Tommy Emmanuel, C.G.P.
LIVE IN CONCERT 2013

May 29 | Portland, ME
June 6 | Norfolk, VA
June 7 | Durham, NC
June 14 | Charleston, SC
June 15 | Roanoke, VA
June 21 | Burlington, VT
June 22 | Hartford, CT
Sept. 17 | Louisville, KY

On Sale Dates, Presale Specials, Ticketing Info, Facebook Groups, and Opening Acts vary.
Check your city above for details.

Two-time Grammy nominee Tommy Emmanuel is one of Australia’s most respected musicians. The legendary guitarist has a professional career that spans almost five decades and continues to intersect with some of the finest musicians throughout the world. A household name in his native Australia, Tommy has garnered hundreds of thousands of loyal fans worldwide. Tommy’s unique style – he calls it simply “finger style” – is akin to playing guitar the way a pianist plays piano, using all ten fingers. Rather than using a whole band for melody, rhythm, bass, and drum parts, Tommy plays all that – and more – on one guitar. Guitar legend Chet Atkins was one of the first to inspire Emmanuel to try this “fingerpicker” style as a child. Decades later, Atkins himself became one of Emmanuel’s biggest fans.

Emmanuel’s unusual talent and life are common lore in Australia. Born into a musical family, Tommy and his older brother Phil were considered child prodigies. Tommy got his first guitar at age 4 and was taught by his mother. He learned by ear, with no formal instruction, and has never read music. By the age of 6, he was already working as a professional musician in the family band, variously named The Emmanuel Quartet, The Midget Surfaries and The Trailblazers. Tommy played rhythm guitar and his older brother Phil played lead, along with their brother Chris on drums and sister Virginia on slide guitar. The Emmanuel siblings earned the family’s sole income for several years. Tommy doesn’t remember such responsibility as a hardship: “I’ve spent all my life from the age of four playing music and entertaining people. I never wanted to do anything else.” By age 10, Emmanuel had played his way across Australia.

In 1962, Tommy heard Nashville guitarist Chet Atkins’ music for the first time and was riveted by the complexity of Atkins’ solo sound. He spent hours trying to figure out the “fingerpicking” style and gobbled up each of the American star’s albums as they came out. Shortly after his father’s death of a heart attack in 1966, Tommy even wrote Chet a letter and, to his surprise, the famous artist and producer wrote him back. Chet would grow to become Tommy’s mentor and primary influence, but it would be another 15 years before the two would finally meet in person.

After his father died, the Emmanuel family was approached by Australian country music star Buddy Williams, who took them on the road until they were forced by the Australian child welfare department to stop traveling. The children were then sent to a regular school. During these years, Tommy was playing in The Trailblazers on weekends. He also taught guitar and made numerous television appearances in musical competitions. Emmanuel’s first brush with fame came when The Trailblazers won two televised talent contests and were able to produce an album.

Leaving school and home in his early teens, Tommy embraced big city life in Sydney in order to pursue his career as a professional guitarist. By the 70′s, he was playing in clubs all over the city and soon found himself in high demand as a session player and sideman known for his versatility and easy-going personality. During the mid 70s through the early 80s, Emmanuel played on recordings for Air Supply, Men at Work and dozens of other popular bands and artists, as well as thousands of commercial ‘jingles.’ He became known as one of the best modern guitarists in Australia. Some of his most notable appearances were on the Air Supply hit singles Lost in Love, All Out of Love, Every Woman in the World, and Now and Forever.In 1985 Emmanuel joined one of the decade’s biggest Australian rock bands, Dragon, and recorded the platinum- selling album Dreams of Ordinary Men. In 1987, Dragon toured with Tina Turner on her ‘Break Every Rule’ tour. As a songwriter (co-writing with 1960s Australian star Steve Kipner), his compositions have been recorded by Olivia Newton-John, Al Jarreau, and Sheena Easton. It is for his successful solo career, however, that Emmanuel is best known.

In 1980 Emmanuel made a trip to the United States and finally met and got to play with his hero, Chet Atkins, in Nashville. From that magical moment forward, the Tennessee master guitarist and producer took the twenty- something Australian ace under his wing and began introducing him to other guitar legends. Tommy speaks of his mentor with the love and gratitude of a son and Atkins’ influences are evident throughout his music and personal philosophy. Emmanuel’s technical precision, his virtuosic improvisations and his unusually broad repertoire – which encompasses not only country and bluegrass, but pop, jazz, blues, gospel, even classical, flamenco, and aboriginal styles – bespeak Chet Atkins’ legacy.Emmanuel got his solo instrumental career off the ground with the release of the gentle and textural Up from Down.

In the 90′s his efforts blossomed and began to be recognized and rewarded by the Australian music industry and media. Sales of his albums set records that have yet to be broken.

His versatility has taken Emmanuel from international Jazz Festivals to shows with the Sydney Philharmonic, The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, and performances for the Masai people in remote areas of Kenya. Tommy’s dream of recording with Chet Atkins came true in 1996 when the pair made an album titled The Day the Finger Pickers Took Over the World, for which Emmanuel received his first Grammy award nomination.

Tommy was well-known in Australia, Asia, and Europe long before his presence was felt in the U.S. However, in 1997 his album Midnight Drive was in the top five for 16 weeks, which made him the “most added artist” on the NAC radio charts that year. In Nashville in 1999, Tommy was honored by his mentor, Chet Atkins with the title of “Certified Guitar Player” for his contribution to fingerstyle guitar, a rare distinction shared by only three other people in the world (Jerry Reed, Steve Wariner and John Knowles). It was a crowning moment for Emmanuel and a title the self-proclaimed “humble, uneducated, country kid” from Down Under takes very seriously.

After Tommy’s appearance with his brother Phil in the Closing Ceremonies of the Sydney Olympic Games and his debut at the famous Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, in late 2000, Americans wanted to know who this mysterious Australian guitar virtuoso was. In 2001, Emmanuel released his first solo-acoustic album, ONLY, and in 2002 it debuted in the U.S.Emmanuel’s popularity in the US has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years, aided by a non-stop touring schedule and increasing exposure in the media. 2005 kicked off a stream of US honors and awards. Tommy was inducted into the National Thumbpickers’ Hall of Fame in Muhlenberg, KY (the only non-American ever to be selected) and awarded with Thumbpicker of the Year and Album of the Year by the group, as well. He played Carnegie Hall for Les Paul’s 90th birthday Tribute Concert. His The Mystery album earned a Grammy nomination in 2006 for Best Country Instrumental for ‘Gameshow Rag/Cannonball Rag’. In 2008, Guitar Player Magazine and Acoustic Guitar Magazine named him Best Acoustic Guitarist and Gold Medalist – Fingerstyle category in the Readers’ Choice and Players’ Choice Awards, respectively.

His newest solo album and DVD Center Stage were produced in 2008 based on the popularity of Emmanuel’s episode of a PBS series called Sierra Center Stage filmed live at the famous Sierra Nevada Brewery venue in Sierra Nevada, CA. Tommy’s Center Stage video has been featured on PBS stations around the country during 2009, drawing ever-larger sellout crowds to his live shows. Tommy was also honored with Guitar Player Magazine’s most prestigious annual Guitar Legend award in 2009, as well as being named Thumbpicker of the Year for the second time. Most recently, Guitar Player’s 2010 Readers Choice awards named him Best Acoustic Guitarist for the second time!

In all, Emmanuel’s catalogue includes 20 musical recordings running the gamut of solos, duets, ensembles, cover tunes, originals, both electric and acoustic guitar. He has made 3 live performance DVDs, 3 additional instructional DVDs, and regularly teaches master classes on the road. At 54, performing live is more important to him than ever and he tours constantly, playing over 300 concerts a year for the last five years. Guitar players of all levels come to his shows to watch the magic hands of the ‘guitar Wizard of Oz,’ but his appeal goes far beyond musicians. His live shows are known for their humor, passion, and infectious joy. The power of his charismatic showmanship will be an enduring part of Emmanuel’s legacy. Tommy Emmanuel’s message is pure love for the music and his delight in sharing it with the world, one audience at a time.

“...run, do not walk, to a Tommy Emmanuel concert near you. True happiness is in tragically short supply right now, all over the world, but you will definitely find it there.”- Richard McFalls, Cactus Cafe Show Review (Austin, TX)

Tommy Emmanuel Online:
Website | Facebook | MySpace

An Evening With Daryl Hall & John Oates

Sunday, June 2nd | 7:30pm
Ryman Auditorium
Nashville, TN

Presale:
10am-10pm Thursday, March 21st.
Use password smile at Ticketmaster.com.

