Why name a songbird Tweet? It’s a simple question, but Charlene Keys, a.k.a. Tweet, can’t remember exactly how the nickname came about.
“Maybe I had a big head like the Tweety Bird character,” she joked recently. “I’ve been Tweet since I was a little girl. It’s been a nickname that everybody in my family wants to get credit for. ‘I named her that. No, I named her that.’ ”
The Rochester, New York, native does know how she can justify naming her album Southern Hummingbird, despite hailing from the North. That ties back to her kinfolk as well.
“I’m the only person in my family that was born in New York,” she explained. “Everybody else is from the South but me. Every summer I go to the South. Everybody thinks I’m Southern because I talk kind of country. My roots are from the South. Why not represent both?”
Last month Tweet was mulling tour offers from Usher, Musiq and Glenn Lewis, and now she’s decided to go with the latter. Her co-headlining tour with Lewis will kick off May 12 in Kansas City, Missouri, hitting mostly theaters.
Tweet/Glenn Lewis Tour Dates, According Elektra Records:
- 5/12 – Kansas City, MO – Starlight Theater
- 5/21 – Boston, MA – Avalon
- 5/23 – Washington, DC – Nation
- 5/24 – Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory
- 5/26 – New York, NY – B.B. King’s Blues Club
- 5/31 – Royal Oak, MI – Royal Oak Music Theatre
- 6/1 – Milwaukee, WI – The Rave
- 6/2 – St. Louis, MO – The Pageant
- 6/4 – Denver, CO – Gothic Theater
- 6/6 – San Diego, CA – 4th & B
- 6/7 – Las Vegas, NV – The Joint
- 6/9 – San Francisco, CA – Fillmore
- 6/11 – West Hollywood, CA – House of Blues
- 6/12 – West Hollywood, CA – House of Blues
- 6/13 – Phoenix, AZ – Club Rio
- 6/15 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
- 6/16 – Houston, TX – Verizon Wireless Theater
- 6/17 – New Orleans, LA – House of Blues
- 6/19 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues
- 6/20 – Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle
- 6/21 – Norfolk, VA – The Boathouse
- 6/22 – Baltimore, MD – Camden Yard
- 6/27 – Chicago, IL – House of Blues
- 6/28 – Cincinnati, OH – Bogart’s