Couldn't Stand the Weather Tour

The Couldn't Stand the Weather Tour was a worldwide concert tour by blues rock band Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Produced in support of their 1984 album Couldn't Stand the Weather, the tour visited North America, Europe, Australasia and Japan from 1984 to 1985. To reflect the new musical direction that the group took with Couldn't Stand the Weather, the tour was aimed to differ from their past and surpass expectations of the band. In comparison to Vaughan and Double Trouble's modest stage setup from the previous Texas Flood Tour, the Couldn't Stand the Weather Tour involved a slightly more elaborate production. It utilized grander amplifier setups and sound systems to take advantage of the larger venues in which they performed. To avoid their renowned strictly blues material, Vaughan and Double Trouble embodied a more expanded and varied repertoire during performances. In disparity to the previous tour, each of the Couldn't Stand the Weather shows opened with mostly the same three songs before other material was played. The album and the tour were the beginnings of the group's mid-eighties musical development. Consisting of twelve legs and 145 shows, the tour commenced in Southampton, New York, on March 10, 1984, and concluded in San Antonio, Texas, on May 4, 1985. The first seven legs alternated between North America and Europe, before the following leg took the band to Carnegie Hall. After this leg, the tour's schedule was expanded for concert halls in Oceania, which was branded "First Tour of Australia", accordingly. Despite a variety of reactions from music critics, the tour received mostly positive reviews. Among other top-grossing concerts on the tour, nearly all of the Australian performances were sold-out over its seven-show period. The band's 1985 album Soul to Soul, which saw the addition of a fourth band member, was recorded during breaks in the tour, and its songs were played during the succeeding Soul to Soul Tour. By many accounts, the Couldn't Stand the Weather Tour was regarded as one of the band's busiest tours—in 1997, drummer Chris Layton recalled "at that point in time, it was like delirium seemed to be setting in". Background Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble's debut album Texas Flood and the supporting Texas Flood Tour brought them to commercial and critical success, particularly in the United States and Europe.