Archive for April, 2011

April 30th, 2011 News, Tour Dates No Comments »

Empires Advance to Next Round of Rolling Stone’s “Choose The Cover” Contest

Empires

With an overwhelming response from both fans and critics, Chicago four-piece Empires have advanced to the next round of Rolling Stone Magazine’s “Choose The Cover” contest. What started with thousands of musicians, has now been narrowed down to the final four. Known for an explosive live show, Empires will embark on a national headlining tour beginning June 15th and play a hometown show on May 21st. Tour dates below.

Driven by insightful lyrics and an exciting balance of swagger, melody and an explosion of guitars, Empires is catching the attention of many. Along with MTV, Alternative Press and more, The Chicago Tribune praises Empires as “refreshingly unpredictable” and AOL Spinner applauds the band’s “explosive Gaslight Anthem-grade stadium rockers.” Rolling Stone raves “a big, multi-faceted, tower of power” and “inspired by the independent spirit of 90s grunge, Empires’ music takes the urgency and emotion of that era and reboots it for a new generation.”

Since their formation, Empires has taken full advantage of the Internet and online communities as a means for getting the word out about their music. As with all of their songs, which are entirely written, engineered and produced by the band leaving them totally free from creative restraints, Empires has allowed kids to download their music for free on their official website www.weareempires.com. Through an organic word-of-mouth and a true love of these songs, the band’s debut album “Howl” is currently over 70,000 album downloads, and counting.

Check out news songs “Night Is Young,” “Hard Times” and “Hells Heroes” at http://www.rollingstone.com/choosethecover/artists/empires

By rating Empires five stars on the link above, you can help the band become the first unsigned band to land the cover of Rolling Stone! Voting for round three ends Friday, May 13th.

Empires Tour Dates

May 21st – Beat Kitchen – Chicago, IL
June 15th – Frankie’s – Toledo, OH
June 17th – The Studio @ Webster Hall – New York, NY
June 18th – The Fire – Philadelphia, PA
June 20th – Vibe Lounge – Rockville Centre, NY
June 21st – Smiling Moose – Pittsburgh, PA
June 22nd – Mac’s Bar – East Lansing, MI
June 23rd – Musica – Akron, OH
June 24th – The Strutt – Kalamazoo, MI


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April 29th, 2011 News No Comments »

Jack Conte From Pomplamoose Covers The Super Mario Bros. Theme Song

Jack Conte, one-half of San Francisco-based music duo Pomplamoose, has released the video of himself covering the famous Super Mario Bros. theme song. In the video, Jack uses drums and synthesized keyboard sounds along with Pomplamoose’s characteristic spliced-up video style to create a video full of nostalgia and bursting with fun. Jack’s rendition of the song even features keyboard lines that mimic well-known sounds from the game, including Mario’s “Power Up” and the plinking of gold coins.


Trek Wars by BustedTees

April 29th, 2011 Tour Dates No Comments »

Big Head Todd and The Monsters Announce Tour Dates

Longtime Colorado favorites, Big Head Todd and The Monsters, have mapped out their summer tour plans. In addition to a handful of theatres in the midwest, the band headlines their annual Red Rocks Amphitheatre gig on June 11, where Guster will be on hand to open the show. The band also returns to Chicago’s famed Ravinia Festival and to the idyllic Colorado mountain town of Telluride for the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, later this summer. The complete list of summer tour dates is listed below.

Earlier this year, in celebration of influential bluesman Robert Johnson (who would be celebrating his 100 birthday on May 8, 2011), Big Head Todd and The Monsters assembled the Big Head Blues Club. The ad-hoc collaboration featuring Big Head Todd and The Monsters and special guests B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin, Honeyboy Edwards, Charlie Musselwhite, Ruthie Foster, Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm toured earlier this year and recently released a studio recording of the project, titled 100 Years of Robert Johnson.

Big Head Todd frontman Todd Park Mohr will be at the 32nd Annual Blues Music Awards on May 5th at the Cook Convention Center in Memphis, Tennessee. Todd will lead a Robert Johnson tribute. This year’s event also features performances by honorees Buddy Guy, Denise LaSalle and John Hammond, among others. Visit www.blues.org for more information.

