2006

Esteemed indie rock trio Sleater-Kinney is going on an indefinite hiatus and has no plans for “future tours or recordings,” according to a statement released by its label, Sub Pop. The group will play five final shows this summer, culminating Aug. 4 at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago.

“We feel lucky to have had the support of many wonderful people over the years,” the band said. “We want to thank everyone who has worked with us, written kind words about us, performed with us, and inspired us.”

But mostly we want to extend our gratitude to our amazing fans,” the statement continued. “You have been a part of our story from the beginning. We could not have made our music without your enthusiasm, passion, and loyalty. It is you who have made the entire journey worthwhile.”

After spending its entire career on Kill Rock Stars, the band’s lone release for Sub Pop, 2005’s “The Woods,” was regarded by many as the best of its career. The set debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Independent Albums chart and has sold 73,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Guitarist/vocalist Corin Tucker previously told Billboard.com the group nearly split before it recorded “The Woods.” “It was very frustrating,” she said. “It was like, ‘Ugh, I don’t know if we’re going to make another record.’ It was definitely a weird, tenuous journey for this record. I think [album track] ‘Entertain’ is definitely the song that was great. We kind of clung to that song like, ‘Okay, we’ve written this one really great song and there’s got to be more in there somewhere’ but we all had to get there.”

Here are Sleater-Kinney’s tour dates:

July 29: Louisville (Mellwood Arts Center)
July 31: Philadelphia (Starlight Ballroom)
Aug. 1: Washington, D.C. (9:30 Club)
Aug. 2: New York (Webster Hall)
Aug. 4: Chicago (Grant Park; Lollapalooza)

Source billboard.com.

Canadian rock outfit the Arcade Fire has 15 songs recorded for the follow-up to its 2004 breakthrough, “Funeral,” according to a post from Win Butler on the band’s Web site. “We have maybe 15 songs with little bits left to record and a few more we want to get to tape,” he wrote. “We are going to try and record a couple of songs in me and Regine [Chassagne]’s living room, because the drums sound so great in there.”

The group is also incorporating new instrumentation in the mix, including “a huge f*cking pipe organ” that will appear on two songs. In early July, violinist Owen Pallet, who records under the name Final Fantasy, will join the band at its Montreal studio.

Butler adds, “There is talk of recording a few songs with a full orchestra in Budapest. The next couple of weeks we will be pulling our hair out.” The group recently took time out from recording to attend one of Radiohead’s shows in Montreal and hit the town with bassist Colin Greenwood and guitarist Ed O’Brien.

Source billboard.com.

More than five months after his arrest, trend-setting KCRW (the eclectic community service radio station in Santa Monica) host Chris Douridas has been charged with drug possession, but faces no prosecution for an alleged sex crime.

In January, Douridas was taken into custody by police outside a Santa Monica nightclub after eye witnesses reported that the 43-year old had slipped a substance into a teenager

Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was arrested in Stockholm early this morning (June 27) after allegedly biting a security guard in the leg outside his hotel, police said.

Rose, who performed in the Swedish capital last night, was being held on suspicion of attacking and threatening the guard, as well as causing damage to the Berns Hotel where the alleged scuffle took place, police spokeswoman Towe Hagg said.

Hagg said Rose was intoxicated during the confrontation, which broke out around 8 a.m., and would face questioning after he sobers up. “He was deemed too intoxicated to be questioned right away,” she said. A prosecutor will then decide whether to press charges against him, Hagg said.

Full story on Billboard.com

The next disc from Garrett Dutton, better known as G. Love, will feature a long list of guest appearanceces from the likes of Jack Johnson and Ben Harper to Marc Broussard and Blackalicious.

Due Aug. 1 on Johnson’s Brushfire label, “G. Love’s Lemonade” also features Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, Donovan Frankenreiter, Tristan Prettyman and keyboardist Steve Molitz from jamband Particle.

“Except for one song, it’s straight hip-hop grooves,” Dutton tells Billboard.com. Of the cameo-packed approach, he says, “It was something I did want to do, but it wasn’t supposed to happen now. It just happened out of the blue, so I just let it go.”

