The Global Poverty Project is staging a new concert series to raise awareness to the global poverty epidemic: Global Citizen Nights, a series of free, ticketed concerts, will kick off next month with the Fray serving as the first show’s headliner, Billboard can exclusively announce.
The debut Global Citizen Nights show will feature the Denver pop-rock group — whose new album, “Helios,” was released on Tuesday (Feb. 25) — as well as Allen Stone and Saints of Valory. The Fray and co. will perform at Emo’s East in Austin, Tex. on Mar. 10, with future Global Citizen Nights performances set to take place in Nashville, Chicago and St. Louis. Performers, venues and dates for the upcoming shows will be announced soon.
“It’s almost unimaginable how many people live in extreme poverty today,” says the Fray’s frontman, Isaac Slade. “With all the technology and connectivity in our so-called modern global landscape, you’d think we’d have this figured out by now. We hope the Global Citizen Nights concerts will help bring attention to this important issue.”
Global Citizen Nights follows the Global Poverty Project’s launch of the Global Citizen Festival, an annual concert in New York’s Central Park that hosted Neil Young & Crazy Horse and the Foo Fighters in 2012, and Stevie Wonder, Kings of Leon and Alicia Keys last year. The Global Poverty Project, which launched in 2008, is being supported by AEG Live, EKOCYCLE and the World Food Program USA in its latest live music venture.
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“Whereas the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park is timed to engage world leaders by coinciding with the UN General Assembly, the Global Citizen Nights concert series lets us bring major artists to small venues as a reward to young, energetic, and socially-conscious Global Citizens who are engaging with us online,” says Global Poverty Project CEO Hugh Evans in a press statement. “It’s an opportunity to reward Global Citizens in their hometowns and encourage global action at the local level.”
Tickets can be received by fans who take certain “actions” to end extreme poverty, including signing the World Food Program USA’s petition or watching a related video about extreme poverty at the Global Citizen web site. Eighty percent of tickets will be given out, while the 20 percent will be available for purchase; presale passes are available for Citi cardmembers beginning on Wednesday (Feb. 26) at 10:00 am ET.