Big Head Todd and The Monsters Summer Tour Dates
April 29 – The Windjammer – Isle of Palms, SC
May 22 – Doheny Blues Festival – Dana Point, CA
June 2 – Cotillion Ballroom – Wichita, KS
June 3 – Fantle Memorial Park – Yankton, SD
June 4 – Crossroads – Kansas City, MO
June 9 – Simon Estes Amphitheater Des Moines IA
June 10 – Stir Cove – Council Bluffs, IA
June 11 – Red Rocks Amphitheatre – Morrison, CO
June 12 – Red Butte Garden – Salt Lake City, UT
June 14 – Knitting Factory Concert House – Reno, NV
June 16 – Mountain Winery – Saratoga, CA
June 17 – Uptown Theatre – Napa, CA
August 4 – Minnesota Zoo – Weesner Amphitheatre – Apple Valley, MN
August 5 – Mankato RibFest – Mankato, MN
August 7 – Nateva Music & Arts Festival – Oxford Fairgrounds – Oxford, ME
September 3 – Big Sky Resort – Big Sky, MT
September 6 – Wolf Trap – Vienna, VA
September 11 – Ravinia Festival – Highland Park, IL
September 17 – Telluride Blues & Brews Festival – Telluride, CO
October 23 – Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise – San Diego, CA


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April 28th, 2011 News No Comments »

Meredith Bragg Drops Nest on July 19th

Meredith Bragg

Virginia-based songwriter Meredith Bragg has announced the release of his forthcoming full-length album entitled, Nest. Out on July 19, this will be Meredith’s fourth release with The Kora Records. Previously supported by longtime backing band the Terminals the chamber-pop artist has been compared to the likes of Ben Gibbard and Elliott Smith.

On Nest, Meredith pulls from a stream of inspirations including John James Audubon (“Birds of North America”) and Renaissance architecture (“The Last Hours of Brunelleschi”), but his biggest influence was the recent birth of his daughter. The themes of parenthood (although initially unintended) are ever present throughout the album. Teaming up with long time collaborator and producer Chad Clark (Dismemberment Plan, Georgie James, Beauty Pill), Nest also finds Meredith extending his sonic palette from the self-restrained single guitar of his sophomore record Silver Sonya to a larger handful of musicians, instruments and digital experimentation. The result is his most engaging and expansive record to date.

Check out the first single, “Birds of North America” here


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April 28th, 2011 News, Tour Dates No Comments »

Jill Andrews Drops The Mirror on June 7th

Jill Andrews

Jill Andrews will head out on a month-long North American tour in direct support for acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician JD Souther. The tour kicks off June 12th in Carrboro, NC with stops along the way in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston (complete list of tour dates below).

Performing songs off her debut, The Mirror is set for release on indie label Thirty Tigers on June 7th, and will showcase Andrews’ beguiling voice and intimate lyrics.

Recorded with Scott Solter (Superchunk, The Crooked Jades) in North Carolina and Neilson Hubbard (Glen Phillips, Matthew Perryman Jones) in Nashville, The Mirror nudges Andrews’ folksy roots into an effortless, classic-pop sensibility and keen eye for human drama.

Much of the new album’s production cost was aided by fan contributions via Kickstarter. You can download the disc’s title track at jillandrews.com. A video is currently in the works for lead track, “The Mirror” and will be impacting radio in May.

Hailing from Knoxville, TN, Andrews spent five years touring with her band, The Everybodyfields. A rock-solid front woman in sundresses and Frye boots, now, Andrews’ voice is accompanied by tender piano, shuffling drums and searing electric guitar to support her careful acoustic picking. Wherever she plays, Andrews offers up a vision of herself as a singular, quickly maturing artist with the power to cross lines of genre and geography, taste and time. She is a force-and a voice-to be reckoned with.

