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CLEVELAND, Ohio - After 45 years in the music business, most with a major record label, singer-songwriter Bryan Adams has gone indie. The 80s and 90s hitmaker will bring his “Roll With The Punches” tour to Rocket Arena on Saturday, Nov. 1, with Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo opening. Tickets start at $69 and are available now at SeatGeek.com. Stories by Malcolm Abram Foo Fighters announce Cleveland stop on 2026 “Take Cover” summer stadium tour Puscifer’s ‘Normal Isn’t’ tour coming to Akron Civic Theatre in 2026 Beauty School Dropout returns to Cleveland with new album for show at Grog Shop Rock Solid Gala 2025: How Cleveland is fighting to save independent music venues Adams released his 16th studio album, “Roll With The Punches,” in August and is on the road promoting his first full-length album of new material on his indie label, Bad Records. The singer-songwriter is known for catchy rockers such as “Run To You” and big movie soundtrack ballads, including “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman,” left his label Universal because they “agreed to disagree” on a new contract. Adams was quite comfortable in the major label system. “I always felt protected by the notion that I had a label that was there for me, but I realized that they weren’t,” Adams explained shortly before the album’s release. Though Adams has long been with major labels, he recalls when A&M Records was sold about a quarter century ago and the artist roster, which included stars such as Sheryl Crow, was parsed out to various subsidiaries, ruining the family feel and removing the friends he’d made across the years. But while going indie at this stage in his career is a big and daunting change, it’s also a good and healthy challenge. “The creative tap does not stop flowing. In fact, I would say that my liberation, if you like, has been super inspiring and given me a whole sort of other sense of independence to carry on and do things independently. It’s very exciting,” Adams said. “A lot of that feeling is about where the idea ‘roll with the punches’ comes from, because you know you’re going to get knocked down, but you got to get back up and keep going,” he added. Adams is back up with “Roll With The Punches,” a solid, rocking collection of melodic tunes such as the second single “Make Up Your Mind,” a jangly pop-rocker anchored by his signature raspy tenor voice, which is still in fine form. The album didn’t make any of the major U.S. charts, though it did make the Top 5 on the U.K. album and independent album charts. Despite the lack of upward chart mobility, Adams is sanguine about his position in the modern pop radio and streaming marketplace, but knows his fans are alive and well and willing to come out and see him onstage. “The only way to really get your music out there is to go on tour and then hopefully create a story around that,” he said. “I can’t truthfully be expecting that I’m going to have a hit record ever again, but I know that my records make me happy and they work perfectly in my show. So, it gives me an impetus to be creative and to bring excitement into what we’re doing and to the people that are fans of the music,” Adams said. Adams believes many of his peers are in a similar situation, still writing and performing, but he says there’s ageism and gatekeepers in the industry that keep older artists from being judged solely on the quality of their new music. But, he also says he understands that the pop landscape is always looking for fresh musical meat and that “there should be younger artists. I think that’s great,” he said. The Rocket show will bring Adams back to Cleveland for the first time in two years, and he has performed in the city many times across his 40-plus years, but one place he has never visited while in the CLE is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “To be honest, I didn’t know there was a museum,” he said, noting that he’s not stressing whether or not he is eventually invited to join the club. “I don’t think they see me. I don’t get any sense that I’m actually on their radar at all. Apart from the one invitation to be there [at the 2021 Rock Hall Inductions] for the Tina [Turner] song [’It’s Only Love’] I’ve never heard from them. I don’t even know who they are.”
