Lucy Dacus

Mechanicsville, a governor's school and a day job editing photos

Lucy Dacus was born on 2 May 1995 in Mechanicsville, Virginia, and adopted as an infant into a house where music was a trade rather than a pastime. Her mother is a professional pianist and music teacher, her father a graphic designer. She was raised devoutly Christian in rural Hanover County, wore hand-me-downs and Goodwill clothes sold by the pound, and by her own account began writing songs at eight.

She attended Richmond's Maggie L. Walker Governor's School, graduating in 2013, and enrolled to study film at Virginia Commonwealth University before leaving to avoid student debt. While the songs accumulated she worked as a photo editor at Richmond Camera. Her first New York show came in March 2015.

No Burden, her debut, was released on 26 February 2016 through the small Richmond label EggHunt Records. Its nine songs, running from "I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore" through "Trust" to "...Familiar Place", travelled far enough that Matador Records later reissued the album, putting a songwriter still in her early twenties on one of the most respected independent labels in America.

Historian, Home Video and three Grammys with boygenius

Historian followed on 2 March 2018, again on Matador, and reached number 20 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart. It carried "Night Shift", the slow-building break-up song that remains the closer of most of her sets and that BRICKS Magazine, writing in 2026, still refers to simply as the anthem.

The same year she formed boygenius with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. Her third solo record, Home Video, arrived on 25 June 2021 and peaked at number 104 on the Billboard 200. Then the trio's full-length The Record turned a side project into the biggest thing any of them had done: at the 66th Grammy Awards in 2024 boygenius won Best Alternative Music Album, and "Not Strong Enough" took Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance, making them the first all-female band to win either of the latter two categories.

Her guitar playing earned its own recognition when Rolling Stone placed her at number 213 in its list of the greatest guitarists of all time in October 2023.

Forever Is a Feeling: a love record with a divided press

Dacus previewed new material at Julien Baker's Brooklyn Steel concert in October 2024, and the paired singles "Ankles" and "Limerence" appeared on 15 January 2025. Forever Is a Feeling, her fourth album and her first for Geffen after three on Matador, was released on 28 March 2025 and reached number 16 on the Billboard 200, comfortably her highest chart placing.

The record was made with a wide production bench, including Blake Mills, Bartees Strange, Andrew Lappin, Melina Duterte of Jay Som, Madison Cunningham and Chloe Saavedra, and features Baker, Bridgers and Hozier as guests. It is a record about being in love rather than falling out of it, and it coincided with Dacus confirming her relationship with Baker. She told BRICKS Magazine in April 2026 that she "wanted to avoid it being a rumour", adding: "If you give the info, they can't hunt for it."

Critics did not agree on it. Emma Keates, reviewing for The A.V. Club on 31 March 2025, called it "a lovely listen, but it never quite reaches the heights of Dacus' past work", and argued that parts of it read "more like a collection of boygenius B-sides than something that could have only come from Dacus". The Hollywood Bowl's own listing quotes Rolling Stone describing the songs as "her most intimate dramas yet". The album cycle has kept producing: the surprise singles "Bus Back to Richmond" and "More Than Friends" came out on 8 August 2025, and by late April 2026 she had released "Planting Tomatoes", produced by Jay Som with drummer Stella Mozgawa.

Eighty-one shows: the biggest solo run of her career

The Forever Is a Feeling Tour opened on 18 February 2025 and ran, across four legs of Europe and North America, to 19 May 2026, a total of 81 shows. Spring 2025 dates in North America had Katie Gavin and Jasmine.4.T opening; Jay Som and Julia Jacklin took selected autumn dates, with Hop Along joining a Philadelphia show on 25 July and Slow Pulp appearing in San Diego and Asheville in September.

The rooms were the largest she has headlined: Radio City Music Hall, Massey Hall, the Ryman Auditorium and Red Rocks Amphitheatre, with festival stops at Glastonbury on 28 June 2025, Roskilde on 5 July and Osheaga on 1 August. Pollstar, reporting on 11 March 2026, put the two Radio City sell-outs at $739,922 from 11,289 tickets and described the run as the biggest solo tour of her career.

That March announcement added seven further North American dates, opening at The Sylvee in Madison on 12 July 2026 and closing at the Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park on 25 July, with Toronto, Cleveland, Kingston and MASS MoCA in between, plus festival bookings at Kilby Block Party, Winnipeg Folk Festival, Ottawa Bluesfest, Minnesota Yacht Club and Outside Lands. Consequence, writing on 9 September 2026, added Newport Folk Festival and Bumbershoot to the summer's tally and noted a first symphonic concert with the Chicago Philharmonic. Away from her own shows, 2026 also saw her sing "Bread and Roses" at the inauguration of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.

September 2026: a reissue, a new old song and the Bowl

The most recent development came on 9 September 2026, when Dacus announced a tenth-anniversary reissue of No Burden, due on 4 December 2026. It is led by "No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye", a previously unreleased studio recording made with Richmond collaborators Adrian Olsen and her long-serving guitarist Alan Good Parker, which Consequence described as having "effortless intimacy".

Four days after that announcement she plays the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday 13 September 2026 with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under conductor Thomas Wilkins, presented with KCRW as part of its festival. Cat Power opens by performing her 2006 album The Greatest in full. It is her return to the Bowl three years after boygenius played there, and follows the Chicago orchestral date in July, which was her first with a live symphony orchestra.

What a show is like now

Two 2026 shows show the shape of the thing. At a sold-out Sydney Opera House on 10 February 2026, reviewed by Dylan Marshall for The AU Review with five stars, Stella Bridie opened with a 30-minute solo guitar set. Dacus's main set began with "Hot & Heavy" and drew mostly from Home Video and Forever Is a Feeling, with "First Time", "Ankles", "VBS", "Brando", "Partner in Crime", "Talk" and "Modigliani" through the middle, before an encore that started with a solo "Trust" and brought the band back for two more, ending with "Night Shift". The review singled out the duet "Bullseye" and the closer, and noted that she treats the crowd with waves to the back rows and high fives at the barrier. Marshall thought it might take the title of gig of the year at the venue.

The orchestral version, at Chicago's Jay Pritzker Pavilion on 19 July 2026 with the Chicago Philharmonic and support from Ratboys, ran about 90 minutes and around 20 songs. It opened with an orchestra-only "Calliope Prelude", moved through "Hot & Heavy", "Ankles", "Modigliani", "Limerence", "Talk", "Cartwheel" and "Big Deal" with the orchestra, handed the middle to her band for "Trust", "Christine", "Fool's Gold", the boygenius song "Afraid of Heights" and "Best Guess", then returned to the orchestra for "Kissing Lessons", "Come Out", "Thumbs", "Triple Dog Dare", "Forever Is a Feeling" and "Night Shift", with "Historians" as the encore. That is the template the Hollywood Bowl date is likely to follow.

Dacus herself told BRICKS in April 2026: "Singing these songs, I get a lift every show I get to play." After 81 dates and a further summer of festivals, that is the mood the reviews describe too.