2005

Sprightly indie rockers the Shins will take a break from recording the follow-up to 2003’s widely lauded Chutes Too Narrow to launch a month-long tour tonight in Portland, Oregon.
“That’s what I’m supposed to be doing,” says singer James Mercer of the new album, which is due by year’s end. “But it’s fun to go out on the road.”

As for the new material, he warns that early projections may be deceiving. “I’ll have thirty or so songs that I’ll be messing with, and then a month or two before we have to have the record done I’ll decide, ‘OK, these ten,'” he says. “So it’s hard to say exactly what songs will be on the record.”

Still, Mercer’s method does not preclude him from envisioning the album’s general vibe. “This record is more bedroom-y,” he says. “It’s hopefully something closer to your ear, and recorded in-the-bedroom style, where we really work over pieces instead of going into the studio for three days and cranking them out. I actually want to get back to a slow, painstaking process of production.”

The tour will see the Shins courting a growing audience after a high-profile mention in last year’s film Garden State, in which Natalie Portman’s character implores Zach Braff’s to listen to the song “New Slang,” saying “It’ll change your life.” “It was such a flattering way to be in a movie from a guy who seems to be a fan,” Mercer says of Braff, also the film’s writer and director.

But, for the Shins, the spotlight is not cause to rush the new record. “Since there’s a lot of people who just learned about us, I suppose if we were really clever we’d get it out right now,” Mercer says, laughing. “But I think it’s probably a good time to let all those people forget about us . . . so we don’t tip over that hill.”

Shins tour dates:

4/7: Portland, OR, Crystal Ballroom
4/11: Minneapolis, First Avenue
4/12: Minneapolis, First Avenue
4/13: Milwaukee, WI, Eagles Ballroom
4/14: Chicago, Congress Theater
4/17: Toronto, Kool Haus
4/19: Montreal, Spectrum
4/21: Providence, RI, Brown University
4/23: New York, Webster Hall
4/24: New York, Webster Hall
4/27: Philadelphia, Electric Factory
4/28: Norfolk, VA, Norva
4/29: Asheville, NC, Orange Peel
4/30: Asheville, NC, Orange Peel
5/3: Atlanta, Variety Playhouse
5/4: Nashville, Cannery Ballroom
5/6: Oklahoma City, Diamond Ballroom
5/8: Lawrence, KS, Liberty Hall
5/9: Omaha, NE, Sokol Underground
5/10: Denver, Fillmore
5/11: Salt Lake City, Olpin Union Ballroom
5/13: Seattle, Bank of America Arena
5/15: Portland, Crystal Ballroom
5/16: Portland, Crystal Ballroom

Source rollingstone.com.

Tommy, the Who’s 1969 rock opera, is the subject of the largest exhibit ever dedicated to a single work at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Tommy: The Amazing Journey, which opens today, fills two floors of the Cleveland museum with guitars, handwritten lyrics, poster art and concert footage. “You’ll hear and feel this exhibit,” says its designer, Matthew Smith. “It will rock and feel like a concert.”

Pete Townshend conceived Tommy — the story of an abused “deaf, dumb and blind kid” so good at pinball that people come to think he’s a prophet — as a cautionary tale about false idols. The album reached Number Four in the U.S. and stayed on the charts for nearly a year on the strength of songs like “Pinball Wizard,” “I’m Free” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” The exhibit traces Tommy through its various incarnations as a movie, a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, a London Orchestra production and even a ballet. “Tommy brought rock a kind of critical respect it had never received,” says curator Howard Kramer.

Townshend lent the Hall of Fame revealing early manuscripts. A draft of the “Sally Simpson” lyrics shows that Townshend originally named the album’s title character Danine. The exhibit also features excerpted recordings from an hours-long interview that Rolling Stone editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner conducted with Townshend in 1968, when Tommy was still in the works. “Fans get to see the creative process at its earliest moments,” says curator Craig Inciardi.

The Amazing Journey promises a visceral experience. The first floor is set up to resemble a pinball machine, with display cases in the shape of bumpers. A mock stage on the second floor displays the band’s Tommy-era costumes and instruments, including the Gibson J-200 guitar Townshend used to write “Pinball Wizard”; above the stage, footage from the band’s legendary 1970 Isle of Wight show will play on a twelve-foot screen.

