Jazz guitar virtuoso Pat Metheny and the other five members of the Pat Metheny Group are gearing up for a 30-city North American tour before heading for the Far East in April.

The band is dropping its latest disc, The Way Up, in January 2005, and plans to kick of its support trek February 18 in Toronto. Other stops along the way include Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Houston, Atlanta , Boston and Washington, D.C.

Kansas City native Metheny has been a fixture of the contemporary jazz scene since 1974, either as a solo act, part of a trio, or with the full-blown sound of the Pat Metheny Group.

He’s won 15 Grammy Awards in just about every jazz category there is, and many more than once – including a stretch of seven in a row for seven consecutive albums.

After the Pat Metheny Group closes down its North American outing March 30 in New Brunswick, N.J., it heads for Japan April 28-22 and then on for four nights in Seoul, South Korean April 26-30.

Source pollstar.com.

Veteran British broadcaster John Peel has died while on holiday in Peru, the BBC and the British Embassy said Tuesday

Peel, who discovered dozens of major bands during 40 years as a radio disc jockey, suffered a heart attack Monday night in the ancient Inca city of Cuzco, the BBC said.

Peel, 65, was on holiday with his wife, Sheila.

“John Peel was a broadcasting legend. I am deeply saddened by his death as are all who work at Radio 1,” said BBC spokesman Andy Parfitt.

“John’s influence has towered over the development of popular music for nearly four decades. He will be hugely missed.”

Born John Ravenscroft near Liverpool in 1939, Peel said his life was changed when he was a teenager by hearing Elvis Presley singing “Heartbreak Hotel.”

He moved to Dallas, Texas, where he landed a job as a DJ on WRR radio.

Returning to the UK, Peel became one of the country’s first pirate DJs, who broadcast from ships outside British waters in the 1960s. He joined the BBC in 1967, becoming the longest-serving DJ on BBC Radio 1.

Peel was among the first DJs to play demo tapes by little-known bands –championing acts ranging from Jimi Hendrix to The Smiths, The Fall, Pulp and Northern Irish punks The Undertones.

He was a strong supporter of punk rock in the late 1970s, as well as reggae music. He also promoted hip-hop.

Since 1998, he hosted Radio 4’s “Home Truths” program, a whimsical show about the travails of family life.

Peel is survived by his wife and four children.

Source CNN.com.

Apple has teamed with U2 to create a customized iPod pre-loaded with every one of the Irish rock act’s studio albums. In all, the portable music player will contain more than 400 U2 tracks, including 25 rarities previously only available to subscribers to U2’s official magazine, Propaganda. The device comes in black with a red click wheel and is engraved with band members’ signatures.

In addition, Apple’s iTunes Music Store will in late November make available “The Complete U2,” allowing fans to download the tracks pre-loaded onto the customized iPod in one click. The bundle will sell for $149; the 20GB U2 iPod, which can hold 5,000 songs, will be available in mid-November for $349.

“We want our audience to have a more intimate online relationship with the band, and Apple can help us do that,” says U2 frontman Bono. “With iPod and iTunes, Apple has created a crossroads of art, commerce and technology which feels good for both musicians and fans.”

U2 and Apple had already partnered on an iPod television ad campaign featuring “Vertigo,” the first single from the band’s upcoming Interscope album, “How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”

Apple today (Oct. 26) also unveiled the new 40 and 60GB iPod Photo models, which feature a color screen and can store up to 25,000 digital photos and 15,000 songs.

Souce billboard.com.

Independent online music retailer CD Baby has now paid over $10 million
dollars directly to musicians for CDs sold worldwide through their online
store at http://www.cdbaby.com.

CD Baby’s easy consignment system has given every musician access to
worldwide sales and distribution, without having to sign away their music to
a record label.

While record labels are blaming piracy for a lack of sales, music sold
through CD Baby has almost doubled every year for the past six years.

“It’s easier than ever for music fans to find great non-mainstream music,”
says CD Baby founder Derek Sivers. “So what’s reported as a sales decline
for a huge pop star is actually a sales boost for the less-famous but
more-talented musicians of the world. We sell thousands of CDs a day by
artists you’ve never heard, but will love when you do.”

