Todd Rundgren is set to perform at Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix on Thursday as part of his expanded 2026 Damned If I Do Tour, bringing a career that spans seven decades and a famously unpredictable fanbase to the Valley. The show caps a stretch of dates across the western and southwestern United States before the tour wraps up later this month.
According to yourvalley.net, the tour’s latest leg includes additional stops throughout the region and concludes Nov. 21 in Salt Lake City. Rundgren himself has acknowledged the tricky balancing act that comes with playing for a crowd that spans multiple musical eras. “It’s always a challenge for me because my audience is so diverse, I never know what they’re in the mood for,” he said in a statement to the outlet. “I want to make sure we have all the musical ammunition we need to satisfy the spectrum.”
A Catalog Built for Variety
That spectrum is no exaggeration. Rundgren’s 1972 double album Something/Anything? went gold and cracked the Top 30, spinning off Top 20 singles “I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me,” per Ultimate Classic Rock. Beyond his own recordings, he built a parallel reputation behind the boards, producing Meat Loaf’s blockbuster Bat Out of Hell and the Psychedelic Furs’ Forever Now — credits that cemented his reputation as one of rock’s more versatile hands long before he became a touring elder statesman.
His career traces back even further, to 1967, when he founded the psychedelic rock band Nazz, as noted by the Albuquerque Journal. Rundgren was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, with Patti Smith handling the induction, the same report notes.
A Southwest Swing With Shifting Setlists
Phoenix isn’t the only Southwestern stop getting a dose of the Damned If I Do Tour this month. Rundgren brought the show to Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre on Nov. 6, with tickets there running $64 to $89. Ahead of that performance, he said the set would lean more heavily on familiar material than his previous outing at The Lensic Performing Arts Center, including an acoustic portion. “There’s more of the familiar songs that people often come to the show to hear, and some of those will be during an acoustic set,” he said, per the same account…