photos by David Andrako

Jack White at Roseland Ballroom 5/22/12

Jack White played his second of two nights at Roseland Ballroom last night (5/22), again supported by Alabama Shakes. Unlike at his first Roseland show (pictures HERE), which was with his all-male band Los Buzzardos, last night's was with his all-female band, The Peacocks, though he was joined by Los Buzzardos for the encore.

Jack covered similar territory to night 1 with seven White Stripes songs, two Raconteurs tracks ("Carolina Drama" and "Top Yourself"), a Rome cut, and a Dead Weather track ("I Cut Like a Buffalo") in the encore. Like he did the night before, Jack finished off the evening with a pair of White Stripes songs, "Catch Hell Blues" and "Seven Nation Army".

If you missed Jack White live and the flesh, hopefully you caught the set on satellite radio.

More pictures and the setlist from last night's show below...

Continue reading "Jack White hit Roseland Ballroom again (night 2 pics & setlist)"

photos by Dana (distortion) Yavin

"Alabama Shakes and Jack White blew the roof off of Roseland." - Afshin Hatami

Jack White at Roseland Ballroom 5/21/12

Jack White's tour stopped in NYC last night (5/21) for his first of two sold out Roseland Ballroom shows with Alabama Shakes. Last night's show was with Lox Buzzardos, his all-male band. He played a similar set to his Webster Hall show in April, mixing material off his new album, Blunderbuss, with White Stripes, Raconteurs, and Dead Weather tracks. He also threw in "Two Against One," one of the songs he contributed to on Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi's Rome album, and a cover of Hank Williams' "You Know That I Know."

Jack will do it again tonight (5/22) and if you can't make it to tonight's show, he'll be streaming the entire thing live on SiriusXMU at 9 PM. In addition, SiriusXMU will also be airing an interview with Jack by SiriusXM host jenny Eliscu at 5 PM.

More pictures, video, and setlist from last night's show below...

Continue reading "Jack White played Roseland Ballroom (night 1 pics, setlist, video); tonight's show streaming live on SiriusXMU"

After teasing us with lineup addictions day by day over the past few days, the full lineup of Austin City Limits 2012 is finally here. Check it out below....

Continue reading "Austin City Limits Festival -- 2012 lineup "

Jack White is in town and tonight (5/21) plays the first of two sold-out Roseland shows with openers the Alabama Shakes. He's also among the growing list of artists playing the ACL Festival this year, which happens October 12 - 14 in Austin, TX. The line-up was revealed via lottery-style scratch-off tickets that were placed in locations around Austin over the weekend and today. Other confirmed performers include Black Keys, Andrew Bird and Delta Spirit. UPDATE: The full ACL lineup has been announced.

When not touring and releasing highly-collectible vinyl via his Third Man record label (like new 7" single "Freedom at 21," due out June 11), Jack has kept himself busy trying to get into the Guiness Book of World Records by using the most metaphors during a single concert. An attempt was made Saturday night (5/19) in Gulf Shores, Alabama:

At Jack White's headlining performance in Gulf Shores, Alabama last night, Guinness officials were anxiously awaiting the beginning of Mr. White's concert (the start of which is apparently very difficult to determine stated Guinness Records reps, music being played notwithstanding). They were there so that they could begin the exhausting process of counting each and every metaphor that occurred onstage as Mr. White attempted to break the record of most metaphors in a single concert.

They definitely had a task in front of them as in the first song alone, three officials that were flown in from the Guinness world headquarters in the anteroom of the Salt and Muskrat pub in Tipperary, counted no less than twelve hundred and three metaphors in three minutes.

Some metaphors were lyrical and others came from moments such as lighting changes and even the calm weather itself during the chorus which momentarily had the feel of Grandma's house in winter. By the seventh song alone the hard work led two of the Guinness officials to wander to the catering table, leaving the counting to their partner who, new to the grueling scientific process involved, accidentally counted 312 similes and three mere comparisons.

Metaphors were occurring in the thousands by this point, some coming from the clothing the musicians had on, others from the colors used on one of the microphone cables which were easter candy blue, making the task of counting extremely trivial or at the very least hard work.

Then tragedy struck and the record attempt had to be forfeited by Jack White when during the second half of the set Mr. White trivialized a metaphor by saying it too quickly. It was something about the moon being a faucet of light but was uttered too fast to be counted.

Guinness representatives will return to tomorrow night's show to begin the exhaustive, scientific, and absolutely authoritative and factual process all over again.

In related news, Third Man recording artists The Black Belles have announced a new round of North American tour dates that include a June 14 stop at Knitting Factory as part of the Panache Booking Northside Festival showcase that also includes Grass Widow, Turbo Fruits, The Black Belles, Gary War, Gap Dream, and Snack Machine. Tickets for that show are on sale now. All Black Belles tour dates are listed below.

