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In a show of consummate solidarity, The Walkmen and Modest Mouse, two bands that were scheduled to be on the entire Lollapalooza tour, have confirmed a Summer tour together. Touring on the strength of their second studio album, Bows And Arrows, and its powerful first single, “The Rat”, The Walkmen have also confirmed headline dates on the days they will not be playing with Modest Mouse.

The dates for the tour are below:

7/13: NEUMOS, SEATTLE
7/14: BERBATIS PAN, PORTLAND
7/16: SENATOR THEATER, CHICO (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
7/17: THE WARFIELD, SAN FRANCISCO (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
7/18: AVALON, LOS ANGELES (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
7/19: THE WILTERN, LOS ANGELES (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
7/20: GALAXY THEATER, SANTA ANA
7/21: CASBAH, SAN DIEGO
7/23: CELEBRIY THEATER, PHOENIX (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
7/25: EMOS OUTSIDE, AUSTIN
7/28: FIRST AVENUE, MINNEAPOLIS (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
7/30: AXIS, BLOOMINGTON W/ MODEST MOUSE (NOT CONFIRMED YET)
7/31: EAGLES BALLROOM, MILWAUKEE (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
8/01: HIGH NOON SALOON, MADISON
8/02: BLUEBERRY HILLS DUCK ROOM, ST LOUIS
8/03: THE INTERSECTION, GRAND RAPIDS
8/04: BLIND PIG, ANN ARBOR
8/05: LEES PALACE, TORONTO
8/06: LITTLE BROTHERS, COLUMBUS
8/07: BEACHLAND BALLROOM, CLEVELAND (this is in the ballroom)
8/08: SOUTHGATE HOUSE, NEWPORT, KY
8/10: ICE GARDEN, ROSTRAVER, PA (W/ MODEST MOUSE)
8/11-14: pending w/ Modest Mouse

Blues Traveler fans in several U.S. cities have a unique opportunity this summer to see the group for free and possibly win a trip to the band’s concert in Prague, Czech Republic.

As part of the “Picture Yourself in Prague” contest, the band will perform free club shows in Denver, New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Atlanta. Tickets will be distributed to adults of legal drinking age on a first-come, first-served basis except in NYC, where they’ll be given out at noon the day of the show.

The concerts take place between July 3 and August 5 and are sponsored by Czech brewer Pilsner Urquell. The company will provide special disposable cameras for fans to take “original, creative” photos featuring Blues Traveler or the beer.

The cameras will be collected after the shows and the pictures judged. One finalist from each city will be chosen to compete for the grand prize: a five-day, four-night trip to Prague for the winner and three guests.

The spring 2005 vacation will include a tour of the company’s brewery and, of course, tickets to Blues Traveler’s Prague concert.

Blues Traveler’s new album, Live On The Rocks, comes out July 13, the day of the NYC stop. In addition to the free shows, they’ll play a number of regular-price gigs this summer, culminating in an August 6 headlining performance for Atlanta’s On The Bricks concert series.

Source pollstar.com.

Having been graced by such collaborators as Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and Richard Thompson on its latest album, “The Ride,” Los Lobos returns the favor on the seven-track mini-album “Covered.”

Due Aug. 3 via Mammoth/Hollywood, the set finds the Latin rock act interpreting material by Costello (“Uncomplicated”), Waits (“Jockey Full of Bourbon”), Thompson (“Shoot Out the Lights”), Bobby Womack (“More Than I Can Stand”), Thee Midnighters (“It’ll Never Be Over for Me”), the Blasters (“Marie Marie”) and Ruben Blades (“Patria”).

Source billboard.com.

While The String Cheese Incident was sorry to hear that promoters and
organizers decided to scrap the plans for Lollapalooza 2004, the band is
in no way discouraged by the hesitancy of a hurting concert industry. Just
back from a hugely successful Bonnaroo weekend and their own sold-out
Horning’s Hideout shows in North Plains, Oregon, SCI sees plenty of
vitality within the music scene. As bassist Keith Moseley explains,
“Despite what the industry is saying, we still believe people want to see
live shows.”

The band is excited to launch a busy summer season with two performances
at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado with The Allman Brothers Band on
July 9 and 10. Both shows are already sold out.

