The ALL GOOD Summer Festival and Campout, traditionally held the weekend before Memorial Day, will celebrate its ninth annual edition Friday, July 9 through Sunday, July 11 at Marvin
Death Cab for Cutie and Ben Kweller are headlining a spring North American tour. The month and a half-long outing kicks off March 24 at Omaha, Neb.’s Sokol Underground. Clubs and theatres across the nation will play host to the two young indie pop acts, with Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and Seattle all getting double doses. The co-bill runs through May 8, after which Kweller will continue with a string of West Coast dates. Death Cab for Cutie is warming up with a sizable European tour, set to begin February 7 in Oxford, U.K. They’ll hit at least 10 countries on the monthlong jaunt.
Source pollstar.com.
Saxophonist Cornelius Bumpus, a former member of the Doobie Brothers who has performed with Steely Dan since 1993, died yesterday (Feb. 4) en route to a series of performances in California. He was 58. Bumpus had a heart attack on a commercial flight from New York, said his friend, Rod Harris, an organizer of the Columbia College Jazz Concert Series, where Bumpus was to perform this week.
Bumpus’ wife, Linda, told Harris that her husband was dead when the plane made an emergency landing. “Cornelius was a man of great modesty and simplicity,” she writes on her husband’s official Web site, she says. “His life was music, family, and church. He never liked giving talks or speeches. He always felt more articulate with a horn in his mouth.”
On its site, Steely Dan expressed its “profound sorrow and sympathy to Cornelius’ wife and family.”
Bumpus began his career at age 10, playing alto saxophone in the school band in Santa Cruz, Calif. In 1966, he spent six months performing with Bobby Freeman, and joined Moby Grape in 1977, writing one tune for the “Live Grape” album. Bumpus also recorded two solo albums and toured with his own band.
Since performing with the Doobie Brothers in the early 1980s, Bumpus played with a number of bands, most recently with Steely Dan, which won the album of the year Grammy award for its 2000 release, “Two Against Nature.”
His relations with his former Doobie Brothers bandmates turned contentious in the late 1990s, when they sued him and several other musicians over their use of the band’s name. A federal judge in 1999 ruled against Bumpus and the other musicians, ordering them not to use the name.
Source billboard.com.
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Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne’s new album, “Grown Backwards,” will also be his debut for Nonesuch Records. Due March 16, the set includes a duet with Rufus Wainwright on “Au found du Temple Saint” from Georges Bizet’s opera “The Pearl Fishers,” plus a collaboration with the Carla Bley Band on “Empire.”
“Grown Backwards” is Byrne’s first studio album since 2001’s “Look Into the Eyeball,” which was issued by Virgin. Last year, Byrne collaborated with members of Mogwai and Belle & Sebastian for “Lead Us Not Into Temptation” (Thrill Jockey), a soundtrack to the film “Young Adam.”
As previously reported, Byrne will join Ray Davies, Bright Eyes, Yo La Tengo, Keb’ Mo’, Nawang Khechog and artistic director Philip Glass at the 14th annual Tibet House benefit concert on Feb. 25 at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
On March 22 in Milan, he will begin an extensive spring European tour. A run of April U.K. dates will feature fellow Luaka Bop artist Jim White.
Source billboard.com.