Tickets On Sale:
Friday, March 22nd at 10am at Ticketmaster.com, all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000, and the Ryman Auditorium box office.

Ticket Prices:
$85 | $79.50 | $69.50 (plus applicable fees)

Official Concert Facebook Group:
Join here.

Produced by NS2.

Rock’s dynamic duo, Daryl Hall and John Oates will return to the Ryman Auditorium for the first time since their last sell-out performance at the legendary venue in December 2011. Arguably one of pop music’s most influential acts, Daryl Hall & John Oates’ unique fusion of Philly soul and rock ‘n’ roll have made the singer-songwriter duo legendary.

Starting out as two devoted disciples of earlier soul greats, Daryl Hall & John Oates are soul survivors in their own right. They have become such musical influences on some of today’s popular artists that the September 2006 cover of Spin Magazine’s headline read: “Why Hall and Oates are the New Velvet Underground.” Their artistic fan base includes Rob Thomas, John Mayer, Brandon Flowers of the Killers, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie and MTV’s newest hipsters Gym Class Heroes who dubbed their tour “Daryl Hall for President Tour 2007.” One of the most sampled artists today, their impact can be heard everywhere from boy band harmonies, to neo-soul to rap-rock fusion.

From the mid-’70s to the mid-’80s, the duo scored six #1 singles, including “Rich Girl,” “Kiss on My List,” “Private Eyes,” “I Can’t Go For That,” “Maneater” and “Out of Touch” from their six consecutive multi-platinum albums—’76’s Bigger Than Both of Us, ’80’s Voices, ’81’sPrivate Eyes, ‘82’s H2O, ‘83’s Rock N Soul, Part I and ‘84’s Big Bam Boom. The era would also produce an additional 5 Top 10 singles, “Sara Smile,” “One on One,” “You Make My Dreams,” “Say It Isn’t So” and “Method of Modern Love.”

Hall & Oates Online
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Journey’s Presents Marianas Trench
With Special Guests Air Dubai and Ghost Town

Tuesday, June 4th | 7pm
The Cannery Ballroom
Nashville, TN

Tickets On Sale:
Friday, April 12th at 10am at MercyLounge.com and 866-777-8932.

Ticket Prices:
$18 Advance
$20 Day of Show

All Ages

Produced by NS2

Marianas Trench

Welcome to Ever After. A fairytale and a single, 54 minute track stitched from 12 discrete songs—the most audacious songs Marianas Trench has ever crafted. Ever After is constructed around a story written by Ramsay himself and then finessed into an accompanying booklet. It’s an actual physical experience; a warm throwback to the album era when your music was more than a bunch of orphaned songs sitting on an endless iPod playlist.

It’s also the project that captures Marianas Trench at a soaring artistic peak. After the breakthrough of Masterpiece Theatre in 2009 and a lot of ensuing months on the road, Ramsay and bandmates Ian Casselman, Mike Ayley, and Matt Webb were eager to start recording again. They finally settled into Ramsay’s studio to begin work on their next theatrical masterpiece by the end of 2010.

“All the songs live on their own as songs, but they also serve the purpose of telling the story throughout the record,” he explains. As for the seamless hour-long symphony he constructed, Ramsay adds, “I wanted to do that on the last record but as a writer I wasn’t ready. I had to step it up, which is also why I decided to produce Ever After on my own. If this is all gonna tie together, then you really need to see it through yourself.”

The tale itself concerns the heartless Queen Carolina, the exiled King, and the stolen heart of his daughter Porcelain. We’re lowered into this barren and heartless Toyland through the title track; a sweeping epic that makes good on Ramsay’s promise that “some things are really over on the top” on Ever After. “It sounds like a chase scene,” he says. “I was, like, ‘If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do this right. We’re gonna need 50 string players.’ ”

After that Michael Bay-sized opener, we get what you might call the basic working unit of Ever After. “Haven’t Had Enough” has a lean ‘80s funk edge to it, as do skin-tight tracks like “Desperate Measures”, “B Team”, and the amazing “Stutter”, but with Ramsay’s jones for the Beach Boys and Queen-calibre vocal arrangements crash into something with the dimensions of Thriller-era Michael Jackson.

Ramsay is also playing up the underused R&B side of his voice on Ever After, turning the epic power ballad “By Now” into an emotional workout, soaring over the krushed groove of “Fallout”, and generally manifesting his inner soul man all over the place. It’s acrobatic work, but he was keen to push himself. “I like to sing in that style,” he says, “it’s something I really enjoy, but it’s gonna be a challenge live, for sure.”

“Truth or Dare” makes an even bolder statement with its choppy flamenco parts and a hook that sounds like a Maori singing backwards, but nothing touches “No Place Like Home” for outlandishness and high-flying ambition. On this climactic track, the band wraps up the third act of the story with a whirlwind battle and epilogue, piling stacked vocals on top of multiple switch-ups and fake-outs, making an end run through Brian May guitar and a touch of the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” before hitting a blockbuster-sized finish and a final, sweet coda played on a harp and a child’s music box.

It’s insane. And brilliant. And it puts the cherry on top of Marianas Trench’s mad, multi-media vision. What Marianas Trench has done with Ever After is create the story and soundtrack to a dark Tim Burton rock opera that hasn’t been made yet. Hollywood, are you listening?

Marianas Trench Online
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Air Dubai

Denver band Air Dubai is more than the sum of its parts. It’s not about the exciting combination of eclectic genres or even the explosive onstage energy. The group’s appeal lies in its member’s passion for the music they create, as well as their love for the people who come to see them perform. A heady mix of hip-hop, pop, soul, rock and electronic, Air Dubai exists not to fit into one specific category or sound, but instead to create something new and fresh on each album and even every song.

The band’s roots date back to 2008, when high school friends singer Jon Shockness and rapper Julian Thomas decided to create a hip-hop duo using the name Air Dubai. Originally utilizing pre-recorded beats, the pair collaborated for a year until they both felt the need to create music more organically. By spring of 2009, Air Dubai had its first rehearsal as a live band with instruments. By rounding out the lineup with Nick Spreigl (drums), Lawrence Grivich (guitar), Michael Ray (keyboard/synth), and Taylor Tait (bass), Air Dubai was able to transform itself into a shape-shifting powerhouse of talent, seamlessly blending genres and styles.

To date, the seven-piece has two official releases: 2010’s “Wonder Age” (produced by Andrew Guerrero of Flobots) and 2011’s “Day Escape” (produced by Sylvia Massy, whose credits include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool and Prince). The albums showcase impressive musical dexterity and songwriting ability, but the true magic lies in Air Dubai’s live shows; energetic, soulful performances fueled mainly by the faithful fans that come to see them play.

Air Dubai has received numerous critical and commercial accolades: voted Westword magazine’s “Best Hip Hop Band” of 2010, 2011 & 2012, winner of Channel 93.3 KTCL’s 2011 “Hometown For The Holidays” competition, multiple songs featured on MTV’s hit series Jersey Shore and in Hollister stores nationwide. The band has also shared the stage with a wide array of local and national artists, including OneRepublic, 3Oh!3 and Rise Against.

In 2013, Air Dubai plans to release a new album, continue touring and increase their fan base worldwide.

Air Dubai Online
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Dawes
With Special Guest Shovels and Rope

Sunday, June 9 | 7:30pm
Ryman Auditorium
Nashville, TN

Presale:
10am-10pm Thursday, March 21st.
Use password window at Ticketmaster.com.

Tickets On Sale:
Friday, March 22nd at 10am at Ticketmaster.com, all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000, and at the Ryman Auditorium Box Office.

Ticket Prices:
$27.50
(Plus applicable fees)

Official Concert Facebook Page:
Join here.

Presented by NS2

While the city of Los Angeles has been both an inspiration and a home to the four members of Dawes, they found themselves traveling East last fall to record their third album in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with newly enlisted producer Jacquire King. It was a chance to hunker down and work each day for a month away from familiar landmarks and routines. The tracks they laid down at Asheville’s Echo Mountain Studio have yielded a 12-song disc of tremendous sonic and narrative clarity, book-ended in classic album fashion by two very different versions of the wistful “Just Beneath The Surface” – a misleading title, really, since the songs stacked in between dig so deep. Stories Don’t End is not so much a departure from the quartet’s previous efforts as a distillation of them. It spotlights the group’s maturing skills as arrangers, performers and interpreters who shape the raw material supplied by chief songwriter and lead vocalist Taylor Goldsmith into an artfully concise and increasingly soulful sound.

