Believe it – Cher, with Nile Rodgers and Chic, to headline Spokane Arena on May 2

Three legendary music artists are heading to Spokane next spring. Emmy-, Grammy- and Oscar-winning actress and singer Cher is headlining Spokane Arena on May 2, the venue announced in a news release Monday morning, and Nile Rodgers and Chic are set to continue to be her opening acts.

Tickets for the “Here We Go Again” tour stop, in support of Cher’s new ABBA covers album, go on sale to the general public starting at noon Friday at the Spokane Arena Box Office, by calling (800) 325-7328 or at ticketswest.com. Members of Cher’s fan club and Citi, the official presale credit card of the tour, will have access to a presale from 10 a.m. Tuesday through 10 p.m. Thursday, at citientertainment.com.

Cher, 73, first performed in Spokane on Aug. 14, 1990, at the Coliseum. At the time, she was arguably the most famous person to perform at the Coliseum. Kenny Rogers, John Denver, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton had all graced that stage, but Cher was bigger, The Spokesman-Review correspondent Don Adair wrote at the time.

Before Cher, only Elvis Presley, who visited in the 1970s toward the end of his career, could compare, Adair wrote. “Cher is the kind of star whose clothes make headlines. Whose boyfriends are front-page news. Whose body has its own category in the library,” Adair wrote.

Cher kept her costume a secret before her Spokane concert and arrived onstage wearing slacks and a jacket, according to S-R archives. The nearly full house moaned when she jokingly announced that she would stay covered up and not make any costume changes.

The Spokesman-Review wrote that she changed costumes, many of them famously revealing, for nearly every song and performed a mix of her own songs and covers, like the Eagles’ “Take It to the Limit.” In a concert review, a Spokesman-Review staff writer noted the Coliseum’s poor sound quality and unbearable heat in the non-air-conditioned building. The next year, voters approved two ballot measures that allowed for construction of Spokane Arena.

In 1999, Spokane actress and singer Nancy Sophia Emerson nearly played Cher in ABC’s “The Beat Goes On: The Sonny and Cher Movie.” Cher returned to Spokane in December 2002 to perform for a full house at Spokane Arena during her farewell tour. The show included acrobats and a life-sized mechanical elephant.

Cher won an Academy Award for best actress in 1988 for “Moonstruck” and, despite a music career that began in the 1960s, claimed her first and only Grammy in 2000 for best dance recording for “Believe.” Her long list of hits, with and without her late ex-husband Sonny Bono, includes “I Got You Babe,” “The Beat Goes On,” “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves,” “Half-Breed,” “Dark Lady,” “I Found Someone,” “After All,” “If I Could Turn Back Time” and “Believe.”

I’ve seen Cher in concert four times. The first two times were the final concert of her residency at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace on Feb. 2, 2011. (incidentally, I also attended DJ Tiesto’s resident show at the Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel that same evening, and his opening act was an up-and-comer named Avicii), and her “Dressed to Kill” tour stop at MGM Grand Garden Arena in May 2014 with opening act Cyndi Lauper, who berated a drunk audience member with “I’m Sicilian – I will cut you.”

The last two Cher concerts were her current residency, “Classic Cher,” at Park Theater at Park MGM, the former Monte Carlo, in Las Vegas, on opening night on Feb. 8, 2017, and a second time nearly one year later. If the four concerts are any indication, this “Here We Go Again” iteration will feature Bob Mackie gowns and Cher and ABBA hits galore. Here we go again indeed. Cher also returns to Las Vegas next year.

Prolific music producer, composer, songwriter, arranger and musician Nile Rodgers, 67, is known for founding trendsetting disco group Chic in 1977 with Bernard Edward. The duo wrote, produced and performed the dance music anthems “Le Freak” and “Good Times.”

Cher is set to perform on the season finale of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” on Nov. 25. Yes, Cher is coming to Spokane next May. This isn’t a dream, so snap out of it!

The Spokesman-Review reporter Jared Brown and Billboard.com contributed to this report.