Orville Peck

In April 2023, Orville Peck walked onto the Hollywood Bowl stage for the first time, as one of dozens of guests across the two nights of Long Story Short: Willie Nelson 90, and sang "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other" in a sleeveless vest. Less than two months later, he cancelled the remainder of his Bronco tour, following an overdose at New York's Bowery Hotel.

Come September 2026, the masked South African country singer born Daniel Pitout returned to that stage, this time with his name on the marquee, on the day Warner Records released Mule — the album he created from that dark period — and sang that same song about cowboys again.

The three years between those two Bowl appearances weren’t so much a rise for Orville as a reconstruction. Peck released and toured the duets record Stampede in 2024, spent sixteen weeks on Broadway as the Emcee in the Cabaret revival at the Kit Kat Club, issued the Appaloosa EP in November 2025, made his Grand Ole Opry debut in July 2026, and filmed the role of Vega in the forthcoming silver-screen adaptation of Street Fighter.

Deloyd Elze opened the evening, working in what the East L.A. songwriter calls "digital twang" — effectively country music routed through experimental production. Lucius followed, with Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig returning to the stage they last played in October 2024 as part of Brandi Carlile's star-studded Joni Jam shows with Joni Mitchell.

Peck then walked out to a piped-in "Prologue (Eulogy of a Man Turned Mule)," the a cappella album opener on which Emmylou Harris, Noah Cyrus and Allison Russell sing. The band picked up where the recording left off, running Mule's next two tracks live ("Big Ol' House" and "Already Gone") before dropping back into "Roses Are Falling" and "C'mon Baby, Cry."

What followed was less a release night showcase than a conversation between two records. Peck had played Mule in full at San Francisco's Castro Theatre on September 12 and 13, pre-release, so the Bowl crowd didn’t get a premiere. Of the 21 songs performed live, seven came from Mule and seven from 2022's Bronco, with three from Pony, one apiece from Appaloosa and Stampede, and two covers. On the night the new album arrived, Peck gave it exactly as much room as the album that preceded his collapse and subsequent sobriety, and gave the duets record that followed it a single citation ("Conquer the Heart"). For someone whose recent publicity has focused so much on recovery, he continued to embrace the totality of his artistry, in all of the complexity that’s added context to it in recent years.

Peck told the crowd that much of Mule came out of living in Los Angeles, which made the Bowl both a release night celebration and a hometown show. The album’s material landed hardest in its quietest form. "The Breeze, the Grass, the Mourning Dove and Me" arrived mid-set as down-home Americana, uncluttered. It was not only the record's clearest argument for itself all night, but also the song that Peck picked out as his favorite. Cyrus then walked out to join him on "Atchafalaya," her voice having already opened the show from tape.

"Hexie Mountains" came immediately after. Peck framed the Bronco track as the point at which he began writing about his mental health, long before making that sort of honesty his modus operandi on Mule. He sang it with the vibrato pushed to its edge.

The back half moved with more pace, courtesy of "Outta Time," "Turn to Hate," and "Run Out of Road." Then came "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other" — Ned Sublette's song, which Peck recorded as a duet with Willie Nelson and performed on this stage three years prior — now carrying both the queer celebration the Bowl crowd came for and the weight of the first visit. "War of the Worlds" and "Too Little, Too Late" ran back to back before "Dead of Night" and "Bronco" closed the main set.

Peck opened the encore opened with "I Will Always Love You." Though the song came across as a tribute to the recently departed Dolly Parton, Peck had performed it prior to her passing, during his Grand Ole Opry debut in July. He then closed with the country-surf of "Daytona Sand."

Three days later, Peck appeared at Amoeba Music in Hollywood for a short, intimate set, before taking off for dates in Oregon and Montana. The 19-date Man Turned Mule Tour officially kicks off on October 28 at Channel 24 in Sacramento and runs through November 22 at The Paramount in Huntington, New York, with Abbie Callahan supporting. One dollar from every ticket goes to The Trevor Project.

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