Now, as one of the primary suppliers of music to digital download services
such as Apple iTunes, MSN Music, Napster, Rhapsody, Sony Connect,
MusicMatch, and more, CD Baby is helping artists everywhere get their music
out into even wider distribution.

CD Baby has been a launching pad for later-famous acts such as O.A.R., Jack
Johnson and Gary Jules. Other already-famous artists such as Thomas Dolby, George Clinton, Grant-Lee Phillips, and Beach Boy Al Jardine have chosen to use CD Baby’s unique distribution service to release smaller projects directly to their fans.

CD Baby now represents over 75,000 artists and labels, making them the
largest seller of independent music on the web.

As reported on rollingstone.com –

WILCO, the FLAMING LIPS and SLEATER-KINNEY are already set to ring in the New Year with a stellar joint show at New York’s Madison Square Garden..

Mos Def will next month return to famed New York jazz nightclub the Blue Note’s Another Side Series, at which he performed last year. The rapper-turned-actor will perform two shows a night Nov. 3-5 backed by an acoustic band featuring Living Colour drummer Will Calhoun and pianist Orrin Evans.

The artist’s musical diversity comes through on his just-released Rawkus/Geffen album “The New Danger,” which debuted this week at No. 5 on The Billboard 200. While there is plenty of hip-hop throughout the set, the Blue Note stand will likely find Mos Def singing and scatting more than rapping.

On the acting front, Mos Def will next be seen in “A Confederacy of Dunces” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” both set to premiere in 2005.

Source billboard.com.

Conor Oberst will release two new albums in January under his Bright Eyes moniker, one a collection of acoustic songs and the other a more rock-oriented affair. “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” and “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” will be issued by Saddle Creek, and preceded by Oct. 26 by the respective singles “Lua” and “Take It Easy.”

The releases will serve as a simultaneous follow-up to 2002’s “Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground,” which reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and has sold 174,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The 10-track “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” is described as a “country-tinged melange” that sports guest appearances by Emmylou Harris on three tracks and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James on one other. “Digital Ash” boasts five tracks with Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner.

Additional guest appearances spread across the two sets include the Postal Service’s Jimmy Tamborello, producer Mike Mogis and members of fellow Saddle Creek bands Rilo Kiley, Cursive, Now It’s Overhead and the Faint, among others.

Oberst recently wrapped a run of dates on the Vote for Change tour. A six-date European swing begins Nov. 7 in Stockholm, to be followed next March by a 10-date support slot on R.E.M.’s tour of Australia and New Zealand.

Here is the track list for “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning”:

“At the Bottom of Everything” (featuring Jim James)
“We Are Nowhere and It’s Now” (featuring Emmylou Harris)
“Old Soul Song (For the New World Order)” (featuring Emmylou Harris)
“Lua”
“Train Under Water”
“First Day of My Life”
“Another Travelin’ Song”
“Landlocked Blues” (featuring Emmylou Harris)
“Poison Oak”
“Road to Joy”

Here is the track list for “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn”:

“Time Code”
“Gold Mine Gutted”
“Arc of Time (Time Code)”
“Down in a Rabbit Hole” (featuring Nick Zinner)
“Take It Easy (Love Nothing)”
“Hit the Switch” (featuring Nick Zinner)
“I Believe in Symmetry” (featuring Nick Zinner)
“Devil in the Details” (featuring Nick Zinner)
“Ship in a Bottle”
“Light Pollution”
“Theme From Pinata”
“Easy/Lucky/Free” (featuring Nick Zinner)

Source billboard.com.

Alison Krauss and Union Station will strike while the iron is still hot with the Nov. 23 release of their next Rounder album, “Lonely Runs Both Ways.” Krauss has reached a new peak in visibility this year, performing at the Grammys and the Oscars and garnering five nominations for the upcoming Country Music Association awards, at which she will also perform with Brad Paisley.

The new 15-track set finds Krauss and guitarist/vocalist Dan Tyminski, dobro player Jerry Douglas, banjo/guitarist/vocalist Ron Block and bassist/vocalist Barry Bales tackling such songs as Del McCoury’s “Rain Please Go Away,” Woodie Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ “Wouldn’t Be So Bad.”

