2005

Vancouver-based indie rockers the New Pornographers will release their third album, Twin Cinema, on August 23rd. Fans will get a taste of new tunes, and a reworked lineup, on a mini-tour this month.

While the band enjoys a large arsenal of players — sometimes upwards of eight — the newest member has a familial connection: Kathryn Calder, who sings and plays piano, is also frontman A.C. Newman’s niece.

“Neko [Case] can’t make the June shows, so Kathryn’s going to be the girl,” Newman says. “So we’re going to be kind of like the Fiery Furnaces — the relatives band [laughs].”

The band will be debut a handful of Twin Cinema tracks on the tour. “I think it’s kind of cruel to give your audience an entire album’s worth of new songs before they’ve heard the album,” says Newman, “so we’ll do about six or seven.”

According to Newman, the new songs reflect the Pornographers’ desire to expand their sound. “I’ve always wanted to make a really epic, epic record,” he says, “the equivalent of some 1,000-page historical novel — but within the space of forty-five minutes.”

The album’s title is about a shift in perspective. “The whole Twin Cinema idea was about going through some upheaval in your life,” says Newman, “where all of a sudden your everyday life looks completely different to you because you’re seeing it through different eyes.”

After the record’s release, the band will hit the road for a more expansive tour featuring yet another lineup change: Dan Bejar, who records and writes with the group, will join the Pornographers live for the first time. His band, Destroyer, will also serve as the opening act.

Newman sighs, “Yeah, the fall tour is going to be a totally supercharged Pornographers lineup that will probably never exist again.”

New Pornographers tour dates:

6/22: Hoboken, NJ, Maxwell’s
6/23: Hoboken, NJ, Maxwell’s
6/24: Lancaster, PA, Chameleon Club
6/25: Brooklyn, NY, Prospect Park Celebrate Brooklyn
6/26: Northampton, MA, Pearl Street
9/23: Vancouver, Commodore Ballroom
9/27: San Francisco, Bimbo’s 365 Club
9/28: San Francisco, Bimbo’s 365 Club
9/29: Los Angeles, Henry Fonda Theater
10/07: Newport, KY, Southgate House
10/08: Kalamazoo, MI, Club Soda
10/11: Boston, The Roxy
10/20: Chicago, Metro

Source rollingstone.com.

Natalie Merchant is recording an undetermined number of new songs for forthcoming two-disc Warner Bros. compilation of her solo work. “The deadline is mid-July, so I should expect it to be released in the early fall,” she writes on her official Web site.

The artist is also designing the packaging for the set. In addition to such well-known songs as “Jealousy” and “Carnival,” also expected are B-sides, live recordings and songs Merchant has contributed to various benefit albums over the years.

Since leaving the major-label world, the former 10,000 Maniacs singer has taken a low-key approach to career, releasing “The House Carpenter’s Daughter” in 2003 on her own Myth America label and devoting her energies to motherhood. Beyond the month-long outing launched in support of that release, Merchant says she has no plans for hitting the road anytime soon. “Touring with a baby is a bit more complicated and exhausting (for everyone),” she writes on the site. “So I have to be realistic.”

Source billboard.com.

Indie rock titans such as Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, the Black Keys and Cat Power have signed on to perform at Arthur Magazine’s first ArthurFest. The event will be held Sept. 4-5 at Barnsdall Art Park in Los Angeles. Two-day passes go on sale tomorrow (June 21) via Ticketweb and a handful of Los Angeles-area music stores.

Other acts confirmed for ArthurFest include Olivia Tremor Control, T-Model Ford, Merzbow, Six Organs Of Admittance, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Dead Meadow, the Juan Maclean, Josephine Foster, Wolfmother and Comets On Fire.

“It’s very easy to put one of those things together if the artists don’t have rings and rings of handlers around them,” Arthur editor-in-chief Jay Babcock tells Billboard.com. “They get excited because they get to play with their peers.”

On site, festivalgoers can expect screenings of avant-garde films and a dedicated T-Model Ford booth at which he will “dispense wisdom & possibly kisses for a small price.” The legendary bluesman writes a regular column for Arthur dubbed “T-Model Knows Better.”

“T-Model is our answer man in the magazine, so he will do crisis counseling,” Babcock says. “He’s dealt with a lot of crises in his life, involving murder, theft, rape, death of pets and ants in the kitchen. Nobody knows how old he is but we think he’s in his early 80’s. He likes to say, ‘Can’t read, can’t write, but I can play this guitar if I have to.'”

Arthur is also planning related shows Sept. 1-3 at such Los Angeles venues as Spaceland, Echo and the Vanguard Theatre. For more information, visit the magazine’s Web site.

Source billboard.com.

For “Back Home,” his first album of new original material since 2001’s “Reptile,” Eric Clapton tapped the talents of longtime collaborator Simon Climie, as well as such guests as Steve Winwood, John Mayer, Stephen Marley and Robert Randolph. Due Aug. 30 via Reprise/Duck Records, the disc boast 12 tracks that were recorded at the same time as the Robert Johnson covers that made up last year’s “Me & Mr. Johnson.”

