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Perpetually touring Bob Dylan is packing his bags and taking his show across the pond in November for seven shows in the United Kingdom.

Kicking off November 15 at the Nottingham Arena, Dylan will spend the rest of the month trekking through Manchester, Glasgow, and Birmingham before closing out with two nights at London’s Brixton Academy.

The European jaunt marks Dylan’s first dates after the August 30 drop date of his Starbucks exclusive release, Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962 and coinciding release of Martin Scorsese’s feature film about Dylan, “No Direction Home.”

The soundtrack will be available through the coffee mega-chain, as well as other stores. But the Gaslight disc will be a Starbucks exclusive for 18 months.

Currently, Dylan is wrapping up his second tour of minor league baseball stadiums with Willie Nelson, then going solo for a swing through Canada and the upper Midwest states.

Source pollstar.com.

The Decemberists know how to take a hint.

Their six-week spring tour was largely sold out – even at Boston’s nearly 2,000-capacity Avalon – and frontman Colin Meloy played to packed houses in the cities lucky enough to get a spot on his January solo mini-tour.
So what’s a band to do? Book its most ambitious tour yet, of course.

This September, the Portland, Ore.-based indie rockers will kick off a two-month nationwide tour, called – we kid you not – “The Flight of the Mistle Thrushes.” The schedule includes double gigs at San Francisco’s Fillmore, New York City’s Webster Hall, Los Angeles’ Music Box at the Fonda, Chicago’s Metro and the Big Easy in Boise, Idaho.

Fans in the group’s Pacific Northwest home can catch some pre-tour gigs in August, including shows with the Violent Femmes and Death Cab For Cutie.
The Decemberists will make a trip to NYC’s SummerStage in Central Park August 18 and play Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival main stage September 5 before officially starting the tour in San Francisco September 11.

The packed itinerary includes two Texas dates with Built to Spill – one of them a co-headliner in Houston.

Sons and Daughters will open on the first half of the tour, with Cass McCombs taking over support duties from October 5 through the end of the month.

The tour wraps October 30 at the Voodoo Festival in New Orleans’ City Park.

Source pollstar.com.

Phish is pleased to continue the tradition of releasing choice shows from the band’s archives with the “Island Tour”, available on CD at Phish Dry Goods and download (FLAC or MP3) at LivePhish.com.

The four shows from this legendary run have been mastered from the original two-track soundboard recordings and are available in all formats on July 20th or for immediate pre-order now. This is the first Phish archives release to be offered simultaneously as both CD and download and the first to feature filler tracks from the soundchecks.

The Shows:
April 2nd, 1998 – Nassau Civic Center, Uniondale, NY
April 3rd, 1998 – Nassau Civic Center, Uniondale, NY
April 4th, 1998 – Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI
April 5th, 1998 – Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI

To celebrate the Island Tour release, a Live Phish Listening Party takes place July 19th at the Canal Room in New York City. Archivist Kevin Shapiro will be on hand with vintage Phish audio, rare video and stills from the Phish Archives with visuals presented by J.O.E. Tickets are on sale now and are only $15 with service charge.

Complete information on tickets and the releases can be found at the band’s website at phish.com.

With more and more fans saying hello from across the Pacific, as well as dropping by Lotus sets at High Sierra, the band figured it was about time to visit Japan. Lotus will make its first trip to Japan in September for at least 6 shows. Stay tuned to lotusvibes.com for complete details and more information as it arises.

Starting today, you will once again be able to purchase advance tickets to most Lotus shows via their own ticketing site:
lotusvibes.musictoday.com

Lotus Tour dates:

07-16 Masontown, WV | All Good Music Festival
07-24 New York, NY | Zen II @ Exit2
08-06 Pomfret, CT | The Stone Bear
08-12&13 Cherokee County, SC | Fire Lake Festival

FALL TOUR

09-10 Tokyo, Japan | The Loft
09-13 Toyama, Japan | Mairo
09-15 Osaka, Japan | Big Cat
09-16 Toyohashi, Japan | Lahaina
09-17 Shizuoka, Japan | TBA
09-18 Yokohama, Japan | Lizard