Krauss co-wrote “This Sad Song” with Alison Brown, while Block turns in “I Don’t Have To Live This Way” and album closer “A Living Prayer.” The set is rounded out by four tunes penned by Robert Lee Castleman, including opener “Gravity” and first single “Restless.”

“Lonely Runs Both Ways” follows 2002’s “Live,” which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Bluegrass Albums chart, and the 2001 studio set “New Favorite,” which hit No. 2 on the same tally.

Although a run of December tour dates is not yet confirmed, Krauss and Union Station will perform during release week on NBC’s “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and the following month on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Here is the track list for “Lonely Runs Both Ways”:

“Gravity”
“Restless”
“Rain Please Go Away”
“Goodbye Is All We Have”
“Unionhouse Branch”
“Wouldn’t Be So Bad”
“Pastures of Plenty”
“Crazy As Me”
“Borderline”
“Poor Old Heart”
“This Sad Song”
“Doesn’t Have To Be This Way”
“I Don’t Have To Live this Way”
“If I Didn’t Know Any Better”
“A Living Prayer”

Source billboard.com.

U.K. rock act Snow Patrol will cap a breakthrough year with the concert DVD “Live 2004: Mums and Dads of the World Be Patient With Your Children.” Due Nov. 23 via Interscope, the 15-track release chronicles a sold-out August show at London’s Somerset House, featuring the smash U.K. singles “Run” and “Chocolate” plus such obscurities as the B-side “Post Punk Progression.”

The package also includes videos for “Run,” “Chocolate,” “Spitting Games” and “How To Be Dead,” as well as band-shot behind-the-scenes footage from its tours of North America, Japan and Ireland.

Snow Patrol crashed into the mainstream this year on the strength of its third album, “Final Straw,” which hit No. 1 on the Oct. 16 edition of Billboard’s Heatseekers chart after 27 weeks and has sold 158,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In the U.K., the set has been certified double platinum for shipments of 600,000 units.

Also on Nov. 23, “Final Straw” will be reissued in DualDisc format, featuring the regular album on one side and a DVD side boasting three videos, a performance and interview on “Sessions@AOL,” a Surround Sound audio mix and a photo gallery.

As previously reported, the band has approximately 10 new songs written in advance of hitting the studio in February to record its next release. Beforehand, Snow Patrol will embark on an already-sold out U.K. tour, beginning Nov. 22 in Belfast. Frontman Gary Lightbody recently told Billboard.com the group would return to North America to play a handful of radio station-sponsored holiday shows, but none have yet been confirmed.

“It’s a wonderful, blessed life that people in bands lead,” Lightbody said. “We had nine lean years, I suppose, but bands that actually sell records are in a privileged position to sit back and listen to other peoples’ records. When your job is your hobby, it’s amazing.”

Source billboard.com.

Former Squeeze mainstays Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook will reunite for a live acoustic performance Nov. 18 in London. The free show at Borders Books and Music store in Charing Cross Road, London, dovetails with the Nov. 15 U.K. publication of Jim Drury’s “Squeeze: Song by Song,” the first fully authorized story of the long-running English group, of which Difford and Tilbrook were founding members and principal songwriters.

The Borders event will be followed by a Q&A session with both performers. Drury is also the author of “Ian Dury and the Blockheads: Song by Song” and co-author of “The Stranglers: Song by Song” with that band’s Hugh Cornwell.

Tilbrook’s recent second solo album, “Transatlantic Ping Pong,” released on his own Quixotic label in the United Kingdom and on Quixotic via Compass in North America, featured a track co-written with Difford, “Where I Can Be Your Friend.” The song was the first collaboration by the duo, who first met in 1973, since Difford left Squeeze, prompting the band’s demise in the late 1990s.

“We avoided each other for a few years,” Tilbrook told this writer in August about his recent rapprochement with Difford, “and I think we probably needed to do that. Now we’re at a stage where we can work together. What we want from our lives is quite different now, and that’s hard to reconcile, but there’s no need to reconcile it — we can work on the good bits.”

“‘Where I Can Be Your Friend’ is a really sweet lyric addressed, I think, to me — a sort of apology from Chris about the way the band ended up,” he continued. “I didn’t fully appreciate some of the things he was going through at the time. So it was a really sweet thing for him to write. I do love him. Even though sometimes I’d like to punch him.”

Source billboard.com.