In The Reins, the seven-song EP that resulted when Howard Greynolds encouraged the two bands to meet up, reads like a wedding invitation: this is what happens when like-minded souls merge brainpower, share a collective moment of romance and allow it to blossom into a deep and meaningful relationship.
The inaugural New York music festival initially dubbed Across the Pond has been rechristened Across the Narrows. Set for Oct. 1-2 at Brooklyn’s Keyspan Park and Staten Island’s Richmond County Bank Ballpark, the event will feature headlining sets from Oasis, the Killers, Beck and the Pixies.
The Pixies will anchor the Oct. 1 bill in Brooklyn, alongside Gang Of Four, Built To Spill, Rilo Kiley, Death From Above 1979, Mando Diao and Nine Black Alps. Simultaneously in Staten Island, the Killers will play with Interpol, the New York Dolls, British Sea Power, Lake Trout, Tegan & Sara and the Ordinary Boys.
The next day’s shows will feature Beck, Belle & Sebastian, the Polyphonic Spree, the Raveonettes, Gang Gang Dance, Whirlwind Heat and a band to be announced in Brooklyn, and Oasis, Jet, Doves, the reunited Lemonheads, Kasabian, Jesse Malin, the Redwalls and an undetermined act in Staten Island.
Tickets can be purchased separately for each of the four shows, and a discounted ticket will be available for any two concerts. VIP package details are still being finalized.
Source billboard.com.
Michael Franti is about to embark on a tour – but not the kind with a band, roadies and instruments. Instead, he’s touring a film.
“I Know I’m Not Alone” is the documentary account of Franti’s recent visits to Iraq and Palestinian territories, in which shared his music with families, doctors, musicians, soldiers and residents.
Franti, who is equal parts activist and entertainer, took along his acoustic guitar and a video camera, recording those he came across who, in turn, revealed to him the often overlooked human cost of war, according to the Web site for the film.
Interwoven are Franti’s stories and songs, creating a visual and musical tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.
“I tell stories through my songs and spoken word, and approached the film in the same way,” Franti writes on theWeb site. “We let the images and music flow together as I re-told the story with voiceover and lyrics inspired from the journey.
“In taking this organic approach, I believe we gave unique insight into what people are facing in the Middle East today.”
A spokeswoman for Franti told Pollstar the film will be shown only at festivals and on college campuses when the tour launches in the fall, in advance of its January release.
Franti will appear at each screening of the film on, which to date hits mainly college towns beginning September 15 at the Griffith Film Theater in Durham, N.C. Other cities include Rohnert Park, Calif., Black Mountain, N.C.; Iowa City, Iowa; Urbana, Ill.; Burlington, Vt.; Toronto and Chico, Calif.
Source pollstar.com.
Big Deal Records has announced the signing of the celebrated American artist, Billy Bob Thornton. Best known for his work as an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, director and actor, it is music that serves as Thornton’s first and greatest passion. Hobo, his brand new album to be released nationwide on September 13, 2005, is Thornton’s third full length release to date. The collection features ten tracks, nine of which are new songs written or co-written by Thornton, that focus on the California experience, offering his own personal accounts alongside profound observations of the Golden State’s people, tempos and landscapes.
“I am very pleased and honored to be associated with a label like Big Deal. They love music and songwriting the way record label people used to,” states Billy Bob Thornton. “I’m very proud of Hobo, and the label gets it. I’d rather sell ten records for people who care, than a million for people who don’t.”
Billy Bob Thornton’s keen revelations and poetic unraveling of California — “the new frontier” — on Hobo exposes startling insights about life in Los Angeles, a city where dreams are achieved, but also crushed. On “The Late Great Golden State,” Thornton warns, “Leave your expectations at the gate of the late great golden state ’cause they can pack you up and send you home in a crate.”
One of the album’s stand-out cuts, “I Used To Be A Lion,” finds Thornton turning inward, musing “I don’t have the pride to hold my head up high and I don’t have the strength to make the kill.” Musically, the songs range from the ethereal Americana of the title track to the hallucinogenic Chicano-flavored rock of “El Centro On Five Dollars A Day.” Thornton recorded Hobo at The Cave, his state-of-the-art home studio in Los Angeles, with his co-producers, Randy Mitchell and Jim Mitchell. At a time when so many albums rehash tired cliches, Thornton’s songwriting is continually pushing the envelope in its search for new and vital means of expression. The results are powerful songs of deeply personal stories and philosophical lyrics that reflect Thornton’s love for life and music itself.
For Billy Bob Thornton, writing, recording and performing music is something he has lived his entire life. He received his first drum kit at age nine and made his first public appearance as a musician by age ten. Throughout the 1960s, he performed in bands across Arkansas and Texas, including the well known, Tres Hombres. Thornton put music aside only temporarily upon arriving in Hollywood to pursue a career in film. However, it wasn’t long before he was jamming with local Los Angeles musicians and once again writing songs. The rest, as they say, is history. Thornton has since received two RIAA gold record certifications, performed on the Grammy Award-winning album, The Wind, by Warren Zevon, performed alongside Willie Nelson, The Allman Brothers Band and Kris Kristofferson, in addition to receiving critical acclaim for his first two albums, Private Radio and The Edge of The World. The Los Angeles Times observed: “If Thornton had tried to make it as a singer-songwriter in Nashville in the early ’70s, he would have surely played the same clubs as Kris Kristofferson. They might have even shared an apartment.” Legendary singer/songwriter Tom Petty declared: “Billy Bob’s music has a style and lean all its own. It can catch you off guard with as much as a word’s inflection.”