10-04 Manchester, CT | The Main Pub
10-05 Burlington, VT | Higher Ground
10-06 Northampton, MA | Iron Horse Music Hall
10-07 Allston (Boston), MA | Harper’s Ferry
10-08 New York, NY | Knitting Factory
10-11 Asbury Park, NJ | The Stone Pony
10-12 State College, PA | Crowbar
10-13 Buffalo, NY | Nietzsche’s
10-14 Pittsburgh, PA | Mr. Smalls Theatre
10-15 Goshen, IN | The Umble Center
10-18 Cincinnatti, OH | Viper Room
10-21 Chicago, IL | Subterranean
10-22 Milwaukee, WI | Shank Hall
10-25 Iowa City, IA | Yacht Club
10-26 Urbana, IL | Canopy Club
10-28 Cleveland, OH | Grog Shop
10-29 Baltimore, MD | The Funk Box
10-30 Plains, PA | River Street Jazz Cafe

Dave Matthews, Neil Young, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp will head to Chicago this year for Farm Aid. The twentieth-anniversary concert, to be held at the Tweeter Center on September 18th, will wrap a weeklong series of events, including club shows and a film festival, in the city to benefit American farmers.

“It’s good to be back in Illinois where it all started,” Nelson said Monday at a press conference at Chicago’s Grant Park. “This state is showing how good food can connect places like Champaign and Chicago. It inspires us to think about family farmers every day. I’m looking forward to playing on the Farm Aid stage, playing music with my friends.”

Farm Aid, which began in Champaign in 1985, was the brainchild of Bob Dylan and spearheaded by Nelson and Mellencamp. The concerts have raised $27 million for family-owned American farms.

Tickets to this year’s show go on sale July 30th. More performers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Source rollingstone.com.

Having nearly completed work on its sophomore Domino/Epic album, U.K. rock act Franz Ferdinand has unveiled plans for a fall North American tour. The month-long trek will begin Sept. 20 in Chicago and has dates on tap through Oct. 18 in Toronto. The group is expected to return for more shows in the first portion of 2006.

Like its 2004 predecessor, the new album will be a self-titled affair. A number of songs from the set, due Oct. 4, were road-tested earlier this spring during a series of gigs in Russia, which allowed the band to fine-tune them before recording final versions.

Franz Ferdinand’s tour dates:

Aug. 9: San Sebastian, Spain (Estadio de Anoeta; w/ U2)
Aug. 11: Madrid (Estadio Vicente Calderon; w/ U2)
Aug. 20-21: Staffordshire/Chelmsford, England (V Festival)
Aug. 30-31: Edinburgh (Edinburgh Castle)
Sept. 20: Chicago (Aragon Ballroom)
Sept. 21: Minneapolis (Target Center)
Sept. 22: Kansas City, Mo. (Uptown Theatre)
Sept. 23: St. Louis (Pageant)
Sept. 25: Austin, Texas (Austin City Limits Festival)
Sept. 27: Denver (Fillmore Auditorium)
Sept. 28: Magna, Utah (Great Salt Air Amphitheatre)
Oct. 1-2: Seattle (Paramount Theatre)
Oct. 3: Portland, Ore. (Rose Garden Arena)
Oct. 4: Vancouver (Orpheum Theatre)
Oct. 6: San Francisco (Bill Graham Civic Auditorium)
Oct. 7: Los Angeles (Greek Theatre)
Oct. 9: San Diego (SDSU Open Air Theatre)
Oct. 11: Las Vegas (the Joint)
Oct. 17: New York (Theatre at Madison Square Garden)
Oct. 18: Toronto (Ricoh Centre)
Oct. 28: Paris (Zenith)
Oct. 31: Rouen, France (31st)
Nov. 1: Lille, France (Zenith)
Nov. 2: Metz, France (Les Arenes)
Nov. 4: Grenoble, France (Zenith)
Nov. 7: Dusseldorf, Germany (Phillishalle)
Nov. 8: Berlin (Tempodrom)
Nov. 9: Hamburg, Germany (Colour Line Arena)
Dec. 12: Munich (Zenith)

Source billboard.com.

The Band will be the subject of a comprehensive boxed set this fall that will feature 37 previously unreleased tracks. Due Sept. 27 via Capitol/EMI Music Catalog Marketing, “A Musical History” will include five audio discs and a DVD featuring a wealth of rare live performance footage.

The 111-song box begins with formative tracks the Band crafted with Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan in the early and mid-1960s, including previously unreleased “song sketches” of “Words and Numbers,” “Beautiful Thing,” “Caledonia Mission” and “The Stones I Throw.”