Continue reading "Jack White's in town, playing ACL, making Guiness Book record attempts; Black Belles touring, playing Northside"

Alabama Shakes @ Bowery Ballroom - 4/11/2012 (photo by sachalecca)

The success story of the year keeps on rolling with a set of summer tour that include the previously mentioned, headlining Central Park Summerstage show which comes a month after they open two sold out shows for Jack White at Roseland Ballroom which come about a month after their recent quickly-sold out, headlining shows at Bowery Ballroom and Music Hall of Williamsburg. All of their now-announced dates, including Sasquatch, Bonnaroo, Newport Folk Fest, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands, are listed below...

Continue reading "Alabama Shakes --- Summer 2012 Tour Dates"

Amadou & Mariam

As you may remember from the past couple of years, "Summerstage" now encompasses more than just Central Park, but Central Park Summerstage will still always be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the series. Here's the 2012 schedule. Check it out below...

Continue reading "Central Park Summerstage 2012 schedule (Alabama Shakes, Dawes, Kurt Vile, Gary Clark Jr, Amadou & Mariam & more)"

"Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly Presents and Starr Hill presents, in a partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, are proud to announce the lineup for the fifth annual Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival. The world's only gourmet music festival will once again take place in San Francisco's historic Golden Gate Park August 10 - 12, 2012. Tickets will go on sale Thursday April 19 at 12 noon PDT via www.sfoutsidelands.com. A significant portion of every ticket sold will directly benefit San Francisco's Recreation and Park Department."

Continue reading "Outside Lands 2012 lineup (Metallica, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Jack White, Foo Fighters, Beck, Skrillex...)"

Lollapalooza (more by Grant MacAllister)

Chicago Sun Times reports:

Lollapalooza has revealed its official 2012 list of performers -- a typically wide-ranging smorgasbord of genres and styles topped by nearly a dozen mainstage headliners: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, freshly reunited bands Black Sabbath and At the Drive-In, the Black Keys, Jack White, Florence + The Machine, the Shins and Passion Pit, plus spotlighted electronic music including Swedish house titan Avicii, French dance duo Justice and DJ-producer Bassnectar.

The annual music festival is scheduled for Aug. 3-5 in Chicago's Grant Park.

Rumored lineups have circulated widely, as they usually do, and Lollapalooza itself stoked the speculation in recent weeks via a series of CTA and online advertisements that seemed to hint at who would be playing.

The ads featured lyrics from such acts as Sigur Ros, Santigold, Jack White, Kimbra, Twin Shadow, the Weeknd, Bloc Party and more -- all bands that wound up on the bill.

Continue reading "Lollapalooza 2012 lineup (Jack White, At The Drive-In, Sigur Ros, Black Keys, RHCP, Afghan Whigs, M83, Weeknd, SBTRKT, Black Sabbath & more)"

Alambama Shakes @ SXSW 2012 (photo by hools)

Alabama Shakes, who like Jack White were down at SXSW last week, will be opening for him at both of the just-announced Roseland Ballroom shows, and four other shows too. The band writes:

"We are beyond ecstatic to announce that we will be opening 6 shows for Jack White. May 15/16 in Nashville at the Ryman, May 19 in Asheville at the Orange Peel, May 21/22 in New York City at the Roseland Ballroom and May 24th in Detroit at the Scottish Rite Theater. Tickets go on sale on Friday. So fired up for these dates."

The Newport Festivals Foundation continues to celebrate the festival's historic past by featuring emerging young artists alongside some of folk music's most venerable names. This year's festival features: My Morning Jacket, Jackson Browne, Conor Oberst, Iron & Wine, Patty Griffin, Guthrie Family Reunion, Dawes, The Head & The Heart, Deer Tick, Punch Brothers, City & Colour, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Tallest Man on Earth, tUnE-yArDs, Tom Morello, Trampled by Turtles, Gary Clark, Jr., Alabama Shakes, Blind Pilot, Of Monsters and Men, original music from: Jay Farrar; Will Johnson; Anders Parker; & Yim Yames set to the lyrics of Woody Guthrie, Sharon Van Etten, First Aid Kit, Sara Watkins, Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Brown Bird, Jonny Corndawg, Jonathan Wilson, Spirit Family Reunion, Deep Dark Woods, Carl Broemel, Ben Sollee, Robert Ellis, Frank Fairfield, The Apache Relay, Spider John Koerner & His Rag Tag Boys, Joel Rafael, Joe Fletcher & The Wrong Reasons, Elizabeth Mitchell, honeyhoney, Sleepy Man Banjo Boys, The Kossoy Sisters, The Berklee City Music Choir and very special guests to be announced.