Widespread Panic has announced a lengthy fall tour that will kick off on September 18th at Farm Aid. From there the band will play a majority of their shows in a variety of southern venues, concluding with a southwest run in New Mexico, Arizona and the tour finale – Vegoos on Halloween. For a full list of tour dates please visit widespreadpanic.com
Nearly four months to the day since he announced in a hoarse voice on his evening newscast that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, longtime ABC “World News Tonight” anchor Peter Jennings died Sunday, according to the ABC News network. He was 67.
To read more please visit CNN.com.
Canadian rock act the Tragically Hip is compiling a four disc music and video boxed set. The limited-edition “Hipeponymous” will boast two audio discs dubbed “Yer Favourites” that will feature 37 tracks recently chosen by fans through an Internet vote on MSN’s Canadian site. Two new songs will also be included.
The box will be bolstered by the concert DVD “That Night in Toronto,” shot in November 2004 at the Air Canada Centre in High Definition. Another DVD will feature the band’s entire video oeuvre of 23 clips, plus 11 new “video pieces.” A 48-page book will round out the package.
The four-disc set will be released as a Nov. 1 in the Great White North by Universal Canada. “Yer Favourites” and “That Night in Toronto” will also be released separately on the same day. At deadline, it was unknown if the collection will be released in any fashion in the United States. The group’s last two studio sets, 2002’s “In Violet Light” and 2004’s “In Between Evolution,” saw U.S. release on Rounder’s Zoe imprint, but a Rounder spokesperson confirms the label and the group are no longer working together.
The Hip has made only two appearances in 2005, playing the Toronto Live 8 concert and Newfoundland’s Salmon Splash Festival. The band will return to live duty when it opens for the Rolling Stones Sept. 3 in Moncton, New Brunswick.
Here is “Yer Favourites” track listing:
Disc one:
“No Threat”
“Grace, Too”
“My Music at Work”
“38 Years Old”
“Gift Shop”
“Ahead by a Century”
“Vaccination Scar”
“Three Pistols”
“So Hard Done By”
“Fiddler’s Green”
“Looking for a Place To Happen”
“Cordelia”
“It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken”
“Blow at High Dough”
“Wheat Kings”
“50 Mission Cap”
“New Orleans Is Sinking”
“Escape Is at Hand for the Travelin’ Man”
Disc two:
“Fully Completely”
“Twist My Arm”
“Courage”
“Lake Fever”
“Poets”
“Fireworks”
“Boots or Hearts”
“Bobcaygeon”
“Nautical Disaster”
“Highway Girl”
“Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park”
“Scared”
“Something On”
“At the Hundredth Meridian”
“Long Time Running”
“The Darkest One”
“Locked in the Trunk of a Car”
“Little Bones”
“The New Maybe”
Source billboard.com.
Jimi Hendrix’s closisng performance at Woodstock on Aug. 18, 1969, is arguably one of the most iconic moments in rock history, but it has never been commercially available in its entirety. That will change on Sept. 13, when Universal Music and Experience Hendrix release the DVD “Jimi Hendrix — Live at Woodstock.” The project comes out a day earlier in the U.K.
The double-disc set captures one of Hendrix’s only performances with an extended backing band, dubbed Gypsy Sun And Rainbows. Longtime Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer supervised a new audio mix in both 5.1 and 2.0 stereo sound. Bonus features include “The Road to Woodstock” documentary, a contemporaneous press conference and “A Second Look,” which blends black-and-white video footage with color clips from alternate angles.
To read more, visit .
After several delays, OutKast is planning a fall release for its next album and a January launch for its debut film, tentatively titled “My Life in Idlewild.” Group member Big Boi tells Billboard.com a second studio album, “The Hard 10,” may even hit stores before 2006 is out.
The first set will serve as the soundtrack to the film and is “about 80% finished,” according to Big Boi. It will be OutKast’s first new music since its 2003 double-album “Speakerboxx/The Love Below,” which has sold 5.5 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
To read more visit .
Photos by Michael Weintrob of Lollapalooza 2005, held July 23 & 24, 2005 at Grant Park in Chicago, IL. Artists included Perry Farrell’s Sattelite Party, Liz Phair, Cake, Dinosaur Jr., Spoon, Kasabian, The Killers, Billy Idol, Primus, Brians Jonestown Massacre, Dandy Warhols and Weezer.
Micheal Weintrob’s status as one of America’s most talented young music photographers brought him to the attention of NPR for which he was the subject of a jazz music special, and was commissioned to photograph Benny Powell and Femi Kuti jazz workshops in New Orleans. A number of magazines and newspapers have profiled his work, the most recent of which was the New York Post. His photographs have appeared in numerous national publications including Drum and Bass Player Magazine, Bass Guitar, Mix, Downbeat, Pollstar, Stuff, Us Weekly, Remix and Rollingstone.
