Michael Bolton ‘One World One Love 2010 Tour' comes to McAllen

If you made a list of performers who have sold more than 53 million records, won multiple Grammys for Best Male Vocalist and countless other honors, earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, and sold out arenas worldwide, Michael Bolton would be on that list.
But if you tallied all the artists who’ve sung with Luciano Pavarotti and Ray Charles, written songs with Bob Dylan, Ne-Yo and Lady Gaga,penned hits for Barbra Streisand and KISS, played guitar with B.B. King and had his music recorded on a track by hip-hop superstar Kanye West (featuring megastar Jay-Z), Michael Bolton would be the only name on that list.
And now Rio Grande Valley fans can see Michael Bolton when he brings his One World One Love 2010 Tour to the McAllen Convention Center on Monday, Aug. 30.
Listening blind to Michael Bolton’s new album, “One World One Love,” you would hardly guess what a long and illustrious career has preceded it. “I never just put out a record,” the singer and songwriter says on his website. “I’m always trying to keep one or two steps ahead of myself. I need to take risks.”
He’s been as good as his word over the past 22 years. In the late 1980s, Bolton emerged reinterpreting old soul classics by Ray Charles, Percy Sledge and Otis Redding, whose widow Zelma wrote to him praising his rendition of “Dock of the Bay” as “my favorite version of my husband’s classic.” Moving swiftly on he played guitar with the blues legend BB King and in 1991 wrote a song with Bob Dylan entitled “Steel Bars.”
Another detour in 1998 saw him wowing classical audiences with an album of Arias, which led to him to singing tenor alongside the late, great Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Jose Carerras, Renee Fleming and other opera stars.
Around the time in 2006 that he conceived a project to record an album of Sinatra’s swing classics, he was approached by the hip hop maestro Kanye West who sampled his vocals on “Maybe It’s The Power Of Love” and “Never Let Me Down” for a track with Jay-Z.
“One big idea I grew up with was this: remain open to all genres and means of musical expression,” Bolton says, “it’s about excepting any type of music as the artist’s right or freedom of exposition.”
The plan for the new album had two main objectives. First, was to craft a collection of memorably uplifting pop songs that sounded fresh without losing the classic Bolton vocal signature. Equally important, in Bolton’s eyes, was to make a record that would supply an antidote to the mood of gloom engulfing the planet.
“Every song had to make you feel good, because people have enough hardships to think about right now. They need to feel good. ‘No heartbreak songs’ became our mantra.”
Bolton’s McAllen show starts at 8 p.m., and doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are priced from $30 to $80 and are available online at ez-tixx.com or the convention center box office, Melhart Music in McAllen, Lionel’s Western Wear in Weslaco, Cavenders Valleywide, The Bullridger in Harlingen and Wireless Toyz Valleywide.