Jill Andrews Tour Dates

5 28 – Brevard, NC – White Squirrel Fest
June 2 – Chattanooga, TN – Rhythm and Brews
June 3 – Bristol, TN – Border Bash
June 4 – Johnson City, TN – Blue Plum Festival
June 9 – St. Louis, MO – Twangfest
June 12 – Carrboro, NC – The Art Center
June 13 – Charlotte ,NC- The Blumenthal PAC
June 16 – New York, NY – Joe’s Pub
June 17 – Sellersville, PA – Sellersville Theatre
June 18 – Montclair, NJ – Outpost in the Burbs
June 21 – Philly, PA – The World Café Live
June 23 – Norfolk, CT – Nancy Marine Studio Theatre
June 24 – Boston, MA – Johnny D’s
June 27 – Detroit – The Ark – C
June 28 – Cleveland, OH- Nite Town
June 29 – Cleveland, OH – Nite Town
June 31 – Evanston, IL – Space
September 16-18 – Bristol – Rhythm and Roots


April 28th, 2011 News No Comments »

The Slayer Moblie App – The Heaviest App on the Planet

Slayer AppFollowing the success of their uber-hot “Pinball Rocks” music game app, Slayer has just launched its official Slayer Mobile App for iPhone, iPod, and Android. The Slayer App, identified on your screen by Slayer’s iconic Eagle logo, is free and offers fans access to exclusive content, the latest band news, photos you can’t get anywhere else, the band’s social media feeds, music and music videos, a merch store, a fan wall, tour dates, and much more. Additionally, the menu functionality of the Slayer App will be available in multiple languages – French, Spanish, Russian, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), and Korean.

The Slayer App is now available in the iTunes store – http://bit.ly/eegFca – and for Android – http://bit.ly/ekhtPB – so log on and get totally connected to Slayer.


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April 28th, 2011 News, Tour Dates No Comments »

John Shannon Drops Songs of The Desert River on June 14th

John Shannon Songs of the Desert RiverMany musicians say that music is their life. For Pittsburgh-born singer-songwriter, John Shannon, music is life itself. Identifying himself as a “song seeker,” Shannon’s spirituality guides his songwriting with results that play as if they are as much a part of nature as the man himself.

Shannon has sought and discovered eleven new songs comprising his second album of delicate guitars and hushed vocals, Songs of The Desert River (June 14th, Creek Valley/ObliqSound), a collection that envelops the listener with its own sense of time and space. On songs such as the album’s first single “Hurricane” (featured below), Shannon and his band Wings of Sound float weightlessly above Shannon’s delicately finger-picked acoustic guitar, a term deemed “too crude… to do justice to his technique” by the UK’s Sunday Times.

Drawing comparisons to Iron & Wine and Jose Gonzalez, Shannon views his work as less a part of contemporary tradition. He describes himself as a “song-seeker,” explaining, “There are songs in the winds and sunrise that, if perceived openly, will synthesize inside you. There is a spiritual quality in a song that comes from looking for it through the beauty of nature. Honoring this process for me keeps the music connected to the spirit.”

John Shannon & Wings of Sound – Hurricane by fanaticpro

Now, with Songs of The Desert River completed both physically and metaphysically, Shannon is ready to give it to the world, especially through his live performance, a near-shamanistic experience which he hopes will be as spiritually cleansing for his audience as he has come to know it to be for himself. See below for live performance dates.

John Shannon & Wings of Sound Tour Dates
04/30 Brooklyn, NY @ Kula Yoga
05/08 New York, NY @ Rockwood Music Hall
05/14 Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Wellness Fair
05/24 New York, NY @ DROM w/ Ablaye Cissoko & Volker Goetze
05/26 Paris, France @ l’International
06/12 Brooklyn, NY @ Temple Beth Emeth of Flatbush/The Sanctuary
07/11 New York, NY @ The Living Room 9PM
07/20 Columbus, OH @ Skully’s
07/22 Pittsburgh, PA @ Thunderbird Café


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April 28th, 2011 Tour Dates No Comments »

Umphrey’s McGee Announce Summer Tour Dates

Umphrey's McGee

Umphrey’s McGee kicks-off their 2011 Summer Tour on May 27th with three nights at Summercamp in Chillicothe, IL, where the band will debut – debut “Huey Lewis and the Rumors”, a new collaboration featuring Umphrey’s McGee, a full horn section, and of course, the legendary Huey Lewis. Additional festival engagements include Wakarusa, Mountain Jam, All Good and others. Also on the schedule, a return to Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre on July 3rd for Red Rocks And Blue II featuring support by the New Mastersounds and Easy Star Allstars, and an intimate show the Boulder Theater the following day. Visit www.umphreys.com for tickets and show details. The complete list of summer tour dates is included below.

