AUSSIE film star Russell Crowe is to perform at Parr Hall in July.

It has been confirmed the Gladiators actor will play with his Indoor Garden Party featuring his band The Gentleman Barbers and Lorraine O’Reilly and special guests on Thursday, July 4.

As the Guardian reported last month, Crowe will perform as part of a mini-tour of Britain, Europe and Ireland. 

The actor’s band, named Indoor Garden Party, will also play shows in Dublin, London, Inverness and Leeds. In Europe they will be in Paris. The band play a range of genres – folk, pop, soul and rock.

A keen rugby league fan, Crowe has also been the co-owner of NRL team South Sydney Rabbitohs since 2006. He is a good friend of Warrington Wolves coach Sam Burgess.

The visit could also see a trip to The Halliwell Jones Stadium.

The Wire are due to play Huddersfield Giants that same weekend.

Starting in Rome at the Coliseum in June 2024, he’s on the road again playing music, and he’s bringing his Indoor Garden Party back to the UK and Ireland for the first time since 2017.

An “Indoor Garden Party” is, he says, “an event, a band, a happening. It’s fluid. The personnel changes, but it’s always big. It’s like a festival where I gather people I admire, musicians and storytellers, and we put on a show.”

The concept started in 2009 in a pub outside London owned by the chat show legend, Michael Parkinson, and it has kept going in a haphazard, ad lib way ever since. With this configuration, Crowe brings to the foreground The Gentlemen Barbers, who he has been quietly tinkering with for the last four years.

“There’s an attitude about this band. It’s got a groove. We do a lot of story songs, but we also know we are here to blow out the cobwebs and give the audience a good night”  Russell adds.

Warrington Guardian:

Grabbing time between the shoots of films like Unhinged, Thor: Love & Thunder, The Pope’s Exorcist, and this year’s marquee Marvel release, Kraven the Hunter,  the band have been gathering, sometimes for weeks at a time just playing, recording, talking, gelling.

In 2023, they got out of the studio and onto the stage with an extensive tour of east coast Australia at iconic gigs like the Espy in Melbourne and the Sydney Opera House. Drop-in artists for those shows included Michael Buble, Rita Ora, and RZA from the Wu Tang Clan.

The relationships within the band go back 30 years. Dave Kelly (drums) and Stewart Kirwan (trumpet) were members of Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, as well as playing with Crowe in The Ordinary Fear of God, which included Stu Hunter (piano), and in its touring form also included Chris Kamzelas (guitar). James Hazelwood (bass) has fit right in and shares friendships within the band that go back decades.

Tickets go on sale on Friday at 10am.