Bachman-Turner Overdrive bring the No Speed Limit Tour to Australia and New Zealand in February 2027. The run opens at Auckland Town Hall on Monday 1 February 2027 and then crosses the Tasman for five Australian theatre shows: The Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane, the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, the Palais Theatre in Melbourne, the Thebarton Theatre in Adelaide and the Astor Theatre in Perth, where it ends on Thursday 11 February.
Six shows in eleven days is a tight schedule, with one night off between each city. The venues are all historic theatres or mid-sized music halls holding somewhere between about 1,500 and 3,000 people, a long way from the arenas and drive-in crowds the band played to in North America in the mid-1970s, and a format that suits a set built on guitar riffs everyone in the room already knows.
This page sets out the confirmed 2027 dates and venues, a night-by-night view of the tour, what the band's records did in Australia and New Zealand, how the current line-up came together around Randy Bachman, and what is known about ticketing. Tickets have been on sale since Friday 25 September 2026.
The No Speed Limit Tour was first announced as a North American winter run of 27 dates, opening in Orlando, Florida, on 7 January 2027 and finishing in Carlton, Minnesota, on 20 March 2027. The Australian and New Zealand leg sits in the middle of it: after roughly a month on the road in the United States, the band fly to the South Pacific for the first half of February before heading back to North America for the rest of the winter.
New Zealand comes first. Auckland Town Hall, the Edwardian concert hall on Queen Street, hosts the only New Zealand date on Monday 1 February 2027. Two days later, on Wednesday 3 February, the band play The Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, followed by the Enmore Theatre in Newtown, Sydney, on Friday 5 February and the Palais Theatre on the St Kilda foreshore in Melbourne on Sunday 7 February.
The final two shows take the tour west. The Thebarton Theatre in Adelaide's inner west follows on Tuesday 9 February, and the Astor Theatre on Beaufort Street in Mount Lawley closes the run in Perth on Thursday 11 February 2027. No support act had been named for the Australian and New Zealand shows as of 9 October 2026, and no second night has been added in any city.
Press coverage of the announcement described this as the first time the band have taken a tour of their own to Australia, more than fifty years after they formed in Winnipeg. That fits the setlist.fm archive, which holds no Bachman-Turner Overdrive concert in Australia or New Zealand at all. Whatever the exact history, for most fans in the six cities these will be the first chances to hear Takin' Care of Business and You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet played by a band led by the man who wrote them.
Auckland Town Hall opened on 14 December 1911 on Queen Street and is a Category 1 historic place. Its Great Hall, modelled on the Gewandhaus in Leipzig and noted for its acoustics, seats about 1,500 and houses the country's largest musical instrument, the town hall organ.
The Fortitude Music Hall opened in July 2019 on the Brunswick Street Mall in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. It holds about 3,000 people standing and was built to fill the gap for a mid-sized concert hall in the city.
The Enmore Theatre on Enmore Road in Newtown, in Sydney's inner west, opened in 1912 and was remodelled in Art Deco style in 1937. It holds about 1,700 seated or 2,500 standing and is the longest-running live theatre in Sydney.
The Palais Theatre stands on the Lower Esplanade at St Kilda, next to Luna Park, and opened in 1927. With a capacity of nearly 3,000 it is described as the largest seated theatre in Australia, and it is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.
The Thebarton Theatre is a concert hall in Torrensville, in Adelaide's inner west. It opened in 1928 as a combined town hall and picture theatre, designed with input from cinema entrepreneur Dan Clifford, and holds about 2,000 people.
The Astor Theatre on Beaufort Street in Mount Lawley opened in 1914 as the Lyceum Theatre and was rebuilt in Art Deco style in 1939. Listed on the State Register of Heritage Places, it reopened in 2009 as a venue for live music and comedy.
Monday 1 February 2027 — Auckland Town Hall, Auckland. The tour starts here.
Wednesday 3 February 2027 — The Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane.
Friday 5 February 2027 — Enmore Theatre, Sydney.
Sunday 7 February 2027 — Palais Theatre, Melbourne.
Tuesday 9 February 2027 — Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide.
Thursday 11 February 2027 — Astor Theatre, Perth. The run finishes here.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive have a long recorded history in Canada, the United States and Europe, but very little of it is in Australia or New Zealand. The setlist.fm archive has no show by the band in either country, under the Bachman-Turner Overdrive name or the shorter BTO, across more than five decades of touring. The Wikipedia articles on the band and its tours do not list any Australian or New Zealand concert either.
