Archive: 2004

Marlow (a.k.a.Todd Pasternack) returns from the depths of his home studio to release his second indie rock album, The World Before It Ever Was on Pasternack

Umphrey’s McGee’s new album, Anchor Drops will be released June 29th nationwide. The album is being released on SCI Fidelity Records/Hanging Brains Music, and will be distributed coast to coast and beyond by Ryko Distribution. This will mark the sixth release by Umphrey’s McGee, but the first that will be available in record stores around the country.

In support, the band brings their live show on the road this summer. Current tour dates include:

Thu May 20 Bendix Theater South Bend IN
Thu May 27 Shank Hall Milwaukee WI
Fri May 28 Harmony Park Geneva MN
Thu Jun 3 Piere’s Fort Wayne, IN
Fri Jun 4 Newport Music Hall Columbus OH
Jun 6 Belmont-Sheffield Festival Chicago, IL
Fri Jun 11-13 Bonnaroo Music Festival Manchester TN
Thu Jul 22 Smilefest Harmony NC

See umphreysmcgee.com for more info.

Willie Nelson has canceled concerts for the next two months to have surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome. The 71-year-old star was apparently in so much pain he couldn’t finish a show Saturday in Las Vegas. Nelson had 10 concerts scheduled for the remainder of May and June, including a June 12 appearance at the three-day Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

It is unclear when Nelson will resume touring. Among the events on his upcoming schedule include a June 26 show in Chicago’s Grant Park and his annual Fourth of July Picnic in Ft. Worth, Texas. That show is also tipped to feature performances by Asleep At The Wheel, Los Lonely Boys, Merle Haggard and David Allan Coe, among others.

Source billboard.com.

Yo La Tengo sure know how to keep busy. Last year, the band released a full-length album and an EP, and toured from March through October. They recently got back from a U.K. outing with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, and now they’re suiting up for another round of U.S. dates.

The new tour begins May 24 in Vancouver, B.C., and ends June 11 with a stop at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tenn. The band has set aside three nights in a row for San Francisco, where they consistently sell out multiple gigs.

Southern indie rock vets Antietam are set to support on the trek. Their new album, Victory Park, was just released on Carrot Top Records.

Source pollstar.com.

Photos by Aaron Baum of Topaz’s live performance at the Pontiac Grille in Philadelphia, PA on January 30th, 2004.

Reviewing Songs From the Tin Shed, a collaboration between The Big Wu’s Chris Castino and Jeff Austin of the Yonder Mountain String Band, promised to be a no-brainer, a work by representatives of two of today’s hottest jambands. I expected pure acoustic gold with this record. Unfortunately, the chaff prevails.

Some things go in and out of style, but Joe Jackson and his brand of

Time to get out the hairspray and black eyeliner again. Less than a week after headlining the Coachella festival in the Southern California desert, goth pioneers the Cure have unveiled plans for a full U.S. tour this summer.

The Curiosa Festival 2004 will feature the Cure headlining a bill that also includes three bands plainly influenced by Robert Smith and company: Interpol, the Rapture and Mogwai.
A second stage will also be part of the traveling road show, with Muse, Thursday, Cursive, Melissa Auf Der Maur, Cooper Temple Clause and Head Automatica rotating as performers.

The Cure formed in 1976, and only iconoclastic singer/songwriter Smith remains from the group’s initial lineup. Simon Gallup, who joined the group in 1979, is the only other longstanding member in the current lineup. The group plans to release a new eponymous album on June 29, the band’s first LP since 2000’s Bloodflowers. The first single from the album bears the cheery title “The End of the World.”

The tour kicks off July 24 in the unlikely tropical setting of West Palm Beach, Florida, and ends August 27 in Los Angeles. Venues have yet to be confirmed, and additional dates are still being added.
Dates for the Curiosa Festival 2004, according to a band spokesperson:

* 7/24 – West Palm Beach, FL
* 7/25 – Tampa, FL
* 7/28 – Nashville, TN
* 7/29 – Atlanta, GA
* 7/31 – New York, NY
* 8/1 – Camden, NJ
* 8/3 – Cincinnati, OH
* 8/4 – Cleveland, OH
* 8/7 – Boston, MA
* 8/11 – Detroit, MI
* 8/12 – Chicago, IL
* 8/14 – Dallas, TX
* 8/15 – Houston, TX
* 8/17 – Denver, CO
* 8/18 – Salt Lake City, UT
* 8/27 – Los Angeles, CA

Source VH1.com.

The brainchild of Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools and Jerry Joseph of the Jackmormons, Stockholm Syndrome will launch a U.S. tour June 29, the same day its debut album, Holy Happy Hour, hits stores.

The group, which also includes guitarist Eric McFadden, keyboardist Danny Dziuk, and drummer Wally Ingram, will reportedly tour until October, although dates are only confirmed through early August.

The group is currently touring Europe, where Schools and Joseph made a preliminary run as an acoustic duo in 2003.

Full dates are available on Pollstar.com

The second Northeast Kingdom Music Festival will be held on Friday and Saturday, August 6th and 7th at the Chilly Ranch in Albany, VT. The festival will provide two days and nights of camping, community, culture, circus acts, poetry, performance, and politics. The lineup includes: Hieroglyphics, Israel Vibration, The Breakestra, Cyro Baptista & Beat the Donkey, Oteil Burbridge & The Peacemakers, Snake Oil Medicine Show and Nero. For a full list of performers and festival details, visit their website.

