With Macklemore dropped and Finneas gone, Ed Sheeran's Loop tour has handed the warm-up slot to a guitar pedal.
With every opening act gone from Ed Sheeran's Loop tour, production has given the support slot to a guitar loop pedal. It was chosen because it cannot speak. Then it repeated what it heard at soundcheck.
The most consequential development on Ed Sheeran's Loop tour this Saturday was not a cancellation. It was a dressing room key, cut fresh, and handed to a small green loop pedal that now travels with nineteen bottles of room-temperature water it cannot drink.
Here is where we are, and sources close to the situation say it moved fast. Macklemore said he was dropped from the tour after pro-Palestinian comments onstage at MetLife Stadium. Sheeran pointed at the US promoter. Finneas walked. By the end of the week the support bill was completely empty.
So production promoted the equipment.
"The pedal has been with this tour since the beginning and it has never once caused a problem," said Renata Colm, the tour's production coordinator. "It does not have opinions. It does not have a publicist. It has a footswitch."
Colm confirmed the pedal will play a nineteen-minute set before doors close, alone, lit from one side. Its name appears on the ticket in the same size type the human acts had.
"We looked at every artist available and every one of them had a mouth. That was the sticking point." — Renata Colm
The vetting process
Insiders describe an unusually thorough review. The pedal was checked for prior statements, social accounts and any history of addressing a crowd. It cleared on all three.
"We asked ourselves what a truly non-controversial opening act looks like in this climate," said Dane Pelletier, who handles bookings for the tour's US promoter. "It looks like a metal box. Honestly it was freeing."
Pelletier said the pedal signed nothing, requested nothing and raised no objection to the morality clause, which he called "the smoothest negotiation of my career."
Merchandise has already adapted. Nineteen shirt designs were pulled and reprinted with the pedal in the centre, slightly larger than it is in life.
Then came soundcheck, and this is the part nobody backstage wants discussed on the record. A loop pedal works by recording whatever it hears and playing it straight back. What it heard, standing alone on that stage in an arena where the crowd chants had not fully faded, it repeated at full volume four times.
"We are reviewing the incident," Colm said. "It may simply not be the right fit for this tour."
Sources close to the situation say the search for a support act continues, and that the tour is now looking at a music stand.