That gap is not for lack of an audience. Wikipedia quotes one summary of the band's reach: if the Guess Who made Canadian music North American, Bachman-Turner Overdrive made it international, earning gold and platinum records in Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as well as in the US and Canada. In Australia, Not Fragile reached number 2 on the Kent Music Report albums chart in 1974, and Four Wheel Drive made the top ten the following year.
The reason the band never followed those sales south is mostly a matter of timing. In their peak years, from 1973 to 1976, Bachman-Turner Overdrive spent most of their time in the United States, logging more than 300 dates in their first year alone and touring Europe with Thin Lizzy as support in 1975. The Canadian press even complained that the band had spent eighteen months in the US before their cross-Canada tour in the summer of 1975. Randy Bachman left after Freeways in 1977, and the line-ups that followed toured far less widely.
When interest in a reunion grew around 2010, Wikipedia records that agents as far away as South America and Australia asked about the Bachman and Turner project. That version of the band played festivals such as Sweden Rock and High Voltage in London, but no Australian dates were recorded, and Fred Turner retired from music in 2018.
That is why this page has no table of past Australian concerts: there is nothing in the archive to put in it. The February 2027 shows are, as far as the available records go, the first Bachman-Turner Overdrive concerts in Australia and New Zealand, and the Auckland Town Hall date on 1 February 2027 is the first in New Zealand.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive grew out of Brave Belt, a country-rock band that Randy Bachman formed in Winnipeg in 1971 after leaving the Guess Who at the height of their success. His brother Robbie Bachman played drums, and on the suggestion of Neil Young, Randy hired local bassist and singer Fred Turner. Brother Tim Bachman joined on second guitar. After two albums that sold poorly, the band found a harder, riff-based sound, emptied Randy's bank account to record new demos and were signed by Charlie Fach at Mercury Records in 1973. The new name came from a truckers' magazine called Overdrive spotted at a steakhouse in Windsor, Ontario.
The first album, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, came out in May 1973 and broke through on radio in US border cities. Bachman-Turner Overdrive II followed in December 1973 with Let It Ride and Takin' Care of Business, a song Randy had first written in the Guess Who days as White Collar Worker. Tim Bachman left in early 1974 and was replaced by Blair Thornton, and that line-up made Not Fragile (1974), which reached number one in Canada and the US and gave the band its only US number-one single, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.
Four Wheel Drive and Head On both appeared in 1975, the second featuring Little Richard on Take It Like a Man, and the compilation Best of B.T.O. (So Far) became the band's best-selling album. Randy Bachman left after Freeways in 1977, and the group carried on as BTO before splitting, reforming in different line-ups in the 1980s and 1990s and going on hiatus in 2005. Over their career they have sold more than 30 million albums.
Randy Bachman and Fred Turner toured together from 2009 to 2018 and played the Grey Cup halftime show in Edmonton in 2010; the classic Not Fragile line-up reunited in 2014 for the band's induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Robbie Bachman and Tim Bachman both died in 2023. Later that year Randy revived the band name with his son Tal Bachman on vocals and guitar, and from 2025 the rhythm section has been bassist Lance LaPointe and drummer Koko Bachman, with Fred Turner appearing on selected dates until 2025.
| Album | Year | AUS chart peak |
|---|---|---|
| Bachman-Turner Overdrive | 1973 | — |
| Bachman-Turner Overdrive II | 1973 | AUS 55 |
| Not Fragile | 1974 | AUS 2 |
| Four Wheel Drive | 1975 | AUS 10 |
| Head On | 1975 | AUS 54 |
| Freeways | 1977 | — |
| Street Action | 1978 | — |
| Rock n' Roll Nights | 1979 | — |
| BTO | 1984 | — |
| Trial by Fire: Greatest & Latest | 1996 | — |
Australian radio played Bachman-Turner Overdrive heavily in the mid-1970s, and Not Fragile came within one place of the top of the Kent Music Report. Yet the band never came. Their management and their label built the band almost entirely in North America, where they would fly to any city in which a record was getting airplay, regardless of the routing. Australia, a long and expensive trip away in an era of chartered planes and trucked equipment, was never part of that plan.
That makes the February 2027 run unusual among classic rock tours to Australia. Most of the band's peers from the same decade have played here many times; Bachman-Turner Overdrive arrive with a catalogue that has had fifty years of radio play and almost no live history in the country. For older fans, the six shows are a chance to fill a gap; for younger ones who know Takin' Care of Business from films, advertising and sporting events, they are a first look at where the song came from.
Auckland Town Hall on Monday 1 February 2027 is the only New Zealand date. It is also the opening night of the southern leg, two days before Brisbane, which means the band arrive in New Zealand straight from the United States. Wellington and Christchurch are not on the schedule as of 9 October 2026.