Once again, Goldsmith displays a particular gift for tunes that balance tough and tender, hardboiled and heartbroken. As a writer, he prowls his psyche like a forties detective, looking for clues to the mysteries of life and love. “Just My Luck” has the irresistible pull of a vintage country tune, though the arrangement is understated and contemporary. If Goldsmith’s vocal delivery weren’t plaintive enough, the band ups the emotional ante with a beautiful wordless coda that intertwines Tay Strathairn’s piano and Goldsmith’s lead guitar. Similarly “Something In Common” is a morning-after shuffle that builds into a bigger and more dramatic track before dropping back to a quiet melancholic finish. Goldsmith takes a few simple words, like “something in common,” and uses them like chapter headings to develop a compelling story, full of unexpected twists, from verse to verse. “Someone Will” includes the same kind of word play while boasting a little more swagger. “Hey Lover,” a cover of a tongue-in-cheek tune by Dawes’ good buddy Blake Mills, is a playful mid-album break with Taylor Goldsmith and his young brother, drummer Griffin Goldsmith, trading off lead vocals.

Before he started composing for the album, says Taylor, “I went through a Joan Didion tear.” It was right after he read the legendary author’s Democracy that he found the title, Stories Don’t End, in her work. Though Didion is currently a New Yorker, she is most associated with Southern California, its culture of the sixties and seventies, a subject she examined in gimlet-eyed prose. When Goldsmith started penning new songs after several months on the road in support of Dawes’ 2011 disc, Nothing Is Wrong, his writing was even more keenly observant. “From a Window Seat” was the first he completed and, he admits, “It’s a very singular song. A lot of the songs on the record can be a little more broad, about a period in someone’s life or trying to explore a certain feeling. This song is about a specific experience of being on an airplane and that’s not a very poetic or lyrical idea.” Yet Goldsmith, employing an accumulation of small details, once again finds the bigger picture, about the narrator’s past and his (and our) uncertain future, about the history lurking beneath the swimming pool-dotted landscape below him. Just as important is the track itself—lean, propulsive and guitar-driven – lending urgency to Goldsmith’s in-flight musings. Similarly, “Bear Witness,” a last-minute addition to the lineup that the band arranged during the Asheville sessions, is an almost cinematically vivid rendering of a man having a conversation with his child from his hospital bed.

Nothing Is Wrong had garnered considerable acclaim, with London’s Independent declaring, “It’s as close to a perfect Americana album as there’s been this year.” Up to then, the band had relied on good friend Jonathan Wilson as producer, cutting its 2009 debut disc, North Hills, at Wilson’s Laurel Canyon studio and its follow-up with Wilson at a larger room in Echo Park. But Wilson’s own career as a solo artist was taking off following the release of his Gentle Spirit disc, and the band began a search for a new collaborator. King boasted an impressive and unusual resume, having produced an eclectic range of artists, including Kings of Leon, Modest Mouse, Norah Jones and the Punch Brothers. Says keyboardist Strathairn, “He’s really easy to work with. As a producer he doesn’t want to be the artist, he simply tries to make the band sound the best that the band can be. And the work speaks for itself.”

Recording with King and foregoing the quickly cut, straight-to-analog tape approach of its first two recordings was a way, says Taylor, for Dawes “to push the boundaries of what might be expected of us, or feel like a comfort zone for us, while trying to be the same band we always are. That was important to us. We didn’t want to abandon anybody’s sense of who we were and, more importantly, our sense of ourselves. We wanted to stay true to this thing that we had while starting to widen the spectrum a little bit.”

The reprise of “Just Beneath the Surface” at the end of the disc, however, is a first-take document of the band figuring out the tune together, and it was too good not to keep. As bassist Wylie Gelber recalls, “We knew the vibe we were going for and we were running through it while Jacquire was setting up. But we were completely unaware that he was recording us. We were fooling around and towards the end of it, we stopped for a minute and Jacquire said, Hey man, I think we’ve got it. We tried to beat that take but we couldn’t. You can hear it there, you can feel that it’s the first time it’s being played, it’s a simple song and there’s a subtle art to doing it. It ebbs and flows.”

“With Jacquire,” explains Taylor, “we were able to hold on to an essence of what we had been, but I feel now, more than with our first two records, that this makes a case that we’re a band from 2013. There a lot of bands that harken back to a period or style of a different time and that can be really limiting. That was never our intention.”

“The album is very honest,” concludes Strathairn. “It’s us.”

Dawes Online
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Gregg Allman

Tuesday, June 25
Victory Theatre
Evansville, IN

Friday, June 28
Ryman Auditorium
Nashville, TN

Check you city above for ticket info, presale dates, Facebook group, etc.

Presented by NS2

“I’ve got my hand over my heart,” Gregg Allman says of his extraordinary new album, “and if it’s a hit there, it’s a hit.”

As a founding member of the one and only Allman Brothers Band and in his own storied solo career, Allman has long been a gifted natural interpreter of the blues, his soulful and distinctive voice one of the defining sounds in the history of American music. Low Country Blues marks the legendary Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s seventh solo recording and first in more than 13 years.

Produced by T Bone Burnett, the album finds Allman putting his own stamp on songs by some of the blues giants whose work has long informed his own, from Muddy Waters and BB King to Buddy Guy and Magic Sam. Named for the coastal Georgia region Allman calls home, Low Country Blues stands as a high water mark in an already remarkable body of work, rich with passion, verve, and the unerring confidence of a true survivor.

Though Allman has been a constant presence on the road over the past decade, with The Allman Brothers Band as well as with his own crack combo, he has spent precious little time in the studio since the 2002 death of producer Tom Dowd – the man behind the glass for much of his recorded career. So when his manager suggested he veer off from a 2009 tour for a Memphis meeting with the multiple Grammy Award-winning Burnett, Allman admits to being not entirely enthused.

“I said, ‘Oh man, I don’t wanna start meeting a string of dudes, all of ‘em trying to outdo the other one,” he recalls. “But we stopped in Memphis and here comes T Bone. The first sentence out of his mouth was something like, ‘Tommy Dowd was The Man, wasn’t he? I’ve patterned a lot of my stuff after that gentleman.’ I thought, ‘Right, what’ve we got here?’”

The two musicians quickly bonded, chatting about favorite records, mutual friends, and reminiscences of Nashville’s renowned clear channel station, WLAC, which introduced rhythm & blues music to a generation of late night listeners from New York to Miami.

“He told me some guy gave him a hard drive, it has 10,000 obscure blues songs,” Allman says. “He says, ‘I’m gonna pick out twenty of ‘em and send ‘em to ya and you tell me what you think.’ He said, ‘They’re old, like Billie Holliday old, and when you listen to ‘em, I want you to think about us gettin’ in there and about bringin’ ‘em up to today.’”

Allman found the idea irresistible and in January 2010, a stunning combo was assembled at Los Angeles’ The Village Recorder, comprising Burnett and Doyle Bramhall II on guitars, backed by the brilliant rhythm section of upright bassist Dennis Crouch and drummer Jay Bellerose. What’s more, the lineup included a brass section arranged and conducted by trumpeter Darrell Leonard, whose illustrious resume extends back to his work with Delaney & Bonnie & Friends (featuring Gregg’s late, great brother Duane). As if that weren’t enough, sitting in on piano was a dear old friend, the Night Tripper himself, Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack, with whom Allman co-wrote “Let This Be A Lesson To Ya’” on The Gregg Allman Band’s 1977 classic, Playin’ Up A Storm.

“T Bone knew that that him being there would put a certain fire in my ass,” Allman says. “It was so good seeing Dr. John, both of us being sober. ‘Cause last time I saw him, both of us were pretty much nose to the floor. He’s such a nice dude, he’s funny, God, is he funny. Before he was so stoned, it didn’t really come out full force, but oh man, he is hilarious!”

This powerhouse band – which of course also features Gregg’s own acoustic guitar expertise and trademark Hammond B- 3 organ – cooks up an earthy and atmospheric musical stew infused with gritty R&B muscle, spooky Southern psychedelia, and greasy deep soul grooves.

“The band was just a bitch, man,” Allman says. “It’s not all just a wall of guitars – not that there’s anything at all wrong with The Brothers, because that’s very, very tasty.”

The tracking came fast and furious, kicking off with an ominous take on Sleepy John Estes’ ominous “Floating Bridge.” From there, the album covers the blues’ many emotional terrains, from exuberant showstoppers like Little Milton’s “Blind Man” and the album’s one original composition, the swaggering “Just Another Rider” (co-written with longtime ABB guitarist Warren Haynes), to Skip James’ haunted “Devil Got My Woman” and the weary but unbowed traditional, “Rolling Stone.”

