Country singer Alan Jackson is stepping back from tour performances amid his ongoing battle with a degenerative nerve condition.
“Y’all may have heard that I’m winding down,” Jackson, 66, said on stage in a Wednesday, October 8, video shared via Instagram. “In fact, this is my last road show of my career.”
He continued, “I appreciate [the applause]. Y’all are gonna make me tear up here, but I just felt like I had to end it all where it all started — and that’s [in] Nashville, Tennessee [a.k.a.] Music City, where country music lives. I gotta do the last one there.”
Jackson will close out his live shows with the final stop on his Last Call With Alan tour on June 27, 2026, at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium. The aptly titled “finale” performance will feature cameos by Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Luke Combs, Riley Green, Cody Johnson, Miranda Lambert, Jon Pardi, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Lee Ann Womack and more country music superstars.
Jackson previously announced in September 2021 that he had been privately battling Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease for a decade. CMT is a hereditary disorder that affects the nervous system, often causing progressive loss of muscle tissue and loss of sensation in the arms and legs.
“I have this neuropathy and neurological disease. It’s genetic that I inherited from my daddy,” Jackson said on the Today show in 2021. “There’s no cure for it, but it’s been affecting me for years, and it’s getting more and more obvious. I know I’m stumbling around on stage, and now I’m having a little trouble balancing, even in front of the microphone, and so, I just feel very uncomfortable.”
He added, “It’s not going to kill me. It’s not deadly, but it’s related [to] muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s disease.”
At the time, Jackson stressed that he planned to continue performing as much as possible.
“I never wanted to do the big retirement tour, like people do, then take a year off and then come back,” he added. “I think that’s kinda cheesy. And I’m not saying I won’t be able to tour. I’ll try to do as much as I can.”
Two years later, Jackson reiterated that he’s not done making music either.
“I may not have toured much, but, like I said, the creative part jumps out every now and then,” the Grammy winner said on the “In Joy Life” podcast in February 2023. “I’m always scribbling down ideas and thinking about melodies and I feel like there’ll be some more music to come. It’s a challenge, so it keeps you interested a little more. If I didn’t write, I think I would’ve gotten bored just singing a long time ago.”
Jackson began his Last Call Tour in 2022, which he’s continued until this day.
“I’m getting into my twilight years. I think it’s just getting time to start thinking about hanging it up full-time,” he said in a May 2024 social media video, announcing the end of the live shows. “Most of my fans know I have a degenerative health condition that affects my legs and arms and mobility that I got from my daddy, and it’s getting worse and it makes me more uncomfortable on stage. I have a hard time and I just want to think about maybe calling it quits before I’m unable to do the job like I want to.”
