The Residents are finally bringing one of their most lauded album’s, 1979’s Eskimo, to the stage. The 2026 tour will “feature a full-length live performance of Eskimo – a theatrical, immersive experience reimagined from the original master recordings.” Dates begin January 9 in Vancouver and are listed below.
The NYC show is at Sony Hall on January 28 and tickets go on sale Friday, October 3 at 10 AM local time.
If you’re not familiar with Eskimo, here are part of the liner notes from The Residents’ website
Created over a period of three years (work began shortly after The Third Reich ‘N’ Roll was released), Eskimo was unlike anything anyone had heard before. Instead of an album made up of songs, The Residents produced a series of acoustic landscapes: each track is the sound of a story taking place, rather than the traditional song telling a story. The idea for the album is supposed to have come from the band’s former collaborator, the Mysterious N. Senada, who had disappeared in the early 70s to search for music among the Eskimos (legend has it that he re-appeared during the making of the album with a tape of sound samples and a jar of arctic air to record). The Residents teamed up with drummer Chris Cutler and Don Preston (formerly a keyboard player for Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention), as well as their regular collaborator, Snakefinger. Inspired by such pieces of pop culture as the famous Santa Claus Coca-Cola ads, The Residents set about inventing an anthropological background for their Eskimos which didn’t bear much resemblance to reality, but instead was based on pop perceptions of the northern peoples (nevertheless, the USSR release was classified as a “cultural documentary”). Each track relates a story which was told in writing on the inside of the album’s gatefold cover. The stories are progressively more complex and dig deeper into the fictional Eskimo culture, starting with a simple Walrus Hunt and ending with a confrontation with the spirit world and a Festival of Death celebrating the end of the six-month night.
You can listen to Eskimo below.
THE RESIDENTS – ESKIMO LIVE! TOUR 2026
Friday, January 9 – Commodore – Vancouver, BC
Saturday, January 10 – Neptune – Seattle, WA
Monday, January 12 – Wonder Ballroom – Portland, OR
Wednesday, January 14 – Palace of Fine Arts – San Francisco, CA
Thursday, January 15 – Belly Up – San Diego, CA
Sunday, January 18 – The Marquee – Tempe, AZ
Tuesday, January 20 – Oriental Theatre – Denver, CO
Thursday, January 22 – Park West – Chicago, IL
Saturday, January 24 – Danforth Music Hall – Toronto, ON
Sunday, January 25 – Le National – Montreal, QC
Tuesday, January 27 – Brighton Music Hall – Boston, MA
Wednesday, January 28 – Sony Hall – New York, NY