“If it works right, it all turns real magic,” Allman says. “And that’s what happened this time, more so I think than anything I’ve ever recorded. We got 15 masters in 11 days; let me tell ya, they just went Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!”

When it came to vocals, Burnett was determined to push Allman out of his comfort zone, encouraging spontaneity and soul above all else. “First takes scare me to death,” he says, “they really do. On about three or maybe four of ‘em, Bone comes over the microphone, ‘Alright, we got it.’ I said, ‘Well wait, hold it, hold it! What do you mean got it? We just ran it down!’ ‘No, we got it.’ I went back in the control room, I said, ‘Man, I know I can get it better than that.’ He says, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ I said, ‘Well, nothin’s wrong with it, I just think I can do it with a little more interesting feel.’ So we went back out there, I tried, man, I tried as hard as I could. Nope.”

Indeed, Allman’s instantly identifiable voice remains a wonder, wringing nuance and history from every lyric. “I have an evolved throat,” he says. “I think I’m a little more meticulous now. I’m a real stickler for melody. I used to think more about beat than I did about melody, but now I think about both of ‘em. See, you’ve got to have beat, because first of all, you’ve got to feel something as well as hear it. Both of those entities have to be really personified in my book.”

Like any genuine bluesman, Allman’s own life has been colored by myriad triumphs and too many tragedies. Low Country Blues was initially slated for a mid-2010 release, but that plan changed when Gregg, who had long battled chronic Hepatitis C, was notified that he was a candidate for a liver transplant. In June 2010, he entered the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida where he successfully underwent the difficult surgery. Knowing that he had only just made one of the defining albums of his recorded career proved to be the best medicine, giving Allman the inner strength he needed to fully heal.

“This record’s one of the things that’s held me together,” he says. “Because when I woke up in the hospital from this incredibly big surgery, I held on to the idea that, hey man, you’ve got a record in the can!”

An inveterate road warrior, Allman is understandably itching to return to the endless highway. He spent the months following the surgery hitting both the gym and the rehearsal studio, working hard to restore his vitality to its requisite level. Moreover, Allman is justifiably proud of Low Country Blues and is eager to get out there to bring these songs to his countless fans.

“When you have a new record it always feels different,” he says. “Man, you gotta get out there and move the muscles, you gotta move it and shake it.”

“It’s been too long,” he adds. “I guess I was just born with a lot of gypsy in my soul.”

Simply put, Low Country Blues is Gregg Allman at his very best, a self-assured, spirited collection that will stand as a major milestone in what is undeniably an exceptional career. “Places you been, things that you done/Somehow you’re still on the run,” Allman sings on “Just Another Rider.” Long may he run.

Gregg Allman Online
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Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo
With Special Guest Brynn Marie

Tuesday, June 25th | 7:30pm
Ryman Auditorium
Nashville, TN

Tickets On Sale:
Friday, March 15th at 10am at Ticketmaster.com, all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000, and at the Ryman Auditorium box office.

Ticket Prices:
$59.50 | $49.50 | $39.50
(Additional fees may apply)

Official Facebook Group:
Join here.

Presented by NS2.

PAT BENATAR • BIOGRAPHY

Pat Benatar: she’s always been a rule-breaker and a trail-blazer, she remains a bold and distinctive artist both on stage and on record, and now, after more than three decades in rock ‘n’ roll, she’s a bonafide living legend.

Songs like “Love is a Battlefield”, “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”, “Heartbreaker”, “Promises In The Dark” and “We Belong” are as unforgettable now as they were at the dawn of MTV, when Pat emerged, fearless, fighting and forging a path for other female rock stars around the world.

Born Patricia Andrzejewski in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Lindenhurst, Long Island, Pat started singing in elementary school and never stopped, working on her craft throughout her teens. At just 19 years old, Pat married her high school sweetheart, took his last name, Benatar, and started moonlighting in the clubs by night, while working as a bank clerk by day.

In 1975, Pat took to performing cabaret on Long Island, before being cast in Harry Chapin’s off- Broadway, sci-fi musical, The Zinger. It was after that, that Pat started hitting Manhattan’s cabaret circuit and open-mic nights, and began incorporating the rock and pop she so loved into her repertoire of standards and show tunes.

It was at an open-mic at the legendary Catch a Rising Star club showcase on Halloween, 1977, that Pat’s life changed forever. Earlier in the evening, she’d dressed up as a streetwise vampire to party at a Greenwich Village café. When she kept the costume on to do her regular set at Catch a Rising Star, the audience gave her a standing ovation for the very first time. Suddenly, her powerful voice (later to reach a 41/2 octave range) had an image to match. And a deal with Chrysalis Records followed shortly afterwards.

Benatar’s life was to change dramatically once again in 1979, when she was introduced to a fiery and inspiring guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, named Neil Giraldo, who shared the singer’s passions and used his skills as an innovative arranger and producer to help design, from its inception, the now renowned Benatar-sound.

Giraldo and Benatar’s vision merged explosively on her 1979 debut album, In The Heat Of The Night, which, thanks to the feisty sass of Top 40 hits like “Heartbreaker” and the Giraldo-penned “We Live For Love”, ultimately went platinum.

1980’s Crimes Of Passion album was a Grammy Award-winning, number 2 smash, reaching quadruple platinum and giving Pat her first Top 10 hit – the gold-certified “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”. It also spawned “You Better Run”, the second ever video to air on MTV.

And that was just the beginning. Benatar’s next album, 1981’s Precious Time went double platinum and outdid its predecessor by hitting #1. Lead single, “Fire and Ice”, brought Benatar her second Grammy.

Other platinum albums followed. 1982’s Get Nervous went Top Five and featured the Grammy- winning “Shadows Of The Night”, the same year that Benatar and Giraldo got married. 1983’s Live From Earth boasted the gold, also Grammy-winning, Top Five hit, “Love Is A Battlefield”; and 1984’s Tropico shined its spotlight on the Top Five as well, charting the Grammy-nominated “We Belong”.

Following 1984’s gold Seven The Hard Way, whose Top 10 Grammy-nominated “Invincible” became theme song for the film The Legend of Billie Jean, Benatar took some well-deserved time out to become a mother. In 1985, she and Giraldo became the proud parents of a baby girl, Haley.

Between 1988 and 1989, Benatar released Wide Awake in Dreamland that spun off the Top 20 hit “All Fired Up.” The song earned her yet another Grammy nomination for “Let’s Stay Together.” In 1991 came the blues/swing-inspired True Love album, followed in 1993 by the critically-acclaimed Gravity’s Rainbow. In 1994, she and Giraldo would become proud parents once again with the birth of their 2nd daughter, Hana.

In 1997, Pat released Innamorata on the CMC International label. That same year, she performed at Lilith Fair, where she was rightfully celebrated as a pioneer for women in rock. Then in 1998, further celebrating Benatar’s live prowess, 8-18-80, a live recording of a concert at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco, was finally released.

In 1999, Benatar and Giraldo opened their private vaults and compiled an extensive three-CD collection, Synchronistic Wanderings: Recorded Anthology 1979-1999. This impressive set includes songs from soundtracks (including Speed), contributions to tribute projects and benefits, previously unreleased live recordings, outtakes and demos, B- sides, and rarities never before available on CD.

As if that wasn’t enough, in the summer of 2002, Benatar and Giraldo released a thrilling live CD and DVD. The CD, Summer Vacation Soundtrack Live, and the DVD, Summer Vacation Live, featured a 90-minute concert filmed at the Grove Theatre in Anaheim , California. In addition, they debuted four new songs (“I Won’t,” “Girl,” “Out Of The Ruins,” and “Please Don’t Leave Me”) as well as previously unrecorded acoustic versions of “We Belong” and “Love Is A Battlefield.” Summer Vacation Live DVD also included behind the scenes footage and exclusive interviews.

In August 2003, Benatar released Go, her first album of new songs in seven years. Benatar described the record as a “contemporary guitar-driven record” and “the natural progression of where we should be”.

After being inducted into the Long Island Hall of Fame in 2008, Benatar released her long- awaited autobiography in 2010, the appropriately-titled Between a Heart and a Rock Place – which allowed the world a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of one of the most beloved female rock ‘n’ roll icons of all time.

Pat Benatar is acknowledged as the leading female rock vocalist of the ‘80s – a feat marked by her unprecedented winning of four consecutive Grammy Awards between 1980 and 1983, as well as three American Music Awards – but Benatar and Giraldo remain a rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse today, selling out concerts and still wowing audiences after over three decades in music together. Theirs is a chemistry that will, undoubtedly, be thrilling music-lovers forever.