Beyond such classics as “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Weight,” the late ’60s/early ’70s are represented with previously unreleased live versions of “Strawberry Wine,” “Rockin’ Chair” and “Look Out Cleveland,” taped June 2, 1971, at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

The latter portion of the group’s career is augmented with a previously unreleased live collaboration with Dylan on “Highway 61 Revisited” (taped Jan. 31, 1974, in New York) and such rarities as a “song sketch” of “Twilight” and a live take on “Forbidden Fruit.”

The DVD contains a bounty of gems from the vault, including the Band’s three-song, Oct. 30, 1976, performance on “Saturday Night Live,” which has never been released in its entirety. Other performances were captured at Robbie Robertson’s studio (“Jam”/”King Harvest (Has Surely Come)”), on the famed Festival Express tour of Canada (“Long Black Veil,” “Rockin’ Chair”) and at London’s Wembley Stadium (“The Genetic Method”/”Chest Fever”).

“A Musical History,” which was overseen by Robertson with producers Cheryl Pawelski and Andrew Sandoval, will be packaged with a 108-page hardbound box.

Source billboard.com.

On July 12, Legacy Records will release Okemah and the Melody of Riot, the first album in seven years from Son Volt. This comes on the heels of a 20-track compilation that included five unreleased tunes and a live DVD.

Son Volt has been making a return this year. For the past several years, it’s been bandleader Jay Farrar who’s been out on the road as a solo act, but the line between a Farrar thing and a Son Volt thing has always been a little fuzzy.

The band will tour in September, starting in Bellingham, Wash., on the 3rd. The next night the Volt travels a short distance to Seattle, then it’s off to Portland, San Francisco and Santa Cruz. Shows include Los Angeles, Austin and Dallas, with the last gig booked for New Orleans’ House of Blues on September 20, but the Web site hints at an “international tour.”

Sat 09/03/05 Bellingham, WA Night Light Lounge

Sun 09/04/05 Seattle, WA Bumbershoot Festival

Wed 09/07/05 Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom

Fri 09/09/05 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore

Sat 09/10/05 Santa Cruz, CA The Catalyst

Mon 09/12/05 Solana Beach, CA Belly Up Tavern

Tue 09/13/05 Los Angeles, CA El Rey Theatre

Wed 09/14/05 Flagstaff, AZ Orpheum Theatre

Fri 09/16/05 Austin, TX Stubb’s Barbeque

Sat 09/17/05 Dallas, TX Gypsy Tea Room / Ballroom

Tue 09/20/05 New Orleans, LA House Of Blues

Source pollstar.com.

Tracks that funk legend Rick James was working on before his death last August will form the new album “Rick James Forever,” due Aug. 16 via Sanctuary. Although the final track list is not yet confirmed, Billboard.com has learned the set will feature a collaboration with James’ daughter Ty, “My Life,” plus “Do You Wanna Play?,” featuring Johnny Gill and Howard Hewitt.

Other cuts earmarked for “Rick James Forever” include “Taste,” “When Your Body’s Mine,” “Sapphire,” “Freak Baby,” “Sex Slave,” “Deeper Still,” “Funk With Me,” “Stroke” and “Brass Bed.”

Discussions are in the works for a James tribute concert to coincide with the new album’s release, but no details have yet been set.

James died Aug. 6, 2004, of a heart attack. The artist, who had battled drug addiction for years and suffered a 1998 stroke, had methamphetamine, cocaine, Vicodin and Xanax in his system at the time of death, according to the autopsy report.

Source billboard.com.

World leaders concluded an economic summit shaken by terrorism, offering an “alternative to the hatred” — aid packages for Africa and the Palestinian Authority and a pledge to address global climate change.

But reaction to the outcome was polarized: Rockers Bob Geldof and Bono, two of the world’s best known Africa fund-raisers, declared victory. But aid groups said the pledges didn’t go nearly far enough.

t is in the nature of politics that we do not achieve absolutely everything we hope to achieve, but nonetheless I believe we have made very substantial progress indeed,” Blair said.

With a last-minute pledge from Japan, Blair won a key victory, announcing that aid to Africa would rise from the current US$25 billion to US$50 billion by 2010.

Geldof praised the leaders for pledging to double aid to Africa, saying it will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. “The world spoke and the politicians listened,” Bono added.

To read more visit CNN.com.