Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening is coming to River Spirit Casino Resort on May 10th, 2025. The show is a celebration of 50 years of “Physical Graffiti.” I recently caught up with Jason via Zoom to discuss the show and more. The show will include a performance of the album in its entirety, although not necessarily in order. As Jason explained “I have a problem with playing “Kashmir” that early in the show.” Jason shared that doing the entire album was a way to “Keep us on our toes.” Over 15 years of doing Led Zeppelin Evening they have played every one of these songs, “But never all at the same time.”
Jason went a little further by saying that usually they will play a few songs from the album. In fact, when doing and LZE show, they try to play a few songs from each Zeppelin album. Depending on how long “Physical Graffiti” takes to play time wise, they will figure out what other songs they can play during the performance. Jason mentioned playing “Achilles Last Stand” and “Dazed and Confused” and how much time they can take up during a show. He then joked that if you then threw in “Stairway To Heaven” and “Rock And Roll,” that could take up the rest of the show.
In there I joked about the old days of radio and long songs that were “Bathroom songs.” Meaning you put that on and had enough time to run to the bathroom before the song ended. Jason said he had songs like that for a show, including “Stairway.”
Jason spoke about how all the players in the band seem to have multi-instrumental skills and how they put that to great use on specific songs they do during the show. He wanted the orchestration to sound as full as the album version. The prospect was literally giving him goosebumps as we spoke. Jason even held his arm up to the camera to show me. Some of the songs were never played live by Zeppelin, including “In The Light.” Jason mentioned watching an interview with Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes and them having played it though. Jason spoke about the challenge to playing some of the songs including “Down By The Seaside” and “Night Flight.” His passion for this album was absolutely clear in the way he spoke about it. I was surprised when Jason told me that John Paul Jones “Does not like it that much” when speaking of the song “Night Flight.”
Jason is even trying to find audio from radio stations talking about playing the album for the first time that he can use during the show. We got into past shows and Jason going head-to-head with his dad live. Jason has now lived longer than John Bonham did. We discussed how lengthy songs might be something with age as a consideration. That’s when Jason pointed out he was in “Pre tour mode” and had no beard die in. He also mentioned being a grandfather at this point.
Jason spoke about looking at doing this tour next year and bringing some of the first tour moments back to the show. He also brought up how they can add a lot of things to the show with AI. Jason didn’t go into too much detail at this point, but I feel he was talking about visuals for the show. It appeared he was talking about possibly using AI to repair some media so that it could be used. Jason wants to continually change the show so that fans can appreciate and enjoy it more. He also spoke about more tour dates to be announced. As Jason said towards the end of our conversation “One of the things that was always, has to be there from day one, is the passion to play it.”
Jason put Led Zeppelin in perspective by saying how they entered Olympic Studios September 25th, 1968, to begin recording “Led Zeppelin I.” John Bonham passed away September 25th, 1980. That was the entire span of the band.
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