NEIL GIRALDO • BIOGRAPHY

Neil “Spyder“ James Giraldo, has been a professional musician, producer, arranger and songwriter for over four decades now, changing the face of the pop charts throughout the 1980s with his collaborator, muse and wife, Pat Benatar. More than just an explosive steel-bending guitar player, Giraldo’s innovative vision helped him create the signature Benatar sound, from its inception.

His impressive back catalog includes more than 100 songs written, produced, arranged and recorded for Benatar, as well as many hits he helped create for John Waite, Rick Springfield (Number One, Grammy-winning classic “Jessie’s Girl” and Top Ten hit “I’ve Done Everything For You” included), Kenny Loggins (Top Twenty hit “Don’t Fight It” – also Grammy-nominated), Steve Forbert, The Del Lords, Beth Hart and countless others.

Giraldo began his career in 1978, as a key member of the Rick Derringer band, after beating out 200 other guitarists for the position. It wasn’t long before Rick discovered Neil’s piano-playing prowess and quickly put those skills to work in the studio as well, while recording Guitars and Women.

In the spring of 1979, producer and writer, Mike Chapman, introduced Giraldo to an up and coming singer who had recently signed to Chrysalis Records. While impressed with the young vocalist, Chapman felt she needed a musical director/partner who could establish a more aggressive sound. The vocalist was, of course, Pat Benatar and, in Giraldo she found someone as strong as her, someone who could match the same fire-power, someone who could inspire, while being inspired by her.

Shortly afterwards, the world was introduced to Giraldo and Benatar’s enduring partnership and rock ‘n’ roll love affair via her platinum 1979 debut album, In The Heat Of The Night, which included the classic “Heartbreaker”, as well as the Giraldo-penned hit, “We Live For Love”.

The following year, Benatar and Giraldo cemented their place in music history forever, by being the first female and first guitarist, respectively, to ever appear on MTV, with the video for “You Better Run”, taken from 1980’s Crimes of Passion – an album that also included the Grammy-winning, gold-certified single, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”.

1981’s Precious Time outdid its predecessor and with Giraldo now officially at the helm as producer, it delivered a second Grammy for Benatar. The Giraldo/Benatar partnership continued to be an increasingly unstoppable force with Get Nervous, which featured yet another Grammy-winner, Shadows of the Night.

After their wedding in 1982, the pair released their biggest hit yet with the Grammy-winning “Love Is a Battlefield”, taken from the Live From Earth album, which featured Giraldo’s most innovative production to date, creating a thundering, rock ‘n’ roll soundscape out of what had started as a somber, acoustic demo.

They closed off the decade with 1989’s True Love – an ahead of its time, ultra-stylized recording for the contemporary market, inspired by the sound of the Count Basie Band – one of Giraldo’s piano-playing idols – and by the Big Joe Turner/Roomful of Blues record, 1984’s Blues Train.

Thus, Giraldo and Benatar took over radios, TVs, jukeboxes, turntables and car stereos around the world, throughout the 1980s and beyond, exciting fans and selling millions of copies of their twelve original albums, as well as two live records and an anthology.

Neil Giraldo was born in 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio. Eternally immersed in the Sicilian culture of their ancestry, parents Anthony and Angela bought Neil his first guitar at the age of six, in the hope that he and big sister Priscilla might serenade the family with songs from the old country. Neil’s Uncle Tim, who was only four years older, had different ideas, however, and introduced Neil to bands like The Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and all the other great guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll bands of the 1960s. It was a move that was to change Neil’s path forever.

Finding new and innovative ways to shadow path his way into songs, Giraldo formed a habit early on of, not just playing along with his favorite artists, but writing different parts for himself within those tracks. At the same time, the budding guitar wizard also became proficient on piano by playing along to Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis records, and played drums to Simon & Garfunkel albums to explore how different rhythms could change the complexion of the songs. These were habits and practices that would go on to give Benatar’s biggest hits – like “Love is a Battlefield” and “We Belong” – their truly unique identity.

Today, Giraldo’s career is as dynamic as ever, as he is in the process of completing two books – one an auto-biographical novel, one a coffee table book – as well performing in a new band project with Scott Kempner from the Del Lords/Dictators and Ron Young from Little Caesar. He is also further expanding his Bel Chiasso entertainment company, which develops a variety of television and film projects. In addition, he has also opened up his large vault of unreleased, unfinished songs and will be completing and releasing various new tracks with Benatar, as well as with other artists, in the coming months.

As their thirty-three-year anniversary approaches, Benatar and Giraldo still hit the road every summer, thrilling audiences just as they always have. Whether, it’s in support of the vocal, or a guitar solo, or jumping from piano to guitar and back again, Giraldo’s gift is knowing how to always up the power in a song, increase the excitement and keep himself and Benatar as creative as they’ve ever been.

DISCOGRAPHY:

• 1978  Rick Derringer GUITARS AND WOMEN (piano/guitar)
• 1979  Pat Benatar IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (arranger/guitar/keyboards/vocals)
• 1980  Pat Benatar CRIMES OF PASSION (arranger/guitar/keyboards/vocals)
• 1981  Pat Benatar PRECIOUS TIME (producer/arranger/guitar/keyboards/vocals)
• 1981  Rick Springfield “JESSIE’S GIRL”/”I’VE DONE EVERYTHING FOR YOU” (arranger/guitar)
• 1982  John Waite IGNITION (producer/guitar/keyboards)
• 1982 Pat Benatar GET NERVOUS (producer/arranger/guitar/keyboards/harmonica)
• 1982  Kenny Loggins “DONT FIGHT IT” (arranger /guitar)
• 1983  Pat Benatar LIVE FROM EARTH (producer/arranger/guitar/keyboards/drum/perc programing)
• 1984  Pat Benatar TROPICO (producer/arranger/guitar/keyboards/drum/perc programing)
• 1985  Pat Benatar SEVEN THE HARD WAY (producer/arranger/guitar/keyboards/drum/perc programing)
• 1986  The Del Lords WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME (producer)
• 1988 Pat Benatar WIDE AWAKE IN DREAMLAND (producer/arranger/guitar/keys/drum-perc programing)
• 1988  The Del Lords BASED ON A TRUE STORY (producer)
• 1989  Pat Benatar TRUE LOVE (producer/arranger/guitar)
• 1993 Pat Benatar GRAVITY’S RAINBOW (producer/arranger/guitar/keyboards/drum-perc programing
• 1997 Pat Benatar INAMORATA
• 2001 NAILED, original film score for the movie, starring Harvey Keitel (composer)
• 2001 Beth Hart “CALIFORNIA DREAMIN” (producer/arranger)
• 2003  Pat Benatar GO (producer/arranger/guitar/keyboards/vocal)
• 2004  SMILE, original film score for the movie, starring Linda Hamilton (composer)

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo Online
Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter

An Evening With drivin’ n cryin’ Live in Concert
includes a special screening of Scarred But Smarter

Tuesday, June 25 | 7:30pm
The Belcourt Theatre
Nashville, TN

Tickets On Sale:
Friday, May 10th at 10am at Belcourt.org and by phone at 615-846-3150.

Ticket Prices:
$20 (Plus applicable fees, if any)

Presented by NS2

Truth N Consequences. Life N Times. Drivin N Cryin. The story behind legendary Southern alternative rock band, drivin n cryin, as documented through the eyes of director Eric Von Haessler.

Director Eric Von Haessler falls in love with legendary Southern alternative rock band, drivin n cryin during their 25th Anniversary Tour. He then wonders, “why did it take me 25 years to discover this band and their incredibly deep catalog of albums?” and “why is this not one of the biggest bands in the world?” …and that led to even more questions…

Starring:
Kevn Kinney, Tim Nielsen, Mac Carter, Dave V. Johnson, Paul Lenz, Jeff Sullivan, Buren Fowler, and many, many more…

I Played Guitar on a Chain Gang
or, things you might want to know about my fuckin’ rock band

by kevn kinney

“We are a band that’s like your record collection.”

–That’s a quote from me in one of the first articles ever written about drivin’ n’ cryin’ back in the Eighties.

We released our first album Scarred But Smarter in 1986 on 688 Records. 688 was the center of the underground Atlanta rock scene in the 1980′s. Bands as diverse as Hüsker Dü, Rank and File, Lords of the New Church, The Residents and a week-long stint by Iggy Pop graced the hallowed walls of that now-defunct night club. If you drive down Spring Street today, there’s just a doc-in-a-box where the punk rock club used to be.

