Paul Simon unretires, sets tour with 5 NYC dates

Paul Simon is coming out of retirement to play a North American tour that includes a five-night stand at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre this summer, the singer announced Tuesday.

Simon’s shows will focus on his recent album "Seven Psalms" but will include material from across his decades-wide catalog, according to Variety. The tour also concentrates on relatively small venues compared with the singer’s previous treks.

Dubbed "A Quiet Celebration," the 55-date tour begins April 4 in New Orleans and ends Aug. 3 in Seattle. Simon will play the Beacon Theatre on June 16, 18, 20, 21 and 23. Other stops on the tour will include the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, Massey Hall in Toronto and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Simon, 83, announced his retirement from touring in 2018 and embarked that year on "Homeward Bound — The Farewell Tour," which began in May in Vancouver, British Columbia, and ended that September in his hometown of Queens at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. In 2023, Simon announced that he had lost most of the hearing in his left ear but nevertheless released "Seven Psalms" and appeared in Alex Gibney’s documentary about the making of the album, "In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon."

In an interview with CBS last year, the man behind such hit albums as "Still Crazy After All These Years," "There Goes Rhymin’ Simon" and "Graceland," seemed to hint that he would return to the road. Simon shared with CBS that he’d been working with the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss and experimenting with new ways to play music.

"It's all much quieter," Simon said. "It's not 'You Can Call Me Al.' That's gone. I can't do that one."

This past Sunday, Simon joined Sabrina Carpenter for a duet of his ballad "Homeward Bound" on NBC’s 3½-hour "SNL50” retrospective. Simon had been one of the earliest musical guests on "Saturday Night Live," performing that song with George Harrison in 1976; he had also performed on the show’s second-ever episode in 1975.

"I was not born then," Carpenter, 25, quipped, "and neither were my parents."

Tour dates and links for purchasing tickets are at paulsimon.com.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com