Empire Underground is the kind of room that rewards the trip into downtown Albany. It sits beneath the Empire Live space on North Pearl Street — a 500-capacity club that puts you close enough to a stage to feel the kick drum in your chest. On Sunday, August 23, Nashville rock band A Thousand Horses brings their White Flag Down Tour here, and if you have been curious what happens when a band completely blows up their old sound and starts over, this is the show to find out.
About A Thousand Horses
A Thousand Horses — Michael Hobby on lead vocals, Bill Satcher on lead guitar, and Graham DeLoach on bass — built their name on gritty, freewheeling country-rock, scoring a platinum-certified hit with “Smoke” off their 2015 album Southernality and touring alongside Lynyrd Skynyrd, Darius Rucker, and Jason Aldean. Then they pivoted hard.
White Flag Down, released February 27, 2026, on Highway Sounds Records, is a deliberate swing into hard rock territory — distortion-heavy, grunge-inflected, drawing comparisons to Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. DeLoach was direct about the intention: “We promised our fans this would be our heaviest album yet.” Lead single “Voices” outpaced “Smoke” in streaming numbers within its first month of release. “Dead Man Walking” opens the record with explosive energy and includes a monologue from Dune: Prophecy actor Chris Mason. “Shadows,” featuring Aaron Gillespie of Underoath, brings the kind of weight that fills a room.
The two-time ACM Award-nominated group has topped 320 million streams and completed a 52-show tour across the U.S. and Europe in 2024. The White Flag Down Tour runs through September with 28 dates across four countries — the Albany stop lands squarely in the middle of the U.S. leg.
About Empire Underground
Empire Underground is the lower-level stage in the Empire Live complex at 93 North Pearl Street in downtown Albany. The venue runs two stages across two floors — Empire Live and Empire Underground — giving the Capital District one of its more versatile live music setups. At 500 capacity, this room keeps things close for a band at this level. Full calendar and details at empirelivealbany.com.
Tickets
Showtime is 8:00 PM. An artist presale is running today (June 4), with general public tickets on sale Friday, June 5, at 10:00 AM EDT. Get tickets via Ticketmaster.