If you search for concerts by Cage the Elephant on ticketmaster.com, a couple of interesting events pop up — both are Major League Soccer matches, including a May 11 date at UC's Nippert Stadium, when FC Cincinnati plays the Montreal Impact. (The other — perhaps coincidentally, since Cage is from Bowling Green,
Kentucky — is an April 20th Montreal Impact match against the Philadelphia Union in Pennsylvania.)
The ticket link goes to what appears to be standard tickets for the 1 p.m. soccer game. Is it possible that Cage the Elephant will perform a post-game concert, like the ones the Cincinnati Reds have done a few times with acts like Walk the Moon and The Avett Brothers?
Another clue that the Cage-meets-the-MLS-in-Cincy show might be for real — the concert alert service Bandsintown sent out an email yesterday evening with the same date and site (the emails alert users based on favorite artists and location).
If it's legit, tickets — including "general admission" ones — are available now right here. (Note: These are for the soccer game. If the concert doesn't materialize, you'll have tickets for the FC Cincinnati match. Obvs.)
Yesterday Cage the Elephant played a free concert in Tampa, Florida as part of the kick-off to the 2019 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. The band is also a part of a co-headlining tour with Beck, which comes to Riverbend in August.
Earlier this week the group released the track "Goodbye," the latest single from their anticipated new album, Social Cues, which drops next Friday.
We have an email out to the band's publicist and will update this post when/if the date is confirmed.
UPDATE (4/12): The mystery deepens. The Nippert Stadium date has disappeared from Cage the Elephant's Ticketmaster page (but remains on the Bands In Town site). The April 20th MLS-affiliated date near Philly is also gone from the Ticketmaster site, but the group is performing a special afternoon acoustic show near Philadelphia on April 19 (the day their album drops).
We've still not heard a response either way from Cage the Elephant's publicists.
And, not that it means anything, but Cage's drummer, Jared Lloyd, was apparently on an NBC Sports-affiliated chat show called Men In Blazers that is all about — you guessed it — soccer. Lloyd's apparently a fan of British football club Arsenal.
Still, it could all just be a very weird and random glitch in Ticketmaster's system that resulted in two errant dates, somehow for a pair of shows in conjunction with MLS games. Perhaps the Montreal Impact's mascot is named Cage the Elephant and the algorithms got confused?
Here's a screenshot of the initial Ticketmaster listing with the now-gone appearance:
