Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepard have collaborated with Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Alain Johannes and Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan to form Ten Commandos, a hard-rock grunge group whose self-titled debut album will be released in late November.
The 10-song album features rock musician Peter Frampton and soul musician Nikka Costa. Frampton will perform on the track “Sketch 9,” while Costa sings on “Come.”
The record’s opening track “Staring Down the Dust” was released as a single on Oct. 9, featuring Lanegan’s raspy vocals over dirty guitar parts and heavy drumming with enough angst to teleport you back to 1990s Seattle.
Ten Commandos is available to be purchased on pre-sale at PearlJam.com. CDs are on sale for $11.99, while vinyls cost $22.99.
This most recent project is just the latest of Cameron and Shepard collaboration projects. The two played together in the band Hater, founded in 1993. Hater released two albums, the self-titled album released in 1993 and The 2nd, released in 2005.
Cameron and Shepard also paired up in the group Wellwood Conspiracy, which released four studio albums between 1997 and 2003.
Soundgarden is currently recording their seventh studio album, to be released in 2016.
Two of the jamtronica scene’s rising stars, Broccoli Samurai (Cleveland) and Strange Machines (Boston) will bring a powerhouse show to the Putnam Den on Saturday, October 24.
Broccoli Samurai, with a progressive electronic complemented by a powerful drum/bass combo that has energized audiences in the Midwest for five years. They’re making their way out east and pack an incredible punch. Check out their performance at this year’s Summer Dance for a taste of what to expect.
Strange Machines is no stranger to Albany and have developed a solid following throughout the Northeast with a blend of funk, rock, jazz and livetronica, creating a powerfully danceable live show. If you’re looking for tight improvisation wrapped around well crafted songs, Strange Machines is the fix you’re looking for.
Floodwood has announced via Facebook that Al Schnier and Zachary Fleitz have left the band.
Floodwood, commonly known as a bluegrass side project for New York’s jam champions moe., will carry on without Schnier, with fellow moe.ron Vinnie Amico remaining in the band. They are currently seeking new members.
While not an audition (or is it?), Floodwood also announced they would be performing a Dec. 5 Holiday concert at the Kirkland Arts Center in Clinton NY with special guest bassist Tony Markellis (Trey Anastasio Band). Ticketing information has yet to be released.
Check out the full announcement below:
Hi Folks,
We know things have been quiet for the last couple of months and there some big changes we want to share with you…
Due to shifts in various life circumstances, both Al and Zach have made the decision to move on from Floodwood. This is a huge change and we will certainly miss their presence on and off stage. Our hope is that occasionally when they have time that one or both of them will be able to make appearances with us.
That said, Vin, Jay and Nick have decided to carry on Floodwood in some fashion or another. You may be wondering what the new band will look like, who will be involved, what it will sound like, etc….. So do we. We have started the process/brainstorming but it may take a little time. What we do know is that we absolutely love to play, love to have fun and of course we love the interaction with our amazing fans. In the upcoming months, we will be making decisions about who we want to be in the band. We are going to be trying some different combinations of musicians/friends until we get that “fit” we are looking for. We hope that you all will come see some of these shows as we try out different things… Please get involved! Let us know what you think about what you hear; we want your input!
To get it all going, we are going to start with a holiday concert at the Kirkland Arts Center in Clinton, NY. We’re excited to have special guest, Tony Markellis from Trey Anastasio Band on bass! Show is December 5, more details to follow!
Thank you all for your incredible support of the band for these past 5 yrs. We’ve had so many great times with you all and look forward to many, many more.
Shockwaves rippled through the jam world last night as Phil Lesh released a statement announcing he is battling bladder cancer, and has been forced to cancel the Phil and Friends shows with Chris Robinson scheduled for the 24th and 25th of this month.
I am sorry to let you know that I will need to cancel the October 24th and 25th Phil & Friends shows with Chris Robinson.
I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in early October, and have spent the last few weeks at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale doing tests and eventually surgery to remove the tumors. I am very fortunate to have the pathology reports show that the tumors are all non aggressive, and that there is no indication that they have spread.
So thanks to my local doctor Cliff Sewell, and the incredible team at the Mayo Clinic, all is well and I can return to normal activities in two weeks from my surgery. Unfortunately, that means I will have to cancel the PLF shows scheduled for Oct 24/25. We will reschedule these shows as soon as we can, but in the meantime, keep a lookout for a free Grate Room show before I leave for the East Coast shows. I also plan to pop in and jam in the bar before we leave, so I hope to see you there at Terrapin.
Love Will See You Through…. -Phil
PS Ticket refund info will be posted soon
While nothing is known about Lesh’s prognosis beyond the statement, the general consensus is that while the news is worrisome, the non-aggressive nature of the tumors that were removed and the quick turnaround from surgery indicate some reason for optimism about the Grateful Dead founding member’s well being.
Lesh’s run of shows at The Capitol Theatre scheduled for Oct. 30 and 31, and November 6 and 7 are still on at this point in time.
The whole team at NYS Music wishes Phil Lesh the best of luck with future testing and a speedy recovery from cancer following his recent surgery.
An evening of enchantment awaits those who intend on attending Terminal 5 in New York City Thursday, Oct. 15. Solo artist Lorely Rodriguez, going by the stage name Empress Of, will open the show, immersing the crowd in a sea of handpicked electronic beats layered with her ethereal Spanish-influenced vocals. Rodriguez released her debut album Me, in September 2015, and will be pulling from this freshly published collection of sound confections.
English indie rock group Glass Animals will take over, performing songs off their debut album Zaba, which dropped in June 2014. Frontman Dave Bayley’s feathery falsetto voice will be accompanied by his keyboard prowess along with Drew MacFarlane (guitar/keyboard), Edmund Irwin-Singer (bass/keyboard) and Joe Seaward (drums). Their eclectic and undeniably sexy sound ambience instils vivid depictions of tropical scenery leaving the listener to feel as though they’ve been immersed in a dance jungle of of desire. Don’t miss this.
With Dead & Company hitting the road later this month, starting at The Times Union Center in Albany, Bob Weir shed some light on the the upcoming tour as well as the potential for more shows with the Fare Thee Well “Core Four” in the future.
Weir had high praise for John Mayer, filling in for lead guitar with this modified FTW lineup. “John’s enthusiasm for this is amazing — I couldn’t believe it. He learned the songs, has great enthusiasm, and he’s a great guitar player. So he fits in perfectly.” Mayer addressed his role in a humble manner, referring to his role by saying, “I don’t feel the pressure, but I would say I feel a responsibility.”
For those looking to see the Core Four perform together again, Weir offered hope to Deadheads hoping for more shows with bassist Phil Lesh. “Phil doesn’t want to hit the road. He’s 75 now. It’s kind of not an option for him, the way he puts it. And so, you know, that’s still where we are; that’s still where we’re going to live, at least I am. And so, if we’re going to see him, we’re going to see him around here or around someplace where he is.”
Suffice it to say, if there were to be shows, they would be similar to the two and three-day events held in Santa Clara, California, and Chicago this past summer, and not a full-blown tour.
Classical pianist Holly Bowling has announced that she plans to hit the road for a tour in the fall of 2015 to support her current album, Distillation Of A Dream: The Music Of Phish Reimagined For Solo Piano. The tour will feature some headlining dates in between opening shows for Pink Talking Fish.
Holly will start the tour opening a pair of shows for Pink Talking Fish in Denver, Colorado, at Quixote’s True Blue, while ending the 13-date run with a two-day stay at the Pittsburgh Winery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bowling will also play two shows in New York, first appearing at The College of Saint Rose’s Massry Center for the Performing Arts in Albany on Oct. 28 and Rockwood Music Hall in New York City on Nov. 8.
Fans can also catch Bowling sail off on Jan. 6-11 on Jam Cruise 14, and she’ll appear at the AURA Music and Arts Festival on March 3-5.
Bowling’s album Distillation Of A Dream: The Music Of Phish Reimagined For Solo Piano has been released on Royal Potato. Fans can also snatch up a vinyl version of Bowling’s arrangement of Tahoe Tweezer, also on the Royal Potato Family.
Touring Cycle:
10-16-2015 – Quixote’s True Blue – Denver, CO
10-17-2015 – Quixote’s True Blue – Denver, CO
10-18-2015 – Owsley’s Golden Road – Boulder, CO^
10-28-2015 – Massry Center for the Arts – Albany, NY^
Gail Zappa, born Adelaide Gail Sloatman, has passed away. According to a release from the Zappa Family Trust, Gail “departed this earth peacefully at her home . . . surrounded by her children, ” in Los Angeles Oct. 7. The cause of death was not released, but TMZ reports she had been fighting a long-time illness.