Other highlights include correspondence from Townshend — such as a letter sent to Tommy film director Ken Russell, suggesting that Lou Reed, Tiny Tim and Frank Zappa be cast — and Keith Moon’s silver Premier drum kit, played at Woodstock. Particularly rare is the Gibson SG guitar that Townshend played onstage in 1968. “In those days,” says New York collector David Swartz, who donated it, “Pete broke most of them.”

Source rollingtone.

Bob Weir and Ratdog, Signal Path, Heartless Bastards and Josh Ritter have been added to the Bonnaroo festival lineup. Bob Weir will also join a select group of artists asked to appear at each of the four Bonnaroo Festivals. For more information on the entire Bonnaroo lineup, to be held June 10-12 in Mancheser, TN, please visit the festival

Bruce Springsteen will begin a solo acoustic tour April 25 in Detroit, in support of his upcoming Columbia album, “Devils & Dust.” The first North American leg of the tour will play 2,500- to 5,000-seat theaters and theater configurations in arenas through May 20 in Boston, to be followed by a European run that begins May 24 in Dublin.

The Boss will finish in Europe on June 25 in Stockholm, with more North American dates likely. “Our hope is that sometime by the fall we will come back to the U.S. and make some additional appearances in our biggest Bruce markets,” longtime Springsteen manager Jon Landau tells Billboard.com.

Initially, the plan is to quickly showcase the new album, due April 26. “Bruce has a beautiful new CD that we’re very excited about and we want to get out and show the colors right off, touching base with as many cities as we can conveniently do,” Landau reports.

Ticket prices are still being finalized, but Landau says they will be in the $85 range for the premium seats. Springsteen last toured solo in support of the 1995 album “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” On that outing, he played only acoustic guitar and harmonica; this time around, Springsteen will also play some piano, Landau says.

“Bruce is rehearsing the show right now, creating a very specific perspective for it,” Landau says. “As is always the case with Bruce, the set will evolve right up until the last show.” Tickets for some shows go on sale this weekend.

Landau says the new album “has a combination of rock music and acoustic music, but as a body of work we thought that the intimacy of the solo show wound up best serving the CD as a whole. The full rock version of some of the new songs is sure to be part of the next E Street Band tour.”

On Monday (April 4), Springsteen taped an episode of the occasional VH1 series “Storytellers” at the new Two River Theatre in Red Bank, N.J. He previewed the title track of “Devils & Dust,” as well as “Jesus Was an Only Son,” and touched on material from across his career, including “Thunder Road,” “Brilliant Disguise” and “The Rising.” The broadcast premiere is scheduled for April 23.

Here are Springsteen’s tour dates:

April 25: Detroit (Fox Theatre)
April 28: Dallas (Nokia Theatre)
April 30: Phoenix (Glendale Arena)
May 2-3: Los Angeles (Pantages Theatre)
May 5: Oakland, Calif. (Oakland Theatre)
May 7: Denver (Convention Theatre)
May 10: St. Paul, Minn. (Xcel Energy Center)
May 11: Chicago (Rosemont Theatre)
May 14: Fairfax, Va. (Patriot Center)
May 15: Cleveland (CSU Convocation Center)
May 17: Philadelphia (Tower Theatre)
May 19: East Rutherford, N.J. (The Theater at Continental Airlines Arena)
May 20: Boston (Orpheum Theatre)
May 24: Dublin (the Point)
May 27-28: London (Royal Albert Hall)
May 30: Brussels (Forest Nationale)
June 1: Barcelona (Pavello Olimpic Badalona)
June 2: Madrid (Palacio de Deportes)
June 4: Bologna, Italy (Palamalaguti Arena)
June 6: Rome (Palalottomatica Arena)
June 7: Milan (Milan Forum)
June 11: Hamburg (Color Line Arena)
June 12: Berlin (ICC)
June 13: Munich (Olympia Hall)
June 15: Frankfurt, Germany (Festhalle)
June 16: Dusseldorf, Germany (Phillipshalle)
June 19: Rotterdam, Holland (Ahoy)
June 20: Paris (Bercy)
June 22: Copenhagen (Forum)
June 23: Gothenberg, Sweden (Scandinavium)
June 25: Stockholm (Hovet)

Source billboard.com.

