Boston Herald Report: NKOTB to Announce Fenway Concert on Wednesday

According to an article in the Boston Herald, NKOTB will be announcing a performance at Fenway this Wednesday. The article is below:

New Kids bringing the right stuff to Fenway
By Jed Gottlieb and Thomas Grillo / Music | Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Do New Kids on the Block have the right stuff for Fenway Park?

Looks like it. The reunited Boston boy band is expected to give a concert at the hallowed home of the Red Sox on June 11, with tour mates the Backstreet Boys, according to a source close to the deal. The official announcement from concert promoter Live Nation is planned for a press conference at Fenway on Wednesday.

“Long before they were famous, the New Kids were huge Sox fans and used to come and hang out at the ballpark quite often,” the source told the Herald. “When they made it big they still came to the park. It’s a huge thrill for them to play Fenway.”

Despite already having a sold-out show set for TD Garden just a week earlier on June 4, the New Kids in December pitched the Sox on a potential gig. The Red Sox then applied for show permits for June 11 and 12.

How eager are the New Kids to play Fenway? Eager enough to deal with the hassle and expense of changing an already tight tour schedule.

Currently the Fab Five — Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight — are slated to play Nassau Memorial Coliseum on Long Island on June 11. They will have to reschedule that date in order to join the short list of musical acts to have the honor of playing Fenway. There’s even an option to add a Sunday date if Saturday’s sells out — although that would mean canceling another already scheduled show at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ.

Sox owner John Henry and company began booking acts into the 98-year-old park in 2003 with Bruce Springsteen and have since welcomed Jimmy Buffett, the Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, the Police, Neil Diamond, Phish and Paul McCartney. But they didn’t tap local legends until last summer’s Aerosmith/J. Geils Band double play. That Boston-centric bill proved a smash and sold out in minutes.

But can the “Hangin’ Tough” kids draw like the “Toys in the Attic” rockers?

The answer: probably.

The New Kids reunion has been huge. In 2008, they sold out the TD Garden. A year later, they packed the Comcast Center in Mansfield.

Now the New Kids have doubled the fan fun by teaming with the Backstreet Boys for a boy band bonanza dubbed NKOTBSB. The joint tour is scheduled to play 41 shows this summer. The two acts have sold a combined total of more than 200 million albums (compared to Aerosmith’s 150 million).