2004

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.

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.

In the early stages of a month-long fall tour supporting its new release, Gov’t Mule has also just announced a two-night New Year’s Eve bash (December 30-31) at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The first night features special opening guest James “Blood” Ulmer, while the second night is all Gov’t Mule

Air, TV On The Radio, Dizzee Rascal and Nellie McKay are confirmed to perform at the 2004 Shortlist Prize awards ceremony, to be held Nov. 15 at Los Angeles’ Avalon Theatre. The acts are among the 10 finalists for the prize, which also include Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, Ghostface Killah, Loretta Lynn, the Streets and Wilco.

In addition, Razor & Tie will on Nov. 2 release “MTV2 Presents: Shortlist 2004 Nominees,” a compilation featuring all 10 finalists plus cuts from Secret Machines, Ryan Adams, Cafe Tacuba, Muse and Jem, who were nominated in the prize’s Long List.

MTV2 will broadcast a special based on the event on Nov. 20. XM Satellite Radio will carry the awards live.

The Shortlist honors critically acclaimed albums that have not yet been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for U.S. shipments of 500,000 copies. Nominees and winners are chosen by a panel of Listmakers which this year includes Norah Jones, John Mayer, Jack Black and Jim Jarmusch.

Source billboard.com.