I met Tim Nielsen just after I moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee. One night I was playing in a pickup band with Die Kreuzen, my good friends from back home (Check out their Touch and Go records produced by Butch Vig). They were staying on my floor, just passing through on tour. We played a lot of shows together a couple of years back when I was in a punk band called The Prosecutors, so we figured what the fuck? Let’s see what happens.

Tim was there that night. He played in the big 688 band, The Nightporters, and was a rock star in Atlanta, especially after The Nightporters opened for The Clash at the Fox Theatre. Tim pulled me aside after the show and asked me if I lived down here. I told him that I had just moved to town and was working at the sewage plant, retired from the music world for good at age 24.

Tim stopped by my apartment one afternoon a couple of weeks later and TOLD me he was gonna find me a band to be in. My music was on the folk side of Dylan at the time but I decided I was up to playing just for the fun of it. He got me practicing with a few guys but it wasn’t really happening, so eventually he decided we’d just start our own damn band.

Tim quit The Nightporters and stole their drummer and we played our first Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ show at 688 in October 1985. A little over a year later, I’m sitting in my living room with an album, a real, freakin’ 12-inch vinyl LP record called Scarred But Smarter.

I wanted to be in a band that would be unafraid of changing genres, mostly because I’m easily distracted and change subjects mid-sentence. “Needs help with self control,” read every report card after fifth grade…smartass…underground comic-readin’ journalistic wannabe…too lazy to write a complete story…I settled on the song format…it’s perfect…a short poem…with its own soundtrack. At 24, I wrote:

“Nobody said it would be fair
They warned you before you went out there
There’s always a chance to get restarted
To a new world, new life
Scarred but smarter”

At that time, I had restarted myself. I come from an industrial land of things that used to be: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, class of 79…a town, back then, that encouraged you to leave high school, get a job in a factory, get injured and then get workers compensation while picking up a side job at a liquor store or record shop where you got paid under the table.

Great American Bubble Factory is the perfect crescendo to a long twenty-plus year career of Drivin’ N’ Cryin’. I think we’ve found the true essence of what we started to build back in1985. It’s the truth as we see it set to a soundtrack fueled by music we love, everyone from The Ramones, The Clash, The Seeds, Iggy, Dylan, Patti Smith Group, R.E.M., Thin Lizzy, The Rolling Stones. You get the point.

The song title for “(Whatever Happened to the) Great American Bubble Factory?” hit me one afternoon when I was at the dollar store getting some bubbles for the neighborhood kids. As I was standing in line, I looked down at the “made in” label and noticed that those bubbles were made in China….China!! That’s a long way for a bottle of freakin’ soap to travel. Come on, maybe we can’t make TVs or refrigerators or cars here anymore, but bubbles?

In my world, the first step to a renewed America and our deliverance from an unspeakable disrespect of the American workforce would be the opening of THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE FACTORY. They would come from miles around to see the Willie Wonka of the New Deal….There’s hope again!!! If you can make it here, why don’t you make it here…

We started demos for this record back in 2001 on September 10th. The next day the world was upside down and traitors were everywhere, underneath every coffee cup. Joe McCarthy was back and I just didn’t feel like I was ready to tell the story of the blue-collared optimist…

“She said, ‘Son, you’re dreamin’
Well, ma, if I’m dreamin’
Just don’t you wake me”

This record weaves in and out of the “Midwestern Blues” to the Flannery O’Connor South of “This Town” to the industrial grind of “Detroit City” to the optimistic anthem (and Dictators cover!!) “I Stand Tall” to the genuine pining for home in “I See Georgia.”

I want you settled in, riled up, loaded for bear and somewhere out there on the road in search of the great American dream….

Did you know…

Drivin’ N’ Cryin’s Whisper Tames the Lion was the lowest debut in the Billboard Top 200 albums chart the same week that Dark Side of the Moon fell off that chart for the first time since its release.

Did you know…

Minneapolis 60s garage band band The Trashmen (“Surfin’ Bird”) had Tim’s Uncle Gary as a member. They used to practice in his grandmother’s basement.

Did you know…

Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ is the only band to share a stage with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sonic Youth AND Neil Young in the same twelve-month period.

Did you know…

The Violent Femmes’ Brian Ritchie was Kevn’s high school locker partner. They would go to his house after school and Kevn would watch Brian play guitar before they both watched 8mm porn films.

Did you know…

Peter Buck produced Kevn’s first solo folk record MacDougal Blues, which is coming up on its twentieth anniversary. Peter also road-managed and played on the MacDougal tour (which featured our great, late friend Nikki Sudden) on his break from R.E.M.’s Green tour!!…

Did you know…

DNC’s lead guitar player Sadler Vaden was voted Charleston’s Best Guitarist 2011. Other Sadler highlights include playing the White House with The Blue Dogs in 2006 and appearing in the Ben Stiller/Robert Downey Jr. movie ‘Tropic Thunder.’

did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….did you know….

Drivin’ N’ Cryin’:
Kevn Kinney: guitar & vocals
Tim Nielsen: bass, mandolin & backing vocals
Dave V. Johnson: drums, percussion & backing vocals
Sadler Vaden: guitar

Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ online:
Website | Facebook | Scarred But Smarter

Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band
Special Guests Milk Carton Kids

Thursday, June 27 | 8pm
The Cannery Ballroom
Nashville, TN

Tickets On Sale:
10am at April 19th at MercyLounge.com and by phone at 866-777-8932.
There is an eight ticket limit per purchase.

Ticket Prices:
$25

Presented by NS2

“…he sets out to carry a world of ideas on a few basic chords….there is no limit to the depth and ambition of his songs.” – The New York Times

“How refreshing and inspiring it is to encounter a young artist whose achievements match his ambitions.” — Washington Post

“If you love music and have a device on which to play it, you should listen to Josh Ritter…” —Mary-Louise Parker in Esquire

“…this is the most exuberant outburst of imagery since Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”—Stephen King naming The Animal Years his #1 album of 2006 in Entertainment Weekly

“The 10 Most Exciting Artists Now”—Entertainment Weekly

“100 Best Living Songwriters”—Paste Magazine

Josh Ritter is from Moscow, Idaho. The son of two neuroscientists, he was on his way to follow in their footsteps when he discovered Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” in high school. He has since released five studio albums and has been recently named one of the 100 greatest living songwriters by Paste Magazine, alongside Dylan, Springsteen, and Neil Young. Joan Baez has covered one of his songs; Stephen King named one of Ritter’s albums the best of recent years and David Letterman has requested him twice, so far.

Ritter’s constant touring has established a robust, fanatical base both in the US and overseas (particularly Ireland and the UK). He and his band can fill theaters throughout the USA, in many major markets: DC and San Francisco but also in smaller cities as diverse as Spokane, WA and Northampton, MA. Ritter and band have performed with the New York Pops and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and many critically acclaimed artists have requested Ritter to share stages. This list includes Swell Season, Ray Lamontagne, and John Prine. His fans have a special, unique bond with Ritter that goes beyond that of other singer-songwriters; he is always there at the merch desk after shows, hugging fans and signing records.

Over the course of his young career Ritter has established longtime relationships with media outlets such as NPR, Paste, the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and Amazon.com, as well as regional radio stalwarts such as WFUV and WXPN and a wide-swath of progressive blogs and websites. Ritter has blogged for the Huffington Post while on tour.

His new album, So Runs the World Away, is ambitious and literary. It will be released this spring by Pytheas Recordings, a label recently started by Ritter and his longtime publicity partner, Sacks & Co., with Redeye Distribution.

Over the clatter of piano and strum of an electric guitar that opens his fourth studio album, Josh Ritter leaps into rapid-fire lyrics that reference Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and Florence Nightingale, all of whom seem to be stuck together in the belly of a whale. As the follow-up to 2006’s critically-acclaimed album The Animal Years, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter is his most adventurous, fresh, and freewheeling work to date.

Ritter is clearly having fun—and you will, too—but there is a method to his madness. Those legendary heroines he name-checks were each responding to an inner voice that pushed them toward some extraordinary mission, one both noble and a little foolhardy. “Those voices can be pretty confusing,” he says, “but there is no doubt that if you follow your two a.m. voices you’ll end up someplace fairly extraordinary.” And Ritter did follow those late night voices.

While The Animal Years was a meticulously crafted and stately paean, for Conquests the artist radically revamped his working methods and his sound. “I needed to be somebody different,” the singer says. “The air of gravitas around me was getting oppressive. For some reason it seemed like there was a premium being placed on earnestness and that can be pretty stifling. There was a lot of talk about true love and righteous indignation. I wanted to write about gunslingers and missile silos.” But it didn’t start like that. “I was tired of writing with the guitar,” says Ritter, who began writing The Historical Conquests by committing to tape wordless tunes and melodic fragments, certain that the lyrics and thematic ideas, whatever shape they might take, would soon follow.

