Willie Nelson has cancelled his tour due to a “breathing problem.”
The 86-year-old country music icon tweeted the news late Wednesday. “I’m sorry to cancel my tour, but I have a breathing problem that I need to have my doctor check out,” Nelson wrote. “I’ll be back.”
Nelson performed Wednesday night with Alison Krauss in Toledo, Ohio and was scheduled to perform Friday in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
On Sept. 6, he was set to kick off the Outlaw Music Festival with Krauss, Bonnie Raitt and Brothers Osborne. Nelson is also in the line-up for Farm Aid in Wisconsin on Sept. 21.
In January 2018, Nelson – who said in 2015 that he'd had emphysema and pneumonia "four or five times" – abruptly ended a show in San Diego due to breathing problems. Five months earlier, he cut short a performance in Salt Lake City for the same reason. At the time he tweeted: “The altitude got to me I am feeling better now & headed for lower ground.”
Nelson cancelled eight concerts in February 2018 so he could recover from a flu.
In March 2017, the country star’s publicist shot down a report by Radar Online that claimed Nelson was “deathly ill.” One of the tracks on his album God’s Problem Child is titled “Still Not Dead.”