Search Results for: folk

Los Angeles – Punk trio Green Day, up for six prizes at the Grammy Awards on Sunday will launch a five-week North American arena tour on April 15, the group’s Reprise Records label said. The 27-date trek, heavy on college towns, begins in Coral Gables, Fla. at the University of Miami’s Convocation Center, and wraps May 20 at the Pengrowth Saddledome in Calgary. Green Day will perform during the Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and will then play New Zealand, Australia and Japan in March. Their Grammy nominations include album of the year and rock album… Read more »

Hoboken, N.J. – The brooding kid hailed as rock’s next musical genius slouches next to the bar at a tiny, smoky club. No one notices. Not even this crowd of indie music fans recognizes Conor Oberst, the 24-year-old sensation behind Bright Eyes who’s been pegged as this generation’s Bob Dylan, putting words and melody behind those tormented emotions the rest of us struggle to describe. He pops up on stage to join his friends, Yo La Tengo, for their encore. Then he slides back into the crowd, just another skinny guy in jeans and a black hoodie. But the days… Read more »

Los Angeles – Out of the blue comes an e-mail from my brother, Miles: “All confirmed. Rehearsals are next Friday, and your show with Andy Summers and Incubus at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas will be on Sunday.” Whaaaat? I dimly remember Miles mentioning something about this radio concert, months ago. At the time I said, “Wow, cool,” and then forgot about it. So I’m thinking about it now, a little panicked, and figure, what the heck? Of course, I had better dig out my drums and try to get some life into my wrists. I remember too vividly getting… Read more »

Los Angeles – Epitaph Records built its foundation on punk rock. But just before last year’s presidential election, the label’s most biting political commentary arrived courtesy of Sage Francis, a 27-year-old rapper from Providence, R.I. The song “Slow Down Gandhi” sarcastically rips into liberals and conservatives alike, casting a cynical eye at warmongers and the “cool kids” who “were rocking votes.” With a perfectly articulated delivery that recalls Chuck D, Francis builds each verse with a mixture of activism, paranoia and humor. “If they could sell sanity in a bottle, they would be charging for compressed air,” he quips. Epitaph… Read more »

Honda Civic Tour dates, according to the tour’s organizers: – With Phantom Planet, the Thrills and the Donnas as their co-pilots, Maroon 5 will hit the road for two months on the fifth annual 2005 Honda Civic Tour. Maroon 5 will headline the trek, which begins March 11 in Universal City, California. “This is the first headlining U.S. tour we’ve done in a long time,” bassist Mickey Madden said Thursday at a press conference in West Hollywood, California, announcing the outing. “We’re playing some of the biggest places we’ve ever played, which is very exciting. And we’re taking out some… Read more »

To record what is shaping up to be their heaviest album yet, P.O.D. have spent the past three months living and brainstorming in the former Palm Springs, California, home of sunny ’60s folk-rock quartet the Mamas and the Papas. The area, which now mostly houses retired couples, would probably rather have had the “California Dreamin’ ” singers as neighbors than the dreadlock-waving, guitar-thrashing writers of “Boom” and “Youth of the Nation,” but the San Diego rockers were gracious residents. “We had to go to all the neighbors’ houses and tell them that we were a rock and roll band and… Read more »

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A nightclub shooting that left four people dead, including a heavy-metal guitarist, has concert bookers and bar managers wondering whether fans will grumble less the next time they’re patted down or directed through a metal detector. Scott Stienecker, for one, thinks it will. “It’ll be a whole different feeling, I bet.” Stienecker’s PromoWest Productions owns two Columbus concert halls larger than the Alrosa Villa, where 25-year-old Nathan Gale gunned down “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott and three others before a police officer shot him to death. Caroline O’Toole, though, and many of her fellow managers doubt Wednesday’s violence will… Read more »

For someone who claims he never wanted to be on stage, Badly Drawn Boy has a hard time getting off of one. Damon Gough’s alter ego displayed his stamina with a marathon set that both delighted and exhausted a sold-out Toronto crowd. The singer-songwriter set the tone for the evening right off the top, claiming that it was “good to be back in America.” From that point on, his curious mix of affability, crustiness and wit had the audience hanging on every sung or spoken word. And there were plenty of both in the nearly three-hour performance. Backed by a… Read more »

Seattle – Fans of Bob Dylan, the songwriter who has been called the conscience of the 1960s generation, will be able to see items from the artist’s early career and listen to rare recordings at an exhibit opening in Seattle this weekend. Dylan’s handwritten lyrics for “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” as well a 24-minute recording of Dylan’s first concert in New York, which was never commercially released, are featured in “Bob Dylan’s American Journey 1956-1966” at the Experience Music Project. The collection is the first comprehensive exhibit of Dylan’s work, according to Jasen Emmons, the… Read more »

For fans of the Warped Tour, the winter months are usually seen as the off-season, a time to buff those Doc Martens or experiment with some Manic Panic variants. But starting in February, the young and spiky will have new reason to rejoice: the Taste of Chaos Tour. Warped founder Kevin Lyman is the mastermind behind the tour, and he’s confirmed both the lineup and the dates for the inaugural jaunt. As previously reported, the Used are locked in to headline, but the rest of the bill has been confirmed, and it’s a harder-edged lineup than Warped fans might be… Read more »