Zappa was predeceased by her husband Frank, who succumbed to prostate cancer in 1993. She is survived by their four children, Diva, Dweezil, Ahmet and Moon.
Gail Zappa formed the Zappa Family Trust, following her husband’s death, to preserve Frank Zappa’s musical legacy and, in that time, released 38 albums of previously unreleased Zappa music.
The statement released on the official Frank Zappa Facebook Page, praised Gail as one who, “enthusiastically executed her role as guardian of her husband’s creative life and, with his passing, strove to ensure his legacy as one of the leading American composers and musicians of the 20th century. In this and all business endeavors, Gail passionately advocated to establish clear definitions of intellectual property and copyright laws on behalf of not just her husband, but all artists.”
The family trust had recently been turned over to son Ahmet and announced plans for a documentary on the life of Frank Zappa, to be directed by Alex Winter, earlier this summer. Speaking with Rolling Stone about the upcoming doc, Gail stated, “My obligation was to get the work out there the way Frank built it in the first place.”
Frank and Gail met through mutual friend, Bobby Jameson in 1966 and were married the following year, while Gail was pregnant with Moon.
Rather than shaking things off through catchy choruses and lip-gloss beats, Lilly Hiatt heals old wounds with poetic confession and shadowy synths on her second record, Royal Blue, released in March.
Photography by Gregg Roth
Hiatt, as the sole writer on the album, conjures grim daydreams of soured love and self discovery that float through 12 tracks rooted in traditional folk and alt-country, but draw on Hiatt’s favorite 80s and 90s influences (think The Pixies, the Breeders, Dinosaur Jr.). Hiatt’s sweet, soft voice sings of a starry-eyed woman scorned and she slays through the wreckage with clever lyrics, because that’s what any good woman with her musical lineage would do—she’d move on and write a song or two, as she proclaims in the title track.
It’s Wednesday afternoon and Hiatt dials in from East Nashville; she’s down-to-earth and speaks with the same girlish honesty that’s reflected in her songs. At the moment, she and band mates—Beth Finney on lead guitar, Jake Bradley on bass, Luke Schneider on pedal steel guitar, and Jon Radford on drums—are rehearsing for a 10-date tour. Several of her east coast shows, including an October 8 stop at the Bell House in Brooklyn, are in support of Austin musician Bob Schneider who Hiatt has never shared the bill with but admires for his similar sense of songwriting humor. “Although, I’m getting tired of writing about my struggles,” she quips. But capturing a perfect Polaroid of real life just comes natural to the rising singer-songwriter whose father is iconic musician John Hiatt. “The biggest thrill of all is the initial coming up with the words; it’s some sort of relief for me,” she says. Hiatt confesses that she’s actually staring at her acoustic guitar, a hand-me-down Martin from her father that is her songwriting muse and never leaves home. “I’ll pick up my guitar and start strumming, or I’ll think about something I want to write about or think of a line that I want to put somewhere,” she says of her method. “I’ll sing something that I don’t know where it comes from; it’s decided, well, OK this is how you’re starting it clearly because I can’t stop singing that one thing, and then this helps me navigate where the rest of it goes.”
And when it comes to laying down tracks and playing them live, Hiatt doesn’t shy away from giving her band the creative rein to guide her songs to places she never imagined, she says. Case in point: “Far Away” had a more folk element before the band’s influence evolved it into a riff-y power-pop piece. “We’re in this singer-songwriter twang-y world and there’s sometimes an unspoken feeling of things you’re not allowed to do for this kind of music, but the band finally felt the green light from me that said screw that,” she says. As for Royal Blue in particular, a progressive follow-up to 2012’s more loosely country-rooted Let Down, Hiatt says the record’s sound is a result of working with analog studio producer Adam Landry (Deer Tick, Diamond Rugs) and a natural gravitation to exploring the darker more dissonant sounds. “We’re a four-piece band of all rockers and we have a similar mentality, but we’re not rough around edges,” she says. “My drummer now totally grew up on punk rock and my guitar player is into psych-rock. When you get the right people together and let them do their own thing you hear that come out a little and I like to encourage that.”
As for her own favorite band, Hiatt says without hesitation, Pearl Jam (she even recently guest hosted on the band’s Sirius XM radio channel). “They have been a band for so long and have been a part of my life for so long. I just have this immense admiration for them and it awakens something in me that I can’t even, it just feels like home when I hear them,” she says. “They have such a base of hardcore fans, and I know because I text with some of them; we’re giggly texting about Pearl Jam and it’s so funny because I think they’re really good to their fans and they make you feel like you’re part of something.” Hiatt is also influenced by other modern-day front women taking risks in their music like Bully’s Alicia Bognanno and Jenny Lewis. “I really look up to Jenny [Lewis]; she always takes chances and she’s so honest in her writing,” she says. “I just love her, and I freaked out for her album [Voyager]; it just brought out something different, and it was awesome.” And Hiatt plans to continue forging her way and not feeling limited in her work. “Records are records. For me, an album isn’t so much a massive representation of this is me the artist, but more of a snapshot of a period of time of what I’m doing right now because there are so many components of being a creative person. It’s hard to hone in on what you do best no matter what profession, but if you’re genuine about things and you work hard it’s going to pay off, or maybe I’m just naive,” she laughs.
Photography by Gregg Roth
Although she’s only three years into her professional career under Athens, Georgia-based label Normaltown records (and still held her supermarket chain day job until last year), Hiatt says she always had this “weird understanding” that she’d end up in music. “In the back of my head I knew this is what I’m going to do, but I didn’t know how because I’m shy,” she says. “I would write in my room and sing and record, but I never performed until toward the end of college… Some people can shake a tambourine and work it and that just doesn’t come natural to me; I’d literally crawl out of my skin before every show and it was excruciating, but I knew I was going to go through with it and that’s now dissipated into a more OK-let’s-go energy that is fun to channel into the show… I think it’s important to be humble.” After graduating from Denver, Hiatt returned to her Music City roots and admits she is still “building my thing” and searching for ways to tap into her creative rhythm. “Writing, or just growing as a human, is an ever-evolving thing, so the goal is to find a spot where the process is effortless,” she says, noting that she admires writers like John Prine and Guy Clark. “When I’m in vulnerable open thought is when the best stuff happens, but I’m trying to write new stuff right now, and I feel like Royal Blue went in a specific territory, a little self indulgent, which is fine, but I’ve gotten so accustomed to writing about painful things and changes and now I’m not so much in that spot. I used to wait until I’m feeling it, but you have to generate that for yourself sometimes; there’s a discipline involved, and I’m trying to look out a little more and figure out how to find the inspiration from all the positive things.” While Hiatt may ponder about getting things right, it’s clear she’s going to be just fine in this “mean machine, this lonely world,” regardless that she’s somebody’s daughter.
Lilly Hiatt Tour Dates 10/8 The Bell House, Brooklyn, NY* 10/9 Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, PA* 10/10 Mr. Small’s Theatre, Millvale, PA* 10/11 Culture Center Theater, Charleston, WV 10/17 Hill Country DC, Washington, DC 10/22 Southgate House, Newport, KY** 10/23 Rumba Cafe, Columbus, GA** 10/24 Musica, Akron, OH** 11/11 Old Town School of Music, Chicago, IL*** *Bob Schneider Music **Patrick Sweany ***Del Barber
The Cure‘s first announcement of a single performance at Madison Square Garden sparked such a demand that a second show was added. Now, the demand was such that a third (and final) MSG show with The Cure has been announced for Monday June 20, 2016 (in addition to the 18th and 19th). A presale will happen Thursday Oct. 22 at 9am EST on Ticketmaster with password DISINTEGRATION. Regular on-sale will happen Friday Oct. 22 at 9am EST on the same site.
Original Article:
The Cure will hit North America next year with a 25-show tour. The announcement comes with a tease – only three of those dates have so far been announced while the rest will be released in January.
On June 18, 2016, The Cure will play Madison Square Garden. A special pre-sale will take place Thursday, Oct. 8, starting at 10 a.m. and tickets will be available to the public Friday, Oct. 9, at 10 a.m.
Check out the tour announcement posting on The Cure’s website here for full details on the pre-sale and public on sale.
The other two dates announced so far are May 22 at Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and June 10 at UIC Pavilion in Chicago. While The Cure have played several shows (namely, festivals) in the past handful of years, this will be the band’s first major tour in North America since 2008.
Joining The Cure at these MSG shows in 2016 will be The Twilight Sad, a post-punk outfit from Scotland with four studio albums under their belt.
English indie rock group 
Zappa was predeceased by her husband Frank, who succumbed to prostate cancer in 1993. She is survived by their four children, Diva, Dweezil, Ahmet and Moon.
