Country music sensation Oliver Anthony has canceled a performance at a Knoxville venue after learning that the Tennessee venue was charging fans $200 to meet him.
Anthony shot to fame after his YouTube rendition of The Rich Men North of Richmond went viral last month.
Since then he has been in such high demand that venues, particularly in the South, are clambering to book him.
He had been scheduled to play at Cotton Eyed Joe in Knoxville on September 27 but said he ‘lost his s**t’ over the ticket prices which were $90 for general admission and $200 for meet-and-greets.
Furious, he told fans not to buy them.
Anthony said he put his friend, a full-time plumber, in charge of booking the show and he agreed to the performance without asking what the ticket prices were.
He pulled over to the side of the road when he found out about how much the venue was charging to tell fans not to buy it.
‘My adrenaline is pumping, I’m pissed off right now,’ the singer said in a video posted to Instagram.
‘Don’t buy Cotton Eyed Joe tickets for $99 a piece and sure as hell don’t buy VIP passes for whatever b******* prices they’re on.
‘Don’t pay $100 for a ticket that’s horses***. If we have to cancel the venue and play somewhere else, we will.
‘I didn’t agree to it and I don’t want you to, so please don’t.’
In the caption, he added his shows should ideally never cost more than $25 and said out of the four shows he has done so far, two of them have been free.
Anthony later issued a statement which confirmed the show had now been cancelled.
‘Ultimately, it’s my fault for not being more directly involved with the venues who have reached out,’ he wrote.
‘My plate has been full and I delegated the responsibility to someone else to help me book. I am not pointing fingers at Cotton Eyed Joe, I don’t know where the miscommunication took place. I’m just upset seeing those prices.’
He added: ‘We will find another place in Knoxville area that can do $25 ticket and free meet and greet. I will work to get your tickets refunded from my own budget if they can’t. This will never happen again.
‘Thanks for your patience. I am still learning how all of this works.’ The owner of Cotton Eyed Joe retaliated by saying ticket prices were never discussed when the contract was signed.
He was left offended by Anthony’s post.
‘We negotiated a price, and nothing was ever said about how much to sell the tickets for. Nothing was ever said about charging for meet and greets,’ Chuck Ward told WATE.
‘We talked about the price. I sent him a contract. Everything was cut in stone, black and white and when we put the tickets on sale, we were at 500 tickets that we had sold in about four hours.’
He negotiated a deal for $120,000 which included production, security, staffing, hotel rooms and catering.
‘We did the math. We set our ticket prices to where we could break even on about 1,200-1,300 tickets,’ Ward said.
‘Not make any money, take all the risk of having 1,500 in here. God forbid something happens. We’re liable.’
He was relying on bar sales to make a profit on the evening but he later cancelled the show on his own accord.
Ward added: ‘He should have picked up the phone and said, “Hey, your prices are too expensive. Let’s renegotiate the deal to where you can lower your ticket price”.’
Anthony is now performing at Knoxville Convention Center on September 29 following the ticket price dispute.The singer’s overnight success was sparked by the blue-collar ballad where he rails against working ‘overtime hours for b****** pay’ and slams woke politicians for only caring about ‘minors on an island somewhere.’
He recently made history as the first debut artist to go straight to No. 1 on the Billboard charts with his country anthem Rich Men North of Richmond.
The factory worker from Farmville, Virginia, bested the Beatles and Elvis after his self-penned song attacking politicians drew 17.5 million streams and 147,000 downloads after its release.
His success has attracted the interest of industry figures including country producer John Rich and rapper Gucci Mane but Anthony claimed he has turned down record contracts worth up to $8million.
Anthony, who releases his music without the help of a record label, is estimated to be earning $40,000 a day.
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