TVT Records today announced the signing of West Coast rap supergroup 213. The trio of Nate Dogg, Snoop Dogg and Warren G will release its long-awaited debut, “The Hard Way,” on July 20. The artists have a long association that predates Snoop’s breakthrough appearance on Dr. Dre’s classic 1992 album “The Chronic” and have frequently collaborated in the years since.

Snoop Dogg has not released an album since 2002’s “Paid tha Cost To Be Da Boss” (Priority), while Warren G’s most recent solo release was that year’s “Return of the Regulator” (Universal). Nate Dogg released a self-titled album in 2003 via Elektra.

Source billboard.com.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo has been wowing audiences for three decades, with a rigorous worldwide touring schedule and an average of at least an album a year.

This summer, the South African group is kicking off a mammoth tour of North America and Europe in support of its latest effort, Raise Your Spirit Higher: Wenyukela.

The trek is set to launch June 11 in Ketchum, Idaho, at Sun Valley Center. The ten-member vocal group will play a few weeks’ worth of U.S. gigs before heading to Europe in July. They’ll do stints in both North America and Europe throughout the fall and winter, including a five-show run in Hawaii in January.

The group is already booked solid for next spring, with North American dates stretching all the way through April. Joseph Shabalala founded Ladysmith Black Mambazo in 1974, combining Zulu vocal traditions with the hymnal music of the Christian church. The ensemble became well-known in South Africa almost immediately and achieved widespread fame in the mid-’80s after performing on Paul Simon’s album Graceland.

Source pollstar.com.

Photos by Chad Anderson of URI Day of Hope festival featuring Rasin Hill in Kingston, RI on April 17th, 2004.

Mike Doughty is making the rounds through U.S. clubs and theatres this spring and summer, armed with his trusty acoustic guitar and his arsenal of self-described “small rock” tunes. He’s currently finishing up his opening run for New Orleans jazz-funk outfit Galactic. His headlining dates begin June 5 at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, N.J., and stretch through early July, when he’ll do a double-nighter at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin, Texas.

The former Soul Coughing frontman set out on a solo career after that band’s demise in 1998, releasing Skittish, a collection of home-recorded acoustic songs, in 2000. Smofe & Smang: Live In Minneapolis followed in 2002.

For full list of dates visit pollstar.com.

Noted jazz artists Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland and Brian Blade are teaming up for a series of tour dates. The quartet will kick off its stateside run June 18 in Jacksonville, Ore. Six dates are on the books through a June 26 performance in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. A brief European schedule in July is expected to follow.

Here are the Hancock, Shorter, Holland and Blade tour dates:

June 18: Jacksonville, Ore. (Britt Pavilion)
June 19: San Francisco (San Francisco Jazz Festival)
June 20: Los Angeles (Playboy Jazz Festival)
June 24: Ottawa (International Jazz Festival)
June 25: New York (Carnegie Hall)
June 26: Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (Saratoga Performing Arts Center)

Layered with dreamy, waif-like harmonies and casual cinematic passages, gorjus: fighting Bockman

The Telluride Blues & Brews Festival turns 11 this year when the annual event returns to the Rocky Mountains on Friday, September 17 though Sunday, September 19. B.B. King is scheduled to be the closing headliner on Sunday, with Jonny Lang and Gov’t Mule headlining Friday and Saturday respectively.

Every September, the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival plays host to more than 20 national touring bands, 50 microbreweries, and a sold-out crowd of 8,000 adventure-seekers who come from around the country. The three-day family-friendly celebration of live music and microbrews takes place within the unparalleled culture and wilderness of the Rocky Mountain landscape. At an elevation of 8,750 feet, this mountain hamlet is home to the famous Telluride Town Park, an outdoor music venue with a humble wooden stage, towering mountain peaks for a backdrop, and a pristine mountain valley for a dance floor.

In addition to the King and Mule, this year’s lineup consists of Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Stockholm Syndrome featuring Dave Schools and Jerry Joseph, Shemekia Copeland, Elvin Bishop, Indigenous, Papa Grows Funk, Bonerama, Gospel Hummingbirds, Hazel Miller, Mofro, Tommy Elskes and Friends and many more.

While the main stage in Telluride Town Park is the heart of the festival, the atmosphere is spread throughout the town with late night shows in local Juke Joints, an after-hours jam, the Telluride Acoustic Blues Camp and Competition, sponsored by Acoustic Guitar magazine, Back Porch Blues and Blues for Breakfast. In addition to live music, attendees can enjoy The Rainbow Kids Area, and The Grand Tasting on Saturday, September 18 which features more than 100 different flavors of beer by microbreweries from the Western U.S. Also, on site for the first time this year, will be a traveling exhibit by Gibson Guitars.

Three-day passes are currently on sale and single-day passes go on sale June 1. To order tickets, check availability, and/or make camping reservations, call 866-515-6166 (toll free) or log on to tellurideblues.com.

The U.S. Open of Mountain Biking returns to Diablo Freeride Park at Mountain Creek in Vernon, NJ for the second consecutive year. This three-day event boasts a huge $20,000 Downhill Pro Purse, while offering a staggering $5,000 cash prize to first place in both the men

Kansas

Bursting onto the singer/songwriter scene with his album O, Rice, a native of Ireland, has quickly built a strong following in the United States with his emotional lyrics and steady radio play. And throughout his two-hour performance, you could argue that Rice will be able to stick around and build on his already strong foundation.