Jason Isbell (one-third of the Drive-By Trucker guitar triumvirate) was scheduled to make a rare appearance with his trio (which includes Trucker bassist Shonna Tucker) to play a set of songs you don
The Jayhawks have apparently called it a day. Singer Gary Louris has confirmed that the alternative country pioneers are no longer an active band. The news comes just as the artist has begun a reunion tour with former Jayhawks principal Mark Olson, who left the band in 1995.
“I don’t think we’re going to do anything else,” Louris told the Minneapolis Star Tribune of the Jayhawks. “We felt like we’ve done that enough. Everybody just wants to do something else. We haven’t completely closed the door, but … I’d say it’s dead.”
Louris recently co-wrote new tunes with the Dixie Chicks and appears eager to try other career directions, such as record production. “When you’re on the treadmill [with a full-time band], you never have time to learn anything else,” he said. “I’m enjoying all these new experiences.”
Source billboard.com.
Foo Fighters have landed guest appearances by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and singer/songwriter Norah Jones for their upcoming double album, which will feature one disc of rock tracks and another of songs recorded in acoustic settings. With basic tracks completed, the band will now focus on overdubs and final vocals, with an eye on releasing the album this summer.
To read more visit billboard.com.
Apple Computer Inc. could announce new iPods this week, including an iPod mini with a color screen and larger song-storage capacity, as well as a price cut on the current iPod mini, according to analysts and Mac rumor Web sites.
Rumor sites including Think Secret, which cited “highly reliable sources,” saying the next iPod mini will gain a full-color screen while the design of the device will remain largely unchanged.
Also, Banc of America Securities analyst Keith Bachman wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday that “a price cut we expect this week or next should help Apple’s market share” in the market for digital music players, adding that the Cupertino, California-based company will also “offer higher capacity points.”
Apple remains the No. 1 seller of MP3 portable digital music players. According to a survey done for Banc of America Securities of 7,500 MP3 users, Apple’s share of the MP3 player market increased to 40.2 percent in the December quarter, up from 37.5 percent in the September quarter, before the introduction of its flash-memory-chip-based iPod Shuffle.
“We think Apple’s iPod will continue to gain market share for the next 2 to 3 quarters as its Flash-based product (iPod Shuffle) gains momentum,” Bachman wrote.
An expected bump to either a five gigabyte or six gigabyte iPod mini with a color screen will help keep the mini competitive with rival players, a number of which already have color screens, analysts said.
The price for the new mini is expected to remain at its current price of $249 and the four gigabyte mini, the current model, could drop to $199, according to Think Secret.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
The Web site also reported, citing “insider information,” that six new colors will make their debut in the iPod mini line-up this week, perhaps as soon as Wednesday.
Source CNN.com.
Gov’t Mule’s Spring Tour has been announced. The Deja Voodoo Spring Tour will begin on April 13th at the historic Tennessee Theater and continue through the Southeast, where we welcome Special Guest opener The John Popper Project with DJ Logic for 2 shows in The Carolinas, before heading up North for a special 3 night run at the brand new Higher Ground in Burlington, VT on 4/22-24. The Mule will then travel down to New Orleans for its annual shows during Jazzfest, which will take place at The Orpheum on Friday 4/29 and Saturday 4/30. Each night, the band will welcome special guest openers. On the 30th, we’ll be joined by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Check Mule.net for an announcement on our special guests on the 29th.
Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, at which artists including the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bob Seger recorded classic songs, has closed. The studio, owned since 1985 by Malaco Records, closed last month; a film production company is in the final stages of purchasing the building.
Musicians Jimmy Johnson, David Hood, Barry Beckett and Roger Hawkins, known collectively as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, founded Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Ala., in 1969. A Rolling Stones session at Muscle Shoals featuring sideman Jim Dickinson, who played on the Stones’ “Wild Horses,” is featured in the film “Gimme Shelter,” which documents the band’s 1969 U.S. tour.
In 1978, the facility moved to a 31,000 square-foot building, also in Sheffield.
Malaco Records principal Wolf Stephenson explains that he and his partners were more interested in acquiring Muscle Shoals Sound Publishing, a catalog that includes “Old Time Rock & Roll” and “Torn Between Two Lovers,” than the recording studio. “To be quite frank with you,” Stephenson tells Billboard, “the only reason we bought the studio was, the banks we were dealing with wouldn’t loan us the money on the publishing company; they didn’t have any idea what it was. It was just a stack of paper to them.”
The two-room facility was used extensively by Malaco artists, Stephenson adds, but the last four years saw a sharp decline in outside projects. “When computer and hard-disk recording really got cheap and better at the same time, it just knocked the socks off a lot of studios, [Muscle Shoals] included,” he says. “It was just a very difficult thing to compete with.”
Muscle Shoals was put up for sale on Internet auction site eBay in 2004. The asking price of $650,000, which included the building, property and equipment, yielded no serious offers, Stephenson says. The studio’s two Neve consoles have been sold to studios in Detroit and Los Angeles.
Source billboard.com.
Photos by Earl Gardner of Arcade Fire at the Theater of Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA – 01/31/2005
Journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, who unleashed the concept of “gonzo journalism” in books like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” fatally shot himself in the head Sunday at his home near Aspen, Colorado, police and his family said.
“On February 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado,” said a statement issued by Thompson’s son, Juan Thompson, to the Aspen Daily News.
A dispatcher for the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department confirmed Thompson’s death.
Neither the family statement nor Pitkin County sheriff’s officials said whether Thompson left a note, The Associated Press reported.
His account of a drug-fueled trip to cover a district attorneys’ anti-drug conference as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine was the seed of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” perhaps his best-known work.
Source: cnn.com
National, regional and local talents collide on a Spotsylvania farm to create a truly unique musical experience. The Haymaker Music Festival is the only place where concert goers will see Keller Williams perform alongside local Virginia favorites such as, Cephas & Wiggins, King Wilkie, The Hackensaw Boys, AJ Roach, and DJ Williams.
How does Starbucks, which partnered with Concord on Ray Charles’ Grammy Award-sweeping “Genius Loves Company,” follow up that phenomenally successful album? By taking another legendary artist and pairing him with a stellar array of acts for what promises to be another strong duets album.
Billboard has learned that the artist is Herbie Hancock and that among the performers already on tape with the keyboardist are Sting, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Carlos Santana, Damien Rice and, as previously reported, Trey Anastasio.
The album will arrive Sept. 13 on Nashville-based Vector Records. “Starbucks is our partner in the record, it is Starbucks’ next big push,” Vector principal Ken Levitan confirms. Like “Genius,” the CD will be available at traditional retail and in Starbucks outlets.
For Hancock, working with the various artists has been very rewarding. “The kind of energy and magic that they are bringing to the project is fantastic,” he says. “So often artists are put into a pigeonhole and expected to stay there, and I never liked that. Coming from jazz, we like to try new things … and I know there’s a lot more to artists than that which they’re kind of forced to do, in a sense.”
Some artists brought finished songs to the project, while some wrote tunes specifically for the record. In Mayer’s case, he brought in a few notes that they crafted into a song in the studio.
“The tune is like 15 minutes long, but the actual song is only four or five minutes long,” Mayer says. “The rest is Herbie going around and around on my chord progression, and every time he tags home, he puts on 50 more pounds of weight and starts lifting that. It’s incredible.”
Hancock is in the midst of a tour with Directions In Music, featuring saxophonist Michael Brecker and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. The trek hits Washington, D.C., tonight (Feb. 18).
Source billboard.com.