Legendary German electronic act Kraftwerk will begin a five-week world tour with a May 30-31 stand at Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 Club. The quartet will also play New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, before 11 European dates through July 4 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Kraftwerk broke a 17-year break between albums with the 2003 release of “Tour de France Soundtracks” (Astralwerks), which peaked at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top Electronic Albums chart. And while a series of vintage album reissues have been in the works for some time, a label spokesperson says there is no update on their status, or that of any other new releases, at present.

Here are Kraftwerk’s tour dates:

May 30-31: Washington, D.C. (9:30 Club)
June 1: New York (Hammerstein Ballroom)
June 2: Detroit (State Theatre)
June 4: Chicago (Riviera Theatre)
June 6: Los Angeles (Greek Theatre)
June 11: Venice (Biennale Palagalileo)
June 13: Belgrade (Kalemegdan Fortress)
June 14: Sofia, Bulgaria (Palace of Culture)
June 16: Skopje, Macedonia (Skopsko Lizgaliste)
June 17: Thessaloniki, Greece (Theatro Gis)
June 18: Athens (Lycabettus)
June 20: Istanbul (Rock Istanbul)
June 30: Werchter, Belgium (Werchter Festival)
July 3: Bavilliers, France (Les Eurockeennes)
July 4: Montreux, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival)

Source billboard.com.

Former classmates, dynamic players and long-time friends Marc Friedman, bass player of the Slip and Marco Benevento, keyboardist of the Benevento/Russo Duo, are joining forces for a 2-city, 4-night run beginning Friday April 8th at the Paradise Lounge in Boston.

Both Friedman and Benevento continue to receive acclaim in their usual outfits – the Slip traverses worlds of styles, carving out their own voice in Rock N Roll with a new album presently in the works. And the Benevento/Russo Duo, with their ropeadope debut Best Reason to Buy the Sun hitting April 5th, have quickly become one of the hottest and most progressive acts in the land recently added to their holiday calendar a Memorial Day BBQ at the Sasquatch Festival with gunslingers Wilco and Kayne West to name a few.

As each performance will focus in improvisation with some of the material pre-arranged, Benevento and Friedman have brought together for the first time some of the finest musicians New York and Boston have to offer

A long-expected live album from Lucinda Williams will finally see the light of day next month, as will a separate DVD. Recorded across three nights in San Francisco in 2003, the “Live @ the Fillmore” audio project boasts 22 tracks, each selected by the artist. The DVD, “Live From Austin, TX,” stems from PBS’ “Austin City Limits.”

The “Fillmore” set will be released May 10 via Lost Highway in a two-CD and a three-disc vinyl package, according to the artist’s official Web site. Among the highlights are such favorites as “Changed the Locks,” “Essence,” “I Lost It,” “Essence” and “Pineola.” Accompanying Williams on stage were Doug Pettibone (guitar/pedal steel/vocals), Taras Prodaniuk (bass) and Jim Christie (drums).

The same day, New West Records will release the DVD, which continues the label’s ongoing “Live in Austin, TX” series, which plucks episodes of the long-running performance show that originates from Austin PBS affiliate KLRU. Williams taped episodes of the show in 1990 and 1998; at deadline it was unknown if the disc features just one appearance or culls from both.

In addition to Williams’ “Austin” title, New West is also readying “Austin City Limits” performances by Richard Thompson and Son Volt to join previously issued DVDs from the Flatlanders, Robert Earl Keen, Susan Tedeschi and Steve Earle.

Here is the “Live @ the Fillmore” track list:

Disc one:
“Ventura”
“Reason To Cry”
“Fruits of My Labor”
“Out of Touch”
“Sweet Side”
“Lonely Girls”
“Overtime”
“Blue”
“Changed the Locks”
“Atonement”

Disc two:
“I Lost It”
“Pineola”
“Righteously”
“Joy”
“Essence”
“Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings”
“Are You Down”
“These Three Days”
“American Dream”
“World Without Tears”
“Bus to Baton Rouge”
“Words Fell”

Here are Williams’ tour dates:

June 15: San Diego (Humphrey’s by the Bay)
June 16: Saratoga, Calif. (Historic Mountain Winery)
July 22: London (Shepherd’s Bush Empire)
July 26: Manchester, England (Bridgewater Hall)
July 27: Glasgow (Carling Glasgow Academy)
July 29: Gateshead, England (The Sage)
July 30: Cambridge, England (Cambridge Folk Festival)

Source billboard.com.