Maroon 5 & Kelly Clarkson Kick Off Joint Honda Civic Tour Tonight

Back in 2005, Maroon 5 headlined the Honda Civic Tour. This year, they're back, and they're bringing Kelly Clarkson along for the ride.  The two acts kick off this year's installment of the Honda Civic tour, which has been running since 2001, Thursday night in St. Louis, Missouri. 

This year's trek is the best-selling one in the history of the tour, and it's no surprise: you can't get much hotter than Kelly and Maroon 5 right now when it comes to chart hits.  But with two heavyweight acts on the bill, which one is going to take the stage first every night?  Will they switch off, or flip a coin?  Well, no: Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine says that's been settled.

"Kelly will be going on first, which is going to really light a huge fire under our asses, because we're going to have to really bring it," James said. "Because I've seen her a couple of times. It's really amazing. What a voice and she really brings so much energy every night to stage. So that's really going to be good for us."

The Honda tour is the second one that Maroon 5 has done this year: they did their own headlining arena tour earlier this year, before Adam had to be around to do the live episodes of The Voice. But if you saw them already in 2013, you should still come check them out this time, because it's a different show, with a different feel.

"The Honda Tour is going to be different because it's outside," explains Adam Levine. "It's a whole different summer kinda vibe. Playing an arena tour is a certain vibe, and I think for the summer tour...it's going to be much more family-oriented. When you're enjoying a concert from outdoors it turns into kinda like a summer camp."

In addition, Adam says Maroon 5 makes sure never to give fans the same show twice. "Each tour is kind of its own statement," he explains. "So we bring that tour like a traveling circus all over town; same tricks every night. But once that tour ends, we don't ever want to repeat ourselves. So we make new changes and throw in some different songs in there."

Some of the changes fans can expect will be more production bells and whistles, in terms of lights, staging and video screens. James tell's souces, "I think we really raised the bar for ourselves on this last tour that we did over this winter in the U.S. We had more production and more elements than we've ever had. And so we're continuing that."

While James says that performing in outdoor venues is "a little more limiting in terms of what you can actually bring in," he adds, "We actually do have a pretty amazing stage planned. It's going to be pretty awesome."  And he's got a personal goal for this tour, as well: "Hopefully this stage, I won't fall off of, like the stage that we had this winter!"

Turns out James got disoriented by the lights during a performance of "Harder to Breathe" one night and literally walked off the stage.  He says to go ahead and Google it and you've got his permission to laugh.