The Town Hall's Great Hall, opened in 1911 and modelled on the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, is known for its acoustics and normally hosts orchestral concerts as much as rock. It is a smaller room than Spark Arena and suits the theatre-sized format of the whole tour. New Zealand fans travelling from elsewhere in the country have no second chance on this leg: the next nearest show is Brisbane on 3 February.
In Australia the band play one show in each of the five mainland state capitals, in the order Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Each venue is a familiar stop for touring rock acts. The Fortitude Music Hall, opened in 2019, is the newest and largest, with room for about 3,000 standing. The Enmore Theatre in Newtown dates from 1912 and is Sydney's longest-running live theatre. The Palais Theatre at St Kilda opened in 1927 and is often described as the largest seated theatre in the country.
Adelaide's Thebarton Theatre opened in 1928 as a combined town hall and picture theatre, and Perth's Astor Theatre, rebuilt in Art Deco style in 1939, reopened as a music and comedy venue in 2009. There are no regional dates, no Hobart or Canberra show and no second night anywhere; with capacities between about 2,000 and 3,000, the tour is planned so that each city gets one full house rather than several partly filled ones.
The 2027 line-up is a family band in a more literal sense than the original. Randy Bachman, the founder and writer of most of the hits, leads on guitar and vocals. His son Tal Bachman, who had already found success as a solo artist, shares lead vocals and guitar, a role he took on when the band name was revived in 2023. The rhythm section since 2025 is Lance LaPointe on bass and Koko Bachman on drums.
Fred Turner, whose voice sang Let It Ride and Roll On Down the Highway, made only selected appearances with the revived band from 2023 to 2025 and is not listed in the 2027 line-up. Australian audiences should therefore expect the Turner songs to be sung by other members, while the Bachman-written hits keep their composer at the front of the stage.
With no Australian or New Zealand concerts in the archive, there are no local set lists to compare. The revived band's shows in North America since 2023 have been built around the 1970s catalogue: the songs from Bachman-Turner Overdrive II, Not Fragile and Four Wheel Drive that still get regular play on classic rock radio, including Let It Ride, Roll On Down the Highway, Hey You, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and Takin' Care of Business, the band's best-known anthem.
Randy Bachman's history with the Guess Who is also part of his live story, and the 2027 dates follow his recent reunion with Burton Cummings touring as the Guess Who. Whether any Guess Who songs make the Australian set is not known; the safest expectation is a show focused on the BTO hits, in theatres rather than arenas, with the riffs played loud and close.
Tickets for all six Australian and New Zealand shows have been on sale since Friday 25 September 2026. Sales are handled by the venues' authorised outlets and box offices, and the full list of dates is above. No extra shows had been announced as of 9 October 2026; if a further date is added, it would normally go on sale through the same channels as the original six.
Buy only from the official ticketing partner listed for each venue or from the venue box office, and check the date, city and seat section before paying. Many Australian venues now issue name-linked mobile tickets that are hard to transfer, so buy through the official outlet or its official resale service to make sure the ticket is in your name. Be wary of websites selling so-called presale codes: genuine presale access is issued only by the artist, the promoter, the venue or a card partner, never sold.
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When does the Bachman-Turner Overdrive 2027 tour of Australia and New Zealand start?
At Auckland Town Hall on Monday 1 February 2027. The first Australian show is at The Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on Wednesday 3 February.
Which cities are on the tour?
Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, one show in each city.
Where do they play in Sydney and Melbourne?
The Enmore Theatre in Newtown, Sydney, on Friday 5 February 2027, and the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, Melbourne, on Sunday 7 February 2027.
When is the last show of the tour?
At the Astor Theatre in Perth on Thursday 11 February 2027, two days after the Thebarton Theatre in Adelaide on Tuesday 9 February.
Is there a New Zealand date?
Yes, one: Auckland Town Hall on Monday 1 February 2027. No Wellington or Christchurch show has been announced.
Have Bachman-Turner Overdrive played in Australia before?
The setlist.fm archive has no Bachman-Turner Overdrive concert in Australia or New Zealand, and the 2027 run was reported as the band's first tour of their own in Australia.
Who is in the band in 2027?
Randy Bachman leads the group with his son Tal Bachman, bassist Lance LaPointe and drummer Koko Bachman. Fred Turner is not part of the 2027 line-up.
Is there a support act?
No support act had been announced for the Australian and New Zealand shows as of 9 October 2026.
Are tickets still on sale?
Tickets went on sale on Friday 25 September 2026 through the official outlets and venue box offices. Check the venue's official ticketing partner for current availability.
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