Bettye Lavette at Highline Ballroom (more by Jacob Blickenstaff )

A quick reminder that one of the greatest songwriters of all-time, Neil Young, will be celebrated at Carnegie Hall in two days (2/10) as part of a benefit for music & arts programs of underpriviledged youth. The bill is beyond diverse, featuring The Roots, Nada Surf, Glen Hansard, DeVotchka, J Mascis and Bettye Lavette just to name a few of the twenty+ that are on board. "100% of the net proceeds from this event" will benefit charities like Fixing Instruments for Kids in Schools, Church Street School for Music & Art, The Pinwheel Project, Music Unites, The American Symphony Orchestra and Young Audiences New York, so pick up your tickets with a clear conscious!

Meanwhile, quite a few of the Neil Young-tribute artists have recently been or will be very active. Glen Hansard recently played City Winery and the Doveman show at LPR. Patti Smith & Jesse Smith are scheduled to play the Tibet benefit at Carnegie Hall in March. When Questlove of The Roots isnt going to see Prince or spinning at Brooklyn Bowl, he can be found on Jimmy Fallon. Nada Surf recently played Mercury Lounge and Rock Shop. DeVotchKa will play Highline in March with El Mariachi Bronx. Juliana Hatfield & Evan Dando were just at Maxwell's and the Bell House. J Mascis has his upcoming tour with shows at Mercury Lounge and MHoW.

Ben Ottewell of Gomez plays the Neil Young event and an early solo show at Mercury Lounge the next day.

And last, but certainly not least, Bettye Lavette, besides paying tribute to the great rock'n roll patriarch from the North, also has quite a NYC residency in the spring when she'll set up shop at Cafe Carlyle from 5/24 - 6/3 (no shows on 5/29, 5/30). Ticketing info is forthcoming, but all tour dates, the full Neil Young Tribute lineup and some videos are below...

Continue reading "Neil Young tribute show coming, Bettye Lavette playing shows at Cafe Carlyle & elsewhere, Ben Ottewell will be at Merc"

Bert Jansch

After cancelling his string of East Coast shows and a few with Neil Young earlier this year due to complications from lung cancer, Burt Jansch is back out on the road and will play The Bell House on December 15th (tickets) and two shows at Iridium on December 20th (tickets still available for for the 8PM and the 10PM). As with the previous cancelled tour, the Pegi Young Band is out with him, though they drop off before the Iridium dates.

In related