2006

Jack Johnson will be joined by Ben Harper and Willie Nelson and the Planetary Bandits at his third annual Kokua Festival. The event will be held April 19 at Maui’s Arts and Cultural Center and April 22 (Earth Day) at the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu. The lineup also features Henry Kapono, Paula Fuga and Animal Liberation Orchestra.

Proceeds from the shows will benefit the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which works to preserve Hawaii’s natural environment. Some funds have been earmarked to expand recycling programs in schools, sponsor field trips and curriculum development.

Local environmental groups will be on hand at both shows, which will also offer local organic food vendors, childrens’ activities and goods purveyed by environmentally friendly, Hawaii-based companies.

Tickets go on sale Feb. 4 via Ticketmaster, but a limited number of pre-sale tickets will be available beginning Jan. 28 via Johnson’s official Web site.

Johnson is gearing up for the Feb. 7 release of the soundtrack to the animated film “Curious George,” which features a number of his songs plus appearances by Harper, G. Love and Matt Costa.

He is also about to embark on an extensive international tour, beginning Feb. 22 in Dublin and wrapping April 15 in Chiba, Japan.

Source billboard.com.

Up-and-coming British rock act Nine Black Alps is plotting a spring North American tour with Giant Drag and the Cribs, lead singer Sam Forrest tells Billboard.com. “We know both those bands really well, so that would be ace,” he says. An appearance at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in late April in Indio, Calif., is “on my schedule, but I’m not sure if that’s confirmed,” according to Forrest.

Nine Black Alps will be out behind its full-length debut, “Everything Is,” due Feb. 28 via Interscope. The set has been out since last fall in the band’s native land, and in the ensuing months, a number of new songs have taken shape.

“Hopefully on the American tour we should get a few new songs out there,” Forrest says. “In England, we have to do hour-long sets on a headline tour, but our album is only 30 minutes long. We have to play B-sides and things nobody really knows. I actually prefer some of the B-sides to the songs on the album.”

Forrest says the time lag between the album’s American release has allowed the band to “correct all the mistakes we made the first time around in England. We were so new to it. We didn’t know what we’re doing. Now we can relax and hopefully take control and rely less on other people’s wisdom.”

Later this month, Nine Black Alps will be back in the studio to begin work on its sophomore album. “I’ve got tons of songs written — over 30, I think,” Forrest says. “Most of January we’ll be in our rehearsal space in Manchester, bashing things out and seeing what works and seeing what direction it takes. That’s the most exciting time for us — when you actually realize what you’re trying to achieve or how good you are.”

The band will return to the road Feb. 9, when a two-week U.K./Ireland trek kicks off in Belfast. Asked how closely he’s following the much buzzed-about new wave of young English acts that have emerged of late, Forrest says, “We don’t have much in common with them musically. I don’t really see any of them as our contemporaries, really. It’s based on geography rather than musicality.”

Source billboard.com.

Soul/R&B legend Wilson Pickett died of a heart attack today (Jan. 19) at a hospital near his Virginia home, according to a spokesperson. He was 64.

Born in Pratville, Ala., Pickett moved to Detroit as a teen and joined the Falcons, singing on their 1962 hit “I Found a Love.” By 1965, he had signed a solo deal with Atlantic, scoring a No. 21 pop hit with “In the Midnight Hour,” which he co-wrote with legendary sessions musician Steve Cropper.

A slew of late ’60s R&B/soul hits followed, including “Land of 1,000 Dances,” “Funky Broadway,” “634-5789,” “She’s Lookin’ Good” and “Mustang Sally.” As the ’70s dawned, Pickett scored three consecutive top 20 pop singles with “Engine Number 9,” “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You” and “Don’t Knock My Love Pt. 1.”

In all, five of his singles reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts. Pickett associated himself with some of the top sessions musicians of the time, and was a frequent visitor to Stax and Muscle Shoals Studios. He even hired the late Duane Allman to play guitar on his 1969 cover of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.”

Pickett recorded regularly into the mid 1980s and was a 1991 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That year, his career was revived thanks to the film “The Commitments,” which followed an unknown Irish soul band of the same name pursuing its dream of performing with Pickett. The artist also joined the band for performances at the Los Angeles and New York film premieres.

The artist’s last studio album, 1999’s “It’s Harder Now,” won WC Handy Awards for soul/blues album of the year and comeback album of the year, while Pickett was named soul/blues male artist of the year.

Pickett is survived by his fiance and four children. He will be buried beside his mother Lena in Louisville, Ky.

Source billboard.com.

Rock duo Ween will continue work on its next studio album at a new studio set up in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Pennsylvania. “I think it’s like the fourth farmhouse we’ve occupied over the years but we seem to have good luck in them at least,” guitarist Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo writes on Ween’s Web site. “Our plan is to continue writing and recording new tunes while also being more active on the road this year.”

Melchiondo says touring will most likely not begin until April but that Ween is hoping its workload will be “more aggressive” in 2006. “We’re gonna try and find the balance between recording and touring, we really didn’t do enough of either last year.”

The new album will be the follow-up to 2003’s “Quebec” (Sanctuary). Last year, the group issued a collection of unreleased studio tracks, “Shinola,” via its own Chocodog imprint. “We’re talking about trying out some different ideas with the next Ween release on Chocodog, maybe a bunch of 45s or something,” Melchiondo says.

Also percolating from the label is a spring album by Chris Harford, produced by Melchiondo and featuring a guest spot by Ween vocalist Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman. Harford and Melchiondo played all the instruments during the sessions.

Source billboard.com.

The Flaming Lips have set the track list for their upcoming album, “At War With the Mystics.” Due April 4 via Warner Bros., the 12-track set is led by the single “The W.A.N.D.,” which is available now from leading digital download stores.