The complete String Cheese Incident summer tour dates are as follows:

Sun Jul 4 Detroit Lakes MN 10,000 LAKES FESTIVAL
Fri Jul 9 Morrison CO RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE
Sat Jul 10 Morrison CO RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE
Fri Jul 16 Garberville CA BENBOW LAKE
Sat Jul 17 Chico CA THE SENATOR THEATER
MonJul 19Tahoe CA CEASARS TAHOE
TueJul 20San Francisco CA WARFIELD THEATER
WedJul 21San Francisco CA WARFIELD THEATER
FriJul 23Los Angeles CA THE WILTERN
Sat Jul 24 Las Vegas NV THE JOINT
Sun Jul 25 Las Vegas NV THE JOINT
Thu Jul 29 Kansas City MO UPTOWN THEATRE
FriJul 30Omaha NE OMAHA MUSIC HALL
Sat Jul 31 Cedar Rapids IA PARAMOUNT THEATER
SunAug 1Milwaukee WI EAGLE’S BALLROOM
FriAug 06Terra Alta WV JERRY GARCIA’S BIRTHDAY BASH
Sat Aug 07 Terra Alta WV JERRY GARCIA’S BIRTHDAY BASH
SunAug 08Terra Alta WV JERRY GARCIA’S BIRTHDAY BASH
Thu Aug 12 Pittsburgh PA CHEVROLET AMPHITHEATRE @ STATION SQUARE
Sat Aug 21 Raleigh NC ALLTEL PAVILION @ WALNUT CREEK
Tue Aug 24 Houston TX
HOBBY CENTER FOR THE PERMORMING A

A set of early 1960s Thelonious Monk performances grace the upcoming set “Monk ‘Round the World.” The second release to stem from a partnership between Thelonious Records and Hyena is due Aug. 10 and includes a bonus DVD capturing the jazz pianist/composer at London’s Marquee Club in 1965. Basketball great and devout Monk fan Kareem Abdul-Jabbar contributes liner notes.

Focusing on performances featuring longtime saxophonist Charlie Rouse, the audio disc boasts recordings from Copenhagen’s Odd Fellow Palaet in 1961 (“Rhythm-A-Ning”), California’s Monterey Jazz Festival in 1963 (“Epistrophy”), and the Alhambra in Paris in 1964 (“Blue Monk,” “Ruby, My Dear”). Also included are performances tracked in Sweden in 1961 (“Bemsha Swing”) and an undetermined European location in 1964 (“Hackensack”).

Sanctioned by the Monk estate, the releases are overseen by Thelonious Records founders T.S. Monk (the artist’s son and a performer in his own right) and Dr. Peter Grain and Hyena’s Joel Dorn, who produced the set. The collaboration seeks to issue legitimate versions of recordings that have been bootlegged for years, as well as make available previously unreleased vault performances.

Source billboard.com.

Rapper/singer/songwriter Everlast will show off tunes from his new album, White Trash Beautiful, on North American stages this July and August.
He’ll do a West Hollywood show at the Conga Room July 1, two weeks before the tour kicks off in earnest at Tequila in Calgary, Alberta. Alt-rocker Buddahead will open on the jaunt, which runs through early August.

White Trash Beautiful is Everlast’s first album since 2000’s Eat At Whitey’s, and finds him further exploring the guitar-based songwriting he first exhibited on the multiplatinum Whitey Ford Sings The Blues.

“A lot of what’s on this album is growing up,” he said. “When I was 19, let’s get drunk and jump around was my emotion, but I’m 34 now.”

Citing influences such as Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, he explains his broadening musical tastes as a natural part of growing up.

“When I was 20, I found rap and it was a form of rebellion. Now I’m reaching back to the things I shunned because it was my parents’ music.”
The album is his third solo effort since House Of Pain broke up, but his fourth overall: He recorded a lesser-known debut, Forever Everlasting, in 1990 when he was a member of Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate outfit.

Source pollstar.com.

When Ray Charles passed away June 10, he left more than his music behind in memory of his talent and influence. The Universal Pictures movie “Ray” (formerly titled “Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Story”) will also serve as testament to Charles’ legacy. Jamie Foxx portrays Charles in a performance already garnering Oscar buzz. “Ray” opens Oct. 29 in U.S. theaters.

The film’s music supervisor and music editor, Curt Sobel, has given Billboard an exclusive insider’s story about the project. “Ray Charles OK’ed the script, and he was 100% supportive of what we were doing in telling his life story,” he says.

Although Foxx did much of his own singing, Charles’ vocals are a huge part of the movie. Sobel worked with the singer to re-record many of his classic songs. “If there were [original recordings] that were unavailable, or if they didn’t match the script, we had Ray come in and do the songs,” says Sobel. “Jamie only sang on the set, not in the studio. We felt that many of the older songs needed to have Ray’s vocals.” Rhino/Atlantic/Warner Strategic Marketing will release the soundtrack Aug. 24.

Taylor Hackford directed “Ray,” which covers Charles’ life from 1935 to 1979. James L. White and Hackford wrote the screenplay. “The way the script was written, they told Ray’s life through the songs,” Sobel says. “You’ll hear a song like ‘Hit the Road Jack’ in a scene when Ray has a fight with his mistress Margie.”

As for Foxx’s portrayal of Charles, Sobel says, “Every scene Jamie is in, he nails the Ray Charles persona and soul. It’s a magnificent performance.”

