Roger Waters The Wall Live Tour rehearsals come to Mohegan Sun Arena | The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton PA

WILKES-BARRE TWP. – Mohegan Sun Arena isn’t listed as a stop on Roger Waters’ upcoming world tour, but the legendary co-founder, bassist and main lyricist of the now-defunct band Pink Floyd is using the venue for rehearsals.

A source familiar with the arena confirmed that Waters’ tour group has been rehearsing there, preparing for the official kickoff of the “Roger Waters: The Wall Live” tour on Sept. 17 at Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

It’s unknown whether Waters will perform a yet-unannounced concert locally, but it wouldn’t be unheard of for a prominent artist to stage a performance at a relatively small venue such as Mohegan Sun with its roughly 10,000 seats in advance of a major tour.

Simon & Garfunkel launched their two-month long “Old Friends” reunion tour – their first tour in more than 20 years – with a concert at the arena after rehearsing there in 2003.

And AC/DC performed a dress-rehearsal show at the arena after rehearsing there before the band’s 2008 world tour. The band spent 10 days at the arena gearing up for the tour, and that’s why the local show was possible, Rebecca Bonnevier, who works for SMG as general manager of the arena, said last year.

Bonnevier had said she felt confident the arena never would have landed the hard rock band otherwise.

But it was because of how impressed AC/DC staff was with arena employees and the reputation the arena built that it was able to land The Dead – a reunited Grateful Dead sans the late Jerry Garcia – for a show during the 19-stop national tour in 2009.

At a meeting of the Luzerne County Convention Center Authority board of directors two weeks ago, Bonnevier told the board that renting the arena for a major artist’s rehearsal netted the arena about as much revenue as an entire season of indoor football.

But officials wouldn’t name the artist that had been rehearsing there, even though Bonnevier had told the board at a public meeting in 2008 that AC/DC would be rehearsing there.

Waters announced the tour commemorating the 30th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s 1979 concept album “The Wall” back in April.

He told The Associated Press that the piece, which was loosely inspired by his life, has taken on new meaning for him since he first performed it 30 years ago.

“Thirty years ago when I was kind of an angry and not a very young lad, I found myself driven into defensive positions because I was scared of stuff, and I’ve come to realize that in that personal story, maybe somewhere hidden in there exists an allegory for more general and universal themes, political and social themes,” he had said. “It’s really for that reason that I decided that I’d try and create a new performance of this piece using a lot of the same things that we did all those years ago.”

Waters had said he won’t just be dusting off the show that Pink Floyd performed decades ago. Part of the excitement surrounding his new staging of “The Wall” involves new technology that allows him to do things he could only dream about in the 1980s and ’90s.

“Projection systems now are completely different from what they were then, which means that I would be able to project over the entire 250-foot expanse of the wall … which we couldn’t do in those days,” he had said.

But more important to Waters than the theatrics is the legendary album’s political and social commentary, which he believes is still relevant.

“When we did it then, we were after the end of the Vietnam War, and we’re right now in the middle of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so there’s a very powerful anti-war message in ‘The Wall.’ There was then and there still is now,” he had said.