Among the songs that made the cut for the follow-up to 2002’s “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is “Mr. Ambulance Driver,” which first appeared on last summer’s “Wedding Crashers” soundtrack. “It is connected to some powerful stuff,” Lips leader Wayne Coyne tells Billboard.com of the track. “Every time I hear it, I think Flaming Lips fans will get it and like it. The metaphors and the ideas in the waiting for the ambulance or something to come and save you still hit me.”

Coyne previously said album opener “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” reminded him “almost [of] an MC5 thing, but it’s not talking about external things. It’s talking about the power within you. What would you do if you had the power?”

In terms of an overall sound for the project, Coyne said, “There are some tracks we’ve delved into production-wise, where we’re trying to get some of that heavy rock’n’roll with heavy guitar riffs, but not just to be aggressive. On the last couple of records, we’ve tried to be more expressive in beautiful ways. But sometimes, volume and intensity are great too.”

“At War With the Mystics” will also be available as a special edition with a bonus DVD featuring extra tracks, videos and a 5.1 audio mix. The same treatment is being afforded to the Lips’ 1999 album “The Soft Bulletin,” which will be reissued Jan. 31 via Warner Bros.

Here is the track list for “At War With the Mystics”:

“The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”
“Free Radicals”
“The Sound of Failure/It’s Dark…Is it Always This Dark??”
“My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion”
“Vein of Stars”
“The Wizard Turns On…”
“It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big, I Am So Small…Do I Stand a Chance?”
“Mr. Ambulance Driver”
“Haven’t Got a Clue”
“The W.A.N.D.”
“Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung”
“Goin’ On”

Source billboard.com.

The live footage shot by the Black Crowes during a multiple-night August 2005 stand at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium will finally see the light of day this spring. Due March 21 via Eagle Vision, the DVD “Freak ‘N’ Roll … Into the Fog” rounds up 19 tracks from those shows, four of which were previously released in their entirety by Instant Live.

Songs are drawn from all the Crowes’ six studio releases, from hits like “Remedy,” “Hard To Handle,” “She Talks to Angels” and “Sting Me” to more obscure fare like “Let Me Share the Ride,” “Sunday Night Buttermilk Waltz” and opener “(Only) Halfway to Everywhere.” The show ends with a cover of the Band’s “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down.”

The Crowes have been off the road since their New Year’s Eve show at New York’s Madison Square Garden, but will return to live duty Jan. 29 in Orlando, Fla. The group will then pause until a March 12 appearance at the Langerado Music Festival in Sunrise, Fla., ahead of a five-date swing through London (March 18-19) and Amsterdam (March 22-24).

Here is the track list for “Freak ‘N’ Roll … Into the Fog”:

“(Only) Halfway to Everywhere”
“Sting Me”

“No Speak No Slave”
“Soul Singing”
“Welcome to the Goodtimes”
“Jealous Again”
“Space Captain”
“My Morning Song”
“Sunday Night Buttermilk Waltz”
“Cursed Diamond”
“She Talks to Angels”
“Wiser Time”
“Non Fiction”
“Seeing Things”
“Hard To Handle”
“Let Me Share the Ride”
“Mellow Down Easy”
“Remedy”
“The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down”

Source billboard.com.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers will unleash a double album, “Stadium Arcadium,” May 9 via Warner Bros. The group recorded 38 songs for the project, and at one point even considered releasing three separate records, but ultimately whittled the material down to a 25-track, two-disc set. Mixing on the Rick Rubin-produced effort is now halfway complete, according to frontman Anthony Kiedis.

“We got together and our initial writing task was to write a short record: an old school, hit ’em and quit ’em, straight to the point record,” he tells Billboard.com. “A record with only 11 or 12 songs instead of 17 songs, just for a change. Three months later, we had 38 songs, all of which were meaningful and worth recording and mixing.”

At first, the idea of an album trilogy seemed “inspiring and appealing. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized it would be a nightmare,” Kiedis admits. “Even if you only release them six months apart, you’re waiting two years until the final installment. Nobody had that kind of patience. By that time, we want to be writing new music and making another record. The best we could come up with is squeezing our favorite 25 onto one body.”

Kiedis cites “Snow” as one of his favorite tunes from the new album, due to its “really crazy sounding guitar part. It’s very busy but rhythmically desirable at the same time. That has grown into one of the epic, kind of great-feeling jams on this record.” Another tune, “Wet Sand,” goes in a new structural direction. “It isn’t so much verse/chorus/verse/chorus with a bridge,” Kiedis says. “It has a beginning, a middle and an end, which I like as a change of pace.”

Fans are sure to be thrilled by the playing of guitarist John Frusciante, who here eschews the more minimalist approach of the Peppers’ past two albums. Says Kiedis, “On this record, he was kind of like, ‘Okay, it’s time for me to lay it all on the table and really shine as a guitar player.’ He’s a lot more balls-out. It’s very solo intensive — there’s some incredible guitar solos. I guess there’s still a little bit of early Beach Boys and early Electric Light Orchestra and intense vocal harmonies. They make themselves known.”

Kiedis attributes the creative burst to the fact that “the chemistry when it comes to writing is better than ever. Always in the past, there was a little bit of struggle between Flea, John or myself as contributing writers — a struggle to dominate. But we are now confident enough in who we are, so everybody feels more comfortably contributing more and more valuable, quality stuff.”

The Peppers will “start rocking in May,” according to Kiedis, with the itinerary set to visit Europe first. A North American tour will then run from August through November. “Instead of playing outdoor shows, we’ll play indoor shows so we can bring a little bit of theatrical love into the arena space,” the artist says.

Source billboard.com.