Making the film was a labor of love, Sobel adds. The picture was an independent production until Universal signed on in March for distribution, long after filming wrapped last year. Prior to that, the movie had been in development for 16 years. “We had budgetary constraints,” Sobel says. “Everyone took a paycheck cut for this picture.”

Sobel says his favorite memories of working on the film include his initial meetings with Charles. “I was there the first time Jamie met Ray,” he recalls. “Jamie was tongue-tied at first, but Ray was so warm and giving of himself. They ended up sitting at pianos side by side and playing music and telling stories. I happened to bring a digital video camera with me to record those meetings. We made a ‘making of’ documentary, which will probably end up on the ‘Ray’ DVD. I deeply regret Ray’s passing; it’s an incredible loss to the world.”

Source billboard.com.

Irish rock act the Thrills will release it sophomore album, “Let’s Bottle Bohemia,” Sept. 14 via Virgin. The first single from the Dave Sardy-produced release will be “Not for All the Love in the World,” a ballad that has been featured in the group’s recent live shows.

As previously reported, the set will feature guest appearances by R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks. It’s the follow-up to 2002’s “So Much for the City,” which reached No. 14 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and has sold 97,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Although the full track list has not been announced, songs recorded for the set include “The Irish Keep Gate Crashing” and “Found My Rosebud,” frontman Conor Deasy told Billboard.com in March. Also confirmed to appear is the cut “What Ever Happened To Corey Haim?”

The Thrills were booked to play dates on the Lollapalooza tour this summer, but in the wake of its cancellation, has lined up a handful of shows with the Polyphonic Spree and Gomez. Those dates get underway July 16 in Vancouver and wrap Aug. 12 in Winston-Salem, N.C. The Thrills will also play the U.K.’s V2004 Festival on Aug. 21-22.

Source billboard.com.

Singer-songwriter David Poe is organizing a pair of concerts to benefit Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry’s campaign. The Living Room in New York City will host Duncan Sheik, Joseph Arthur, Jesse Malin, Jesse Harris and Clem Snide’s Eef Barzelay on July 20th. And the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Golden Smog, Kraig Johnson and Big Star will take the stage at First Avenue in Minneapolis two nights earlier.

Poe projects that the shows could raise about $100,000 for Kerry’s campaign coffer, but he also sees them as an opportunity to promote voter registration. He points out that since eighteen-year-olds got the right to vote, fewer have actually exercised it each year, with only thirty-six-percent of eighteen to twenty-year-olds casting their ballot in the last presidential election. “If you do the math,” he says, “and get that number up to around fifty-percent, Kerry could win this thing by a landside . . . and you won’t have to deal with anything like hanging chads. Politics and voting begins at the grassroots level.”

Following these two shows, Poe is hoping to organize a few others in some battleground states where support for Kerry and President George W. Bush is split evenly. “Like a lot of people,” he says, “I don’t want to wake up the day after the elections, kicking myself for not having done everything I could, especially if the outcome of election is not what I hope it will be.”

As with activism-minded artists like Moby (whose cafe, Teany, will provide beverages before the New York show) and Steve Earle, Poe and company have put pet causes on the backburner due to, what he calls, “intense dissatisfaction with the current administration,” prompting the current call for political fundraising. “This is quite different from a benefit for a charity,” he says, “because the recipient of the proceeds is not only a politician — rather than a clubbed seal — but he’s also a very wealthy man. So now I have to raise money from people who make less money than I do and give it to a millionaire. It’s an irony, and I loves me some irony. But having said that, I really do support him. He’s chosen to serve, unlike a lot of rich people, and he seems to have a voting record that reflects a concern for humanity.”

The two concerts are being organized in conjunction with the Concerts for Kerry Organization (concertsforkerry.com), which has hosted almost twenty shows so far this year with several more planed. Jack Black, Grant-Lee Phillips, Victoria Williams, Mark Olson and comedian David Cross will perform at other events in July.

Source rollingstone.com.

Iggy and the Stooges, the Strokes, the New York Dolls and Bo Diddley lead the lineup for Little Steven’s International Underground Garage Festival. An offshoot of Little Steven’s Underground Garage radio show, the event will be held Aug. 14 at New York’s Randall’s Island. Tickets are $20 and are available through Ticketmaster.

Rounding out the lineup is the Raveonettes, the Pretty Things, the Mooney Suzuki, the Romantics, the Chesterfield Kings, the Fuzztones, the Electric Prunes, the Contrast, Cocktail Strippers, the High Dials, the Chains and Flaming Sideburns. The winner of Little Steven and Dunkin’ Donuts’ Underground Garage Battle of the Bands, to be held July 23 at New York’s Irving Plaza, will also get the chance to perform at the festival.

The Garage Festival stage will be created by Pink Floyd production designer Mark Brickman. Organizers also claim the event aims to “set the world record for most go-go dancers appearing in one show.”

Source billboard.com.