Setting aside the guitar, he began writing on an upright piano some family friends had given him—an instrument, he admits, he didn’t actually know how to play. The result is an often raucous, occasionally dizzying affair, with pounding keyboards, strings, horns, and his new producer and long-time collaborator Sam Kassirer, leading the charge. About the recording conditions in the Maine farmhouse where the record was made, Ritter enthuses, “You should have seen it up there. It was January and twenty below. We had horns in the attic, we had strings in the barn, we had a gaggle of people shooting targets with bb guns in the woods. It was a full house and everyone was there to throw themselves at the music. There was no holding back.”

As he says in the drum and Steinway-driven “Rumors,”
My orchestra is gigantic.
This thing could sink the Titanic
And the string section’s screaming
Like horses in a barn burning up.

Giving the project a literal go-for-broke feel was the fact that his then-label, V2 America, had just fired the entire staff. “They went under the night we performed on Letterman!,” laughs the songwriter. “It seemed me and my band were pretty much storming the heights of irony that day.” The situation emboldened the self-reliant artist; after all, Ritter had launched his career DIY-fashion with his self-titled 1999 debut and released its 2001 follow-up, The Golden Age of Radio, on his own, before finally signing with an indie label. When he rushed back into the studio in early ’07, after another year of worldwide touring, it was on his own timetable. “One thing I’ve realized is that at the end of the day, you’re on your own. There isn’t a song, a record or a record label that can teach you how to swim or how to keep your head above water,” Ritter says. “You have to be the one getting out of the boat and taking your chances every day. In what you write and in how you play. If not…”

The artistic leaps Josh Ritter displays on Conquests are not without their stepping-stones, however. On a conceptual level, Paul McCartney’s Ram served as an ever-present reminder to enjoy the process of writing. Ritter was attracted to the free-spirited quality of the solo album McCartney made at his own farmhouse—amidst the Beatles’ tumultuous breakup: “It sounded like he had something to prove, but also like he didn’t really care. In terms of my favorite records, Ram is more about the philosophy. If this guy can do this after what he came through, then, okay, maybe I could try something like this too. It really loosened me up.”

Stepping farther back, he sites Buddy Holly’s apocryphal The Apartment Tapes as a major influence. “A friend passed me Buddy Holly’s Apartment Tapes. The tapes are plain and genius. Buddy sang ‘Learning the Game’ and ‘That’s What they Say’ in his apartment in New York City and you can hear his wife bumping around in the kitchen and the whole thing feels clear but not simple. Those recordings feel like a Raymond Carver story. I listen to him and remember that it doesn’t have to be all nine-minute songs. That guy can get more across in a couplet than some people are lucky to learn in their whole life.” With a new approach, a new producer and a new location, Ritter got underway in earnest. “I shaped the songs and recorded a basic shell with Sam and then asked my bassist Zack Hickman and my new drummer Liam Hurley to come on up.”

Skeleton tracks in hand, Ritter collaborated further with his band mates and a group of assorted musician friends he dubbed The Great North Sound Society Orchestra, who were clearly up for trying anything. The results speak for themselves. The upbeat, vintage “Right Moves,” the Liberty Valance standoff “Mind’s Eye,” the pre-(and possibly post-) apocalyptic love song “The Temptation of Adam” and the Robert Altman era “Next to the Last” combine to hold a kind of punk-meets-Peckinpah fiesta. Says Ritter in summary, “On my last disc, The Animal Years, I went pretty deep inside the gears of what I do. I knew where the words fit and how the songs dovetailed with each other.” He adds, however, “If I hadn’t approached the writing that record on such a clockmaker’s level, I may not have decided to step back and try shooting the clock to pieces on Historical Conquests. I’m glad we did though,” he adds. “I wanted to blow something up.” Given the new lyrical and musical trails that he is blazing, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter proves that one can still cross any number of Rubicons all the while not taking themselves too seriously. Historic indeed.

Josh Ritter Online
Website | Facebook | YouTube | MySpace

The Milk Carton Kids

“Gorgeous contemporary folk” – NPR 

“A sweetly dazzling variation on close-harmony vocals, part Simon and Garfunkel and part Everly Brothers, with occasional acoustic prestidigitation” – The New York Times 

While The Milk Carton Kids’ most obvious frame of musical reference is the classic folk sound of twin acoustic guitars and close harmonies, the band both expand and contradict that rich legacy. The music strikes listeners immediately with its sweet, bluegrass-inflected simplicity, but underneath snake Pattengale’s sinuous modal guitar lines, sounding for all the world like a jazzified Bert Jansch dropped in to jam with the Everly Brothers. Their harmonies, too, while recalling classic brother duos from the Louvins to the Everlys, achieve a richness that blends into a vivid singularity. Their new album, The Ash & Clay will be released 3/26 on Anti Records.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

Fall Out Boy

Sunday, June 30 | 7:30pm
Ryman Auditorium
Nashville, TN

Tickets On Sale:
This show is SOLD OUT.

Official Concert Facebook Group:
Join here.

Presented by NS2.

Multi-platinum Grammy-nominated Island Records group Fall Out Boy finally puts an end to years of rumors and speculation, with the official announcement today from their hometown of Chicago that the band has returned and will globally launch their new single – “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)“- today at iTunes.  They commemorated the occasion at the site of the original Comiskey Park, the location of Disco Demolition Night in 1979, as they were burning albums.

“My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)” is the first single from Fall Out Boy’s new album, SAVE ROCK AND ROLL, which will be released globally on May 6^th / 7^th, 2013, the 10th anniversary of Fall Out Boy’s first full length studio album in 2003, Take This To Your Grave. Pre-orders for the album are at www.falloutboy.com. In conjunction with today’s news, Fall Out Boy will play three intimate one-night-only club dates for their fans this week, starting tonight in Chicago (Subterranean), tomorrow night in New York City (Webster Hall Studio), and Los Angeles (Roxy) on Thursday night (February 7th).  The SAVE ROCK AND ROLL U.S. tour kicks off May 14 in Milwaukee, WI at the Rave (tour dates to follow). Tickets will go on sale February 8^th and 9^th at Ticketmaster.

Statement from Fall Out Boy:

“When we were kids the only thing that got us through most days was music. It’s why we started Fall Out Boy in the first place. This isn’t a reunion because we never broke up. We needed to plug back in and make some music that matters to us.

The future of Fall Out Boy starts now.

Save Rock And Roll…”

Pete, Patrick, Andy and Joe

SAVE ROCK AND ROLL is Fall Out Boy’s fifth studio album, and is their first new studio album since Folie Á Deux in December 2008.

Hailing from the Chicago, Fall Out Boy – Patrick Stump (vocals/guitar), Pete Wentz (bass), Joe Trohman (guitar), and Andy Hurley (drums) – have appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone, Spin, Blender, and Alternative Press, among others.  They have performed on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, CBS’s The Late Show with David Letterman, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, and many more.  In addition to their Grammy nod, they have won three MTV Video Music Awards.

Fall Out Boy Online
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Friday, July 12 | 7:30pm
Charter Amphitheater
at Simpsonville’s Heritage Park
Simpsonville, SC

Tickets On Sale Now: at Ticketmaster.com, by phone at 800-745-3000, at all Ticketmaster outlets, and at the Bridgestone Arena Box Office.
(purchase limit of eight tickets)

Ticket Prices:
$54.50 | $39.50
(additional fees may apply)

Official Facebook Concert Group:
Join here.

Presented by
NS2 | Frank Productions | C3 |  AEG

The Black Keys

“…tremendous, hook-laden, all-killer-no-filler, by some distance the most powerful, compelling rock album of the year.” —Independent, *****

“This is both a supremely confident record and a ridiculously enjoyable one. A decade into their career The Black Keys have not only outlasted their more celebrated peers but outstripped their own past achievements. El Camino feels like the dawn of greatness.”—Uncut

The Black Keys will embark on the first leg of their U.S. tour this March, with shows in arenas such as New York’s Madison Square Garden, Boston’s TD Garden, and Chicago’s United Center. The shows are in support of their new album, El Camino, due out December 6 on Nonesuch Records. In advance of the release, five tracks from the record are currently streaming on the band’s website which has the album available for preorder. El Camino can also be preordered at, Nonesuch, and iTunes, with an instant download of the single “Lonely Boy” included.

