Blink-182 Delays Tour After Travis Barker's Injury
Blink-182 has had to postpone its world tour due to drummer Travis Barker's finger injury. The "All the Small Things" band, which was slated to tour for the first time ever in Latin America after kicking off its reunion tour on March 11 at the Imperial GNP festival in Tijuana, Mexico, announced Wednesday that it would have to postpone that leg of the tour while Barker recovers from a surgery he underwent this week.
"I'm so sorry to everyone in South America that we couldn't come down there. This has been something we've been aiming to do for so long and we work so hard and we just kind of had one of those freak accidents that nobody saw coming," Tom DeLonge said in a video Wednesday. "Travis needs to go in and have surgery on his finger and we have to get that well. We have to get that strong before we can do anything else. This is just so sad."
While the band is "devastated" to have to postpone their tour dates, they "plan to come back," DeLonge assured. The reunion tour is now scheduled to kick off on May 5 in St. Paul, Minnesota and will finish its North American leg in Nashville, Tennessee on July 16 before heading overseas to Europe in September and Australia in February 2024.
"I know it seems like you waited so long that you have and we waited so long to do this is just devastating on so many levels, but we're going to get Travis better," DeLonge said Wednesday. "And we're going to come down, the three of us together, and we're going to rock and we're going to have an incredible time with you guys." He continued, "But I really want you to know from my heart to yours, how important you guys are to us and this is not something that we could even have saw coming. It's just devastating. But we love you. Blink-182 loves you. We will see you soon."
Barker previously revealed he had hurt his finger on Feb. 8, tweeting, "I was playing the drums at rehearsals yesterday and I smashed my finger so hard I dislocated it and tore the ligaments." Then, just 12 days later, the drummer shared on his Instagram Story a photo of his gnarled finger, writing that he had injured it "again." Barker was scheduled to have surgery Wednesday, sharing a photo of himself in the hospital on his Instagram Story before going under the knife.