In other Umphrey’s McGee news, the band’s esteemed Lighting Director, Jeff Waful, will soon debut his new web TV series, “Jeff Waful +1,” exclusively at Relix.com. As jambands.com originally reported, “Jeff Waful +1” promises to “take viewers on the tour bus and backstage” while “filing intimate reports from the road and portraying the real story of a touring rock band.” The first episode will “air” May 3rd and features guitarist Warren Haynes.

Umphrey’s McGee Summer Tour Dates
May 19 Sundown In The City – Knoxville TN
May 21 The Hangout Music Festival – Gulf Shores AL
June 2 Wakarusa Festival – Ozark AR
June 3 Stone Pony – Asbury Park NJ
June 4 Mountain Jam Festival – Hunter NY
June 23 Maymont Park – Richmond VA
June 24 Iroquois Amphitheater – Louisville KY
June 25 The Lawn at White River State Park – Indianapolis IN
June 26 Lifestyle Communities Pavilion – Columbus OH
July 1 Simon Estes Amphitheater – Des Moines IA
July 2 Crossroads – Kansas City MO
July 3 Red Rocks Amphitheatre – Morrison CO
July 4 Boulder Theater – Boulder CO
July 7 Centennial Terrace – Sylvania OH
July 10 Moonlite Gardens – Cincinnati OH
July 15 All Good Music Festival – Masontown WV
July 16 Great South Bay Music Festival – Patchogue NY
January 26-30 Mayan Holidaze – Puerto Morelos MEXICO

Additional dates to be announced.


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April 28th, 2011 News No Comments »

FM Belfast Drops Don’t Want to Sleep on June 21st

FM Belfast Don't Want to SleepIcelandic electro-pop group FM Belfast has announced the US release of its sophomore album, Don’t Want To Sleep, on Morr Music. Out on June 21, the album follows their breakout debut, How To Make Friends, and is a perfect follow up to two years of making friends, taking in experiences, sounds, and adventure.

Known for their closing performances at Iceland Airwaves every year, FM Belfast have perfected the art of engaging audiences around the world, honing a music that is catchy, runs deep, and induces extreme euphoria in large crowds, or just in headphones. Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir and Árni Rúnar Hlöðversson formed the band in late 2005 as a studio project, recording songs for friends as Christmas presents. Adding two more friends to the mix, Árni Vilhjálmsson and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason (múm), these four remain the core of FM Belfast, but will often draft their friends into the performance, with as many as 25 people ending up on stage.

Don’t Want To Sleep was written and recorded by FM Belfast (guests include Retro Stefson’s Unnsteinn Manúel, Borko’s Borko and mighty trumpeter Eiríkur Orri Ólafsson). It retains the bouncy and joyful spirit of How To Make Friends, yet veers off into territories that the band have hitherto left unexplored. There are slow songs and introspective ones; calm, drifting meditations mixed with calls to arms and potential dancefloor workouts. And lots of fun, of course.

One of MTV’s “International Bands To Watch” at this year’s SXSW ’11, FM Belfast will return to the states for a national tour in the fall. Dates to follow shortly.

In the meantime, check out the first single from Don’t Want to Sleep. It’s called New Year.


Trek Wars by BustedTees

April 28th, 2011 News No Comments »

Chad Valley Drops Equatorial Ultravox on June 20th

Chad Valley Equitorial UltravoxChad Valley is the solo guise of Hugo Manuel. He also operates as frontman for Oxford, UK-based quintet Jonquil, and is a founding member of the Blessing Force collective. His newest and much-anticipated EP, Equatorial Ultravox, will be released on June 20th via experimental pop label, Cascine.

Following Cascine’s release of his self titled debut EP last fall, there was a point where Chad Valley was the fourth most blogged about artist on earth, having the opportunity to perform in Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris, Budapest, Belgrade and Istanbul, and supporting acts including Amiina, Twin Shadow and Foals.

Chad Valley – Equatorial Ultravox – 05 Fast Challenges by CASCINE

On Equatorial Ultravox, Chad Valley expands even further on his lush, entrancing sound. Hugo’s voice feels like it’s beyond a cloudy horizon, distant but warmly omni-present. The strong melodies and glistening samples have a certain buoyancy to them, giving the illusion that one could just float away into a glowing paradise.


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