Nobody had ever put 20 singles at the top of the Billboard Smooth Jazz chart. Boney James did it in 2024, pulling past a mark no artist before him had reached in the chart’s history. He brings the Slow Burn Tour to House of Blues Houston on Sunday, December 6 at 7:00 p.m.
About the Show
The tour takes its name from Slow Burn, James’s nineteenth studio album, released October 18, 2024, on Concord Records. James describes it as “a feeling that grows with a slow but deliberate intensity,” a phrase that fits both the album’s groove-heavy R&B-jazz blend and the long-game patience of a career now more than three decades running. The record features collaborations with bassist Marcus Miller and R&B vocalist October London, who duets with James on the single “All I Want Is You.” No support act has been announced for the Houston date. The show follows a December 4 date at Fillmore New Orleans, two southern rooms and two nights apart, closing a national run that had James on the Hollywood Bowl stage alongside The Commodores on August 30.
James’s route to that 20th No. 1 ran through years of session work before he ever recorded under his own name. Influenced by Grover Washington Jr., he started on clarinet, switched to saxophone by age 10, earned a history degree at UCLA, and went out on the road as a keyboardist with Morris Day in 1985, eventually convincing Day to let him play saxophone instead, and worked as a session player with Randy Crawford, the Isley Brothers, Bobby Caldwell, and Teena Marie before making his own records. His 1992 debut, Trust, launched a catalog that has since earned four RIAA Gold Record certifications, four Grammy nominations, and a Soul Train Award for Best Jazz Album. Albums like Body Language (1999), Pure (2004), and Futuresoul (2015) deepened his following across three decades; Slow Burn, the nineteenth, arrives as the milestone marker of a career that keeps adding to its own record. The sound through all of it has run grittier and more muscular than the smooth jazz label typically implies.
Venue & Logistics
House of Blues Houston on Caroline Street is one of Houston‘s main stages for R&B and jazz headliners, a room in the national chain built to handle touring artists at this scale. Showtime is 7:00 p.m.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets are on sale through Ticketmaster. Buy tickets