“G. Love’s Lemonade” features the latest in a long line of collaborations with Johnson. Remembering the first time he heard the Hawaiian singer/songwriter perform, Dutton says, “We went for a surf, and we went back to this little bungalow I was staying at in Topanga Canyon, and we were just trading songs, and he played a lot of songs that ended up being on his first record [‘Brushfire Fairytales’]. I was thinking, ‘There’s something going on here. This is the shit.'”

Dutton appeared on Johnson’s “Curious George” soundtrack last year, and Johnson returns the favor on the “Lemonade” track “Rainbow.” “We’re family,” says Dutton. The new album’s first single, “Hot Cooking,” can be downloaded from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. A video was recently shot by Emmett Malloy.

Source billboard.com.

The Wu-Tang Clan, Flaming Lips, My Chemical Romance and Kings Of Leon have joined the bill for the eighth Voodoo Music Experience. The event will be held Oct. 28-29 in New Orleans’ City Park and will be headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Duran Duran.

“Despite the ongoing uncertainty in New Orleans, I feel it’s important for people to continue to invest in the rebirth of our city,” Voodoo producer Stephen Rehage tells Billboard.com. “Whatever small part we can play in that, we will continue to do and we’ll see in due course if it was the right decision. What I do know with no uncertainty is that New Orleans and its music culture is something worth nurturing back to its glory.”

Other acts confirmed to appear include Social Distortion, Broken Social Scene, Ozomatli, Secret Machines, Blue October, Brazilian Girls, Drive-By Truckers, the Rentals, Ferry Corsten, Jack’s Mannequin and Yerba Buena.

Last year’s Voodoo Music Experience was the first major musical event held in the Crescent City in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and boasted performances by Nine Inch Nails, Queens Of The Stone Age, Tiesto, the Bravery, the New York Dolls and Secret Machines, among others. A host of native New Orleans musicians also appeared, some of them playing in the city for the first time since Katrina struck.

Source billboard.com.

Yonder Mountain String Band, Son Volt, Todd Snider, and Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile are among the many artists slated to appear at the fifth annual Northwest String Summit in North Plains, Ore.
The festival will return to Horning’s Hideout, just west of Portland, for the weekend of August 25-27, with three full days of acoustic music planned.
Yonder Mountain String Band will play the closing set each night, joined by guest fiddler Darol Anger.
Son Volt will perform in an acoustic format, as will Todd Snider, while Danny Barnes will play one of the festival’s only electric sets.
The festival will also feature the first public performance by the duo of Brendan Bayliss (Umphrey’s McGee) and Jeff Austin (Yonder Mountain).
Thile plans to sit in on a number of sets throughout the weekend, in addition to hosting the annual String Summit Super Jam, which has featured such luminaries as David Grisman and Jerry Douglas in past years.
The Summit’s band contest will take place on the first day of the festival, with four finalists competing for a main stage slot on next year’s bill.
Three-day passes are on sale now for $115 to $135 at musictoday.com.

Source pollstar.com.

Six years of music, a self-titled debut EP due out June 29, and a CD-release party set for the same date: Jounce is back at it again.

“Jounce,” due out at the end of the month, is a virtual showcase for Matt DeSteno, guitar; Danny Tamberelli, bass, whom you may remember as “Little Pete” from the cult-hit television show “The Adventures of Pete & Pete”; and Joe Ciarallo, drums. Longtime friends and collaborators Ryan Abribat (guitar) and Adam Gold (keyboards) added to the recording and will tour with the band. Marco Centola of Urban Nature Audio and Alan Silverman of Arf! Digital in New York mixed and mastered the EP, which was recorded throughout April 2006 in Syracuse, N.Y. “It was good for us to get out of town those weekends and get really focused in on everything, but at the same time we knew we had very limited time in the studio, so we kept moving fast. For Limerick 63 we literally did one take during our last hour in the studio, laying down ideas we weren’t even sure would make it on to the album,” says Tamberelli.

Eveready for celebration, Jounce will host a CD release party and kickoff to a summer tour at 10 p.m. Thursday, June 29th at Mexicali Blues, 1409 Queene Anne Road, Teaneck, N.J. Tickets are $10 at the door. 21+. The album will be self released by the band and available at cdbaby.com, iTunes, and jounce.org.