“I wanted to make a studio album without quite knowing what it was going to be,” Clapton says. “We kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that it was going to take a long time, but when we got stuck or if it wasn’t moving fast enough we’d stop and do a Robert Johnson song. That would clear the air and we’d go back and carry on for the new album. As a result, we ended up with a complete Robert Johnson album first.”

Clapton solely wrote only the new album’s title track, while he and Climie co-authored five of the songs on “Back Home,” including first single “Revolution.”

Also included are versions of George Harrison’s “Love Comes to Everyone,” the Spinners’ “Love Don’t Love Nobody” and a rendition of the Stevie Wonder/Syreeta Wright song “I’m Going Left,” as well as two songs co-written by guitarist Doyle Bramhall II and one by Vince Gill (“One Day”).

In addition to keyboardist Climie, who co-produced the album with Clapton, the artist tapped such familiar players drummer Steve Gadd, bassists Nathan East and Pino Palladino, guitarists Bramhall and Andy Fairweather Low and keyboardists Billy Preston.

Source billboard.com.

The Ramones and the Grateful Dead will both be feted with multi-disc summer releases from Rhino.

Due Aug. 16, the box set “Weird Tales of the Ramones” will compile 85 tracks onto three discs of music and include the DVD debut of “Lifestyles of the Ramones.” Originally issued in 1990, the latter rounds up the band’s complete Sire music video collection, bolstered by six clips the Ramones made during their run on the MCA-affiliated Radioactive label.

Musically, “Weird Tales” pulls highlights from 1976’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” through 1996’s “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.,” including such classics as “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Rockaway Beach,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll High School,” “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” and “I Wanna Live.” Also featured are the band’s covers of the Searchers’ “Needles and Pins,” the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” and Love’s “7 And 7 Is.”

The box will also include a comic book featuring the work of 25 top graphic novel/comic artists, including Rick Altergott (“Doofus”), Sergio Aragones (Mad magazine), Bill Griffiths (“Zippy the Pinhead”), Xaime Hernandez (“Love and Rockets”) and John Holmstrom. In addition to Punk magazine, Holmstrom has to his credit illustrations on the back cover and throughout the liner notes of the Ramones’ 1977 album “Rocket To Russia” and the cover of the following year’s “Road to Ruin.”

Meanwhile, on July 12, Rhino will release the two-disc Grateful Dead concert set “Truckin’ up to Buffalo, July 4, 1989.” The soundtrack to the Monterey Video DVD of the same name features audio taken from the show’s 24-track analog master tapes and mastered in HDCD.

This version of the Dead — guitarist/singers Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, bassist/vocalist Phil Lesh and keyboardist/vocalist Brent Mydland — was enjoying resurgent popularity, still riding the wave of the 1987 single “Touch of Grey,” which reached No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot 100. This summer tour came in advance of “Built To Last,” which would be the band’s final studio album.

To accompany the music, the “Truckin'” package features rare photos of the band and liner notes written by Blair Jackson, publisher of the Dead fanzine “The Golden Road” and author of the biography “Garcia: An American Life.”

Source billboard.com.

The White Stripes have announced a series of east coast dates to follow their August U.S. tour in the west and midwest. Dates of interest include a 9/24 show at Keyspan Park with The Shins and Brandan Benson and two shows at the Opera House in Boston, MA.

9/8 Milwaukee, WI @ Eagles Ballroom *
9/9 Indianapolis, IN @ The Murat Theatre *
9/10 Columbus, OH @ Ohio Theatre *
9/12 Cincinnati, OH @ Cincinnati Music Hall *
9/13 Louisville, KY @ Palace Theatre *
9/14 Cleveland, OH @ Playhouse Square Center

The world premiere of

Steve Earle, Mary Gauthier and Tift Merritt are the top nominees for the fourth annual Americana Honors & Awards, each receiving three nods from voting members of the Americana Music Association. Buddy Miller received two nominations.

Earle, Merritt and Miller are nominated for artist of the year along with John Prine.

Album of the year nominees are Earle’s “The Revolution Starts Now” (E-Squared/Artemis), Gauthier’s “Mercy Now” (Lost Highway), Merritt’s “Tambourine” (Lost Highway) and Miller’s “Universal United House of Prayer” (New West).

In the song of the year category, the nominees are Earle’s “The Revolution Starts … Now,” Gauthier’s “Mercy Now,” Mark Heard’s “Worry Too Much” and Merritt’s “Good Hearted Man.”

Gauthier is also nominated in the new/emerging artist of the year category along with Hayes Carll, the Duhks, Tom Gilliam and Martha Wainwright. Instrumentalist of the year nominees are Alison Brown, Jerry Douglas, Sonny Landreth and Gurf Morlix.

The awards show will be held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on Sept. 9 and broadcast live on both XM and Sirius Satellite Radio. A cable television deal is also in the works.

Source billboard.com.