The first leg of blink-182’s 2023 reunion tour has been pushed back to allow drummer Travis Barker to recover from finger surgery he underwent Tuesday after injuring one of his fingers — twice — during rehearsals for the tour.
As a result, the Poway-bred pop-punk band’s tour-opening March 11 show at the Imperial GNP festival in Tijuana has been pushed back to 2024, along with its 10 other March and April concerts in Mexico and South America.
Assuming Barker, 46, is fully healed, the tour will now open May 4 at Minnesota’s Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. The West Coast leg includes June 16 and 17 Los Angeles concerts at Banc of California Stadium, and June 19 and 20 San Diego concerts at Pechanga Arena.
As of this writing, no official statement has been issued by blink’s record company or representatives. However, guitarist-singer Tom DeLonge announced the tour’s postponement in a Wednesday post on his Instagram page.
“Travis needs to go in and have surgery on his finger, and we have to get that well, and we have to get that strong before we can do anything else,” said Delonge, who described Barker’s accident as “a freak accident that no one saw coming.”
Barker dislocated the ring finger on his left hand at a Feb. 7 rehearsal with blink. He re-injured the same finger at a subsequent rehearsal.
The now-postponed reunion will mark the first time DeLonge has done a tour with Barker and bassist-vocalist Mark Hoppus in nearly a decade. The reconstituted trio has been working on a new album that is expected to be released within the next few months.