Folk and blues singer-songwriter A.J. Croce has added the Bloomington Center for the Arts to a summer tour framed around his new album, Heart of the Eternal.
The album, due to drop on Friday, March 7, includes Croce’s funk-forward I Got a Feeling. The single is among several new songs since Croce’s last studio album, By Request, in 2021. Complications of Love, released last November, has hot club jazz leanings, while So Much Fun, out in 2022, pulls more directly from early influences like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke.
Croce has a long list of collaborators in a long career that includes jazz, blues and Americana/roots legends like Charles, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, the Neville Brothers and Bela Fleck.
A few years ago, Croce also began playing songs by his late father, Jim Croce. He refused to play or even talk about the legendary singer-songwriter’s music that includes hits like Bad, Bad Leroy Brown; Operator; Time in a Bottle and I Got a Name. Jim Croce died in a plane crash in 1973; A.J. was days away from turning 2 years old.
Croce plays Croce has select dates scheduled prior to the April 4 kickoff of his Heart of the Eternal Tour. The latter is scheduled to stop in Bloomington on June 13.
Tickets start at $38, on sale beginning Friday, March 7, at 10 a.m. at 309-434-2777 and artsblooming.org.