Concert ticket and album packages are available at the band’s site. Additionally, The Black Keys are teaming up with Tickets-for-Charity to offer fans access to some of the best seats in the house. Proceeds will benefit Community Support Services in Akron, OH and W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville, TN.

In anticipation of the release, the duo will join Steve Buscemi on tomorrow’s episode of Saturday Night Live. This is the band’s second time this year as musical guests on the show, a “rare distinction,” says Rolling Stone. Other television appearances next week include The Colbert Report on December 6 and the Late Show with David Letterman on December 7. Moreover, the band is being featured on several MTV programs, including the week-long series Road to Release: The Black Keys, an interview with Matt Pinfield on MTV2’s 120 Minutes, and a live stream of their album release show at New York’s Webster Hall on December 5 exclusively on MTV Hive.

Produced by Danger Mouse and The Black Keys, El Camino was recorded in the band’s new hometown of Nashville during the spring of 2011. In advance of the release, the album’s first single, “Lonely Boy,” was released October 26, to acclaim from fans and press; the song has been climbing the radio charts rapidly and is rising toward #1 on the Alternative and AAA charts. Additionally, the accompanying video has been viewed nearly three million times on YouTube.

Describing the sound of the album, drummer Patrick Carney tells Rolling Stone, “Every record, we figure out the mood and stick with that. With Brothers, we were listening to a lot of hip-hop and old R&B and drawing from that. This is the first record we’ve made where it’s all rock & roll.” And in an interview with Spin Magazine Auerbach says, “I’ve never been into guitar solos. I really like when every instrument in the band is a rhythm instrument. This record has a lot of that going on—guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards all working together as a rhythm instrument. But unlike Brothers, which has more of these slower songs with an open feeling, [the new LP] is definitely fast.”

The Black Keys online
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The Flaming Lips

Even within the eclectic world of alternative rock, few bands were so brave, so frequently brilliant, and so deliciously weird as the Flaming Lips. From their beginnings as Oklahoma weirdos to their mid-’90s pop culture breakthrough to their status as one of the most respected groups of the 2000s, the Lips rode one of the more surreal and haphazard career trajectories in pop music. An acid-bubblegum band with as much affinity for sweet melodies as blistering noise assaults, their off-kilter sound, uncommon emotional depth, and bizarre history (packed with tales of self-immolating fans and the like) firmly established them as true originals.

The Flaming Lips formed in Oklahoma City in 1983, when founder and guitarist Wayne Coyne allegedly stole a collection of musical instruments from an area church hall and enlisted his vocalist-brother Mark and bassist Michael Ivins to start a band. Giving themselves the nonsensical name the Flaming Lips (its origin variously attributed to a porn film, an obscure drug reference, or a dream in which a fiery Virgin Mary plants a kiss on Wayne in the back seat of his car), the band made its live debut at a local transvestite club. After progressing through an endless string of drummers, they recruited percussionist Richard English and recorded their self-titled debut, issued on green vinyl on their own Lovely Sorts of Death label in 1985.

When Mark Coyne soon departed to get married, Wayne assumed full control of the group; in addition to remaining its lead guitarist, he also became the primary singer and songwriter. Continuing on as a trio, the Lips released 1986′s Hear It Is, followed a year later by Oh My Gawd!!!…The Flaming Lips. While touring in support of the Butthole Surfers, they played Buffalo, NY, where they were befriended by concert promoter Jonathan Donahue; after a jam session with Donahue’s nascent band Mercury Rev, he and Coyne became close friends, and Donahue eventually signed on as the group’s sound technician.

After recording 1988′s difficult Telepathic Surgery, English exited, reducing the Lips to the core duo of Coyne and Ivins; after adding drummer Nathan Roberts, Donahue adopted the name Dingus and became a full-time member in time to cut 1990′s stellar In a Priest Driven Ambulance while simultaneously recording the brilliant Mercury Rev debut, Yerself Is Steam. Following a series of hopeful phone calls to Warner Bros., the company signed the band in 1991, and in 1992 their oft-delayed major-label debut, Hit to Death in the Future Head, appeared to little commercial notice. Donahue soon exited to focus his full energies on Mercury Rev, followed by the departure of Roberts.

With new guitarist Ronald Jones and drummer Steven Drozd, the group cut 1993′s sublime Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, which they supported by playing the second stage at Lollapalooza and touring the nation in a Ryder truck. Initially, the album stiffed; however, nearly a year after its initial release, the single “She Don’t Use Jelly” became a grassroots hit, and against all odds, the Flaming Lips found themselves on the Top 40 charts. They took full advantage of their requisite 15 minutes of fame, appearing everywhere from MTV’s annual Spring Break broadcast to an arena tour in support of Candlebox to a memorable, surreal, lip-synced performance on the teen soap opera Beverly Hills 90210, where supporting character Steve Sanders (portrayed by actor Ian Ziering) uttered the immortal words, “You know, I’ve never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house!”

After the 1994 release of a limited-edition sampler of odds and ends titled Providing Needles for Your Balloons, the Lips returned in 1995 with Clouds Taste Metallic, a strikingly mature and diverse collection highlighted by the singles “Bad Days” (also heard in the film Batman Forever), “This Here Giraffe,” and “Brainville.” Despite the inclusion of the remarkably melodic “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles,” “Christmas at the Zoo” (rumored to be under consideration for inclusion on an upcoming John Tesh holiday record), and the epic “Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World,” the album nonetheless failed to live up to the commercial success of Transmissions, and the band was once again relegated to cult status.

In 1996, the Lips’ world went haywire; first, Jones disappeared to undertake a spiritual odyssey from which he did not return, then Drozd’s hand was almost needlessly amputated after he was bitten by a spider. At about the same time, Ivins was the victim of a bizarre hit-and-run accident after a wheel came off of another vehicle and slammed into his car, trapping him inside. Ironically, Coyne was having car problems of his own when rumors of his latest sonic foray — conducting an orchestra of 40 automobiles, all with their tape decks playing specially composed music at the same time — prompted fan discussion of his possible psychological collapse. “I would try to tell people what I was doing and found that I couldn’t explain it very well,” Coyne later remarked about the project, dubbed the Parking Lot Experiment. “Plus, I had a sore on the side of my tongue for a week and it made me talk kind of weird. I’m sure they thought I was retarded.”

By the following year, the Flaming Lips (who continued as a trio, opting not to attempt to replace Jones) were back in the studio, recording an album that, according to Coyne, would be “so different and exciting it will either make us millionaires or break us” — in short, 1997′s Zaireeka, a breathtaking and wildly experimental set of four discs designed to be played simultaneously. A previously unreleased track, “Hot Day,” also appeared earlier that year on the soundtrack to Richard Linklater’s film SubUrbia. A Collection of Songs Representing an Enthusiasm for Recording…by Amateurs, a retrospective of their Restless label material, followed in 1998, and a year later, the Lips returned with a breathtaking new studio effort, The Soft Bulletin.

After a three-year absence from the shelves, 2002 brought several new releases, including the new record Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and a two-volume retrospective of the Restless years. Yoshimi won the group even more popular and critical acclaim than The Soft Bulletin, which the group maximized by spending half of 2002 appearing with Beck on his Sea Change tour as both his opening act and backing band. The Lips kept busy over the next two years by touring in support of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and working on their movie Christmas on Mars. They returned to the studio in 2004 and spent much of 2005 recording; that year, the Flaming Lips documentary, The Fearless Freaks, and their VOID video collection were both released, whetting fans’ appetites for the band’s 2006 album, At War with the Mystics.

In 2007, the Flaming Lips were nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Album for Mystics and won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album. One year later, the band’s long-awaited, seven-years-in-the-making film Christmas on Mars made its debut at the Sasquatch Festival in George, WA; that fall, the movie and its soundtrack were released as a CD/DVD set. During 2007 and 2008, the Lips began working on the follow-up to At War with the Mystics, taking a looser, more experimental approach than they had in years. The results were released as Embryonic in fall 2009, followed by the band’s quirky remake of the Pink Floyd classic Dark Side of the Moon. The Flaming Lips worked with several different artists on the latter album, which was billed as The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing the Dark Side of the Moon. The band continued to shy away from full-length releases for the next couple years, opting instead to work with a number of collaborators on various, limited edition EPs. Working with artists like Neon Indian, Prefuse 73, and Lightning Bolt, the Lips released tracks over the next couple of years in various, non-traditional formats incliding USB keys embedded in gummy skulls, limited edition vinyl, and candy fetuses. Their series of team-ups came to a head in 2012 when the band released The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, which collected songs from their previous collaborations, as well as new material recorded with artists like Keha, Bon Iver, and Erykah Badu.

The Flaming Lips Online
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