Billy Corgan Celebrating Smashing Pumpkins Milestones With … Solo Tour

Billy Corgan will celebrate multiple Smashing Pumpkins milestones with concerts and reissues this year, but, for no apparent reason, he’s doing it without his longtime bandmates. Instead, Corgan will launch the solo endeavor Billy Corgan and the Machines of God, which will be rounded out by drummer Jake Hayden, bassist Jenna Fournier (also known as Kid Tigrrr) and guitarist Kiki Wong, who joined the Pumpkins in April 2024.

The group’s Return to Zero tour will begin June 7 in Baltimore and will comprise sets drawn heavily from 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God and its then online-only sequel Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, plus last year’s Aghori Mhori Mei.

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Tickets will be available for pre-sale tomorrow (April 1) and for the general public on Thursday.

Corgan will also toast Mellon Collie as part of a seven-show collaboration with Chicago’s Lyric Opera from Nov. 21-30. “You’ll hear Billy Corgan and special guest artists along with the epic sound of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra and Chorus in a completely new sonic and visual experience,” reads a message on the event’s web site. “Whether you love the Pumpkins and are excited to hear their music in a sumptuous new dimension, or you simply crave the opportunity to hear a new work inspired by the unexpected, this promises to be one of the can’t-miss cultural collaborations of the season.”

Extending the Chicago theme, Corgan’s Madame Zuzu tea shop in Highland Park, Il., will be the exclusive retailer for an 80-song boxed set bundling both Machina albums for the first time. Beyond 48 Machina tracks, the project includes 32 additional demos, outtakes and live cuts. A 16-song reissue of the original Machina vinyl arrives Aug. 22.

“This isn’t the kind of double album you’ll mentally condense into one disc,” SPIN wrote of the chart-topping Mellon Collie in 1995. “That’s partly because Smashing Pumpkins make music that rejects standard song shapes in favor of a more ambient, uncontainable sonic narrative.”

As for Machina, Corgan told Radio.com in 2021 that volume 1 “was like one edit of the footage, and Machina II was some of the leftover footage — but there was even more stuff leftover. So, this [is] my attempt, 20 years later, to kind of finish the movie and in the process of trying to finish the movie, realizing the movie can never be finished. Some are unfinished, almost like a sketch. But in the aggregate of listening to it, you kinda get a sense of the movie I was after. It’s pretty wild. It’s almost impossible to put into words.”

Here are Billy Corgan’s tour dates:

June 7 – Baltimore, MD // Baltimore Soundstage
June 9 – Boston, MA // Paradise Rock Club
June 11 – Muskoka, ON // Kee to Bala
June 12 – Toronto, ON // HISTORY
June 13 – Montreal QC // Beanfield Theatre
June 15 – New York, NY // Irving Plaza
June 16 – Philadelphia, PA // Theatre of Living Arts
June 17 – Allentown, PA // Archer Music Hall
June 19 – Detroit, MI // St. Andrew’s Hall
June 20 – Joliet, IL // Taste of Joliet
June 21 – Grand Rapids, MI // Intersection
June 23 – Pittsburgh, PA // Roxian Theatre
June 25 – Cleveland, OH // House of Blues Cleveland
June 26 – Cincinnati, OH // Bogart’s
June 27 – Milwaukee, WI // Summerfest
June 29 – Minneapolis, MN // Varsity Theater

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.