Blake Shelton Says He Used to ‘Resent’ Touring

Fans might have noticed that Blake Shelton has scaled back his touring schedule in recent years, and he opened up about the reason why during an interview with Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music Country. Shelton explained that around 2012, just after he had started coaching on The Voice, he felt burned out thanks to his new job combined with a rigorous touring schedule.

“It did lose its luster for a minute there, about 2012 or something, that’s when I was just starting,” he recalled. “We went to two seasons of The Voice, The Voice was a brand new show, and I was touring full time, or as much as I could, and it became too much, it was too much for me personally. I mean, there was never a day off, it was just crazy, and I started resenting touring a little bit. I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is the point, what are we doing? I’m not enjoying it anymore.’ And so we did the hardest thing probably for any country artists, or a manager, a booking agency you could ever do, is went, ‘We got to pull back as much as we possibly can.’”

The “Minimum Wage” singer estimated that since 2013, he has played around 25 shows per year. “And that’s obviously not very many for any artist that is trying to maintain that touring profile,” he noted. “But what it has done is, it’s kept me so excited about when I go on stage now, because it’s been a month, half the time, since I’ve been on the stage, and until we get to that tour. And the tours are exciting, because I’m not rolling into them, burnout from the tour that just ended, like you do amphitheaters, and then you go into arenas. And it’s just that one moment that we have a year, it’s like, ‘Hey, we get to go be country stars this month.’ And it’s so exciting, and it’s something that I look forward to, I really do.”

Shelton will next get to go be a country star in August, when he embarks on the latest iteration of his Friends and Heroes Tour with a 17-date run. The Oklahoma native will be joined by very special guest Lindsay Ell, with special appearances by Martina McBride, Tracy Byrd and Trace Adkins. “I’m giving everybody in every city plenty of notice – you might as well tell your boss you’re gonna be late to work the next day and pay that babysitter overtime because we are going to play some country music for y’all until they turn on the lights,” Shelton previously said in a statement. “And that might not stop us!”