Young hot band Alabama Shakes finish up a 3-night, sold out run at London's Boston Arms tonight, and will continue touring the world throughout 2012. After visiting Austin in March to tape an episode of Austin City Limits and play SXSW, Alabama Shakes will drive around North America and eventually find their way back to NYC where they'll headline both Bowery Ballroom and Music Hall of Williamsburg before heading back to Europe. Tickets for both NYC shows are on sale at noon. In May they play Sasquatch. In June they play Bonnaroo. All dates are listed below...

Continue reading "Alabama Shakes -- 2012 Tour Dates"

"Superfly Presents and A.C. Entertainment are excited to announce the initial lineup for the 2012 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. The 11th annual four-day camping and music festival will be held on June 7 - 10 on the same beautiful 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles south of Nashville. A full list of confirmed acts follows, and more will be announced in the coming weeks. The final Bonnaroo 2012 lineup will total over 125 bands and over 20 comedians performing on 13 stages over four days.Tickets for the event will go on sale on this Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 12 noon EST exclusively at bonnaroo.com."

Continue reading "Bonnaroo 2012 lineup announced"

"Following last year's 10th anniversary, which crushed previous attendance records and set a new mark for the speed with which tickets sold out, the Sasquatch! Music Festival unveils its 2012 lineup which once again features 4 days of music. The festival, hailed as "a model of well-paced programming...in a four-day schedule as efficient and natural feeling as an expertly built algorithm" by NPR Music while Wired notes, "leave the landscape out of it and Sasquatch! has a lineup to kill for," runs May 25-28 (Memorial Day Weekend) at The Gorge, the internationally acclaimed concert venue carved in the basalt cliffs high above the Columbia River Gorge in Quincy, WA."

Continue reading "Sasquatch! 2012 lineup announced (Bon Iver, Jack White, Beck, Tenacious D, Shins, Portlandia, Spiritualized & more) "

Extremely talented Athens, Alabama modern soul and rock band Alabama Shakes seemed to come out of nowhwere. It was less than two months ago that the young band came to NYC to play a few random CMJ shows and then announced they would return to NYC to play an early show at Mercury Lounge. That show, which was last night (12/9), didn't even sell out that quickly, though it did eventually sell out in advance which prompted the addition of a much larger Thursday night (12/8) Brooklyn Bowl show which nobody could believe ALSO SOLD OUT IN ADVANCE. Chicago and LA shows are also sold out.

Next time the overnight success comes back to NYC will probably be with headlining shows at Bowery Ballroom and Music Hall of Williamsburg, so if you're curious at all, you may want to check their just-announced gig at Lakeside Lounge in NYC tonight (12/10).

Though I'm probably never going to personally throw on an Alabama Shakes record, I was curious enough to go see them at Brooklyn Bowl and I was definitely blown away by the talent and smiles on stage, and the seemingly pure place it came from, especially from frontwoman Brittany Howard...

"This is what the saga of a breaking band can look like in the age of the constantly plugged-in, accelerated news cycle. In the case of The Alabama Shakes, there really is something beneath the hype that people are viscerally responding to. Aquarium Drunkard called it "a slice of the real" -- as opposed to stuff that's "fake" and "pre-packaged." NPR music critic Ann Powers noted the pre-packaging inherent in retro soul, but pointed to Howard's artistic self-determination, describing the 22-year-old singer as "a young woman living in the now, wrapping her arms around a tradition without letting it carry her away." New York Times music critic Jon Pareles celebrated the contrast between The Shakes and the typical CMJ buzz band -- one that's "built around some cool-headed concept involving noise or irony or ambiguities or primitivism." [Nashville Scene]

Continue reading "new phenomenon Alabama Shakes playing NYC again TONIGHT before continuing on tour (dates)"

EMA at MFNW 2011 (more by Autumn Andel)

EMA will headline the High Road Touring CMJ showcase which is happening on October 20 at Bowery Ballroom. The showcase also includes Gross Magic, Marques Toliver (who opened for Liam Finn last night), Dry The River, Lydia, and Alabama Shakes. Tickets go on sale Wednesday (9/21) at noon.

In the spirit of the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind and EMA's cover of "Endless Nameless," she posted three Nirvana covers that her previous band, Gowns, played at a cover show in LA to her blog. You can check out their scratchy, rowdy takes on "Clean Up Before She Comes," "You Know You're Right," and "Aneurysm."

EMA also has a bunch of other dates on her international tour, which she kicked off earlier this month, including the previously announed CMJ show with CSS and MEN on October 22 at Webster Hall. Tickets for that show are still on sale.

The High Road Touring CMJ showcase will be Gross Magic's fourth (currently known) NYC show in October, after they make their US debut at Music Hall of Williamsburg on October 13 and 14 with Yuck and Porcelain Raft (tickets) and Cameo Gallery on October 15 with Mon Khmer and Lost Boy? (tickets).

Updated dates below...

Continue reading "EMA & Gross Magic add a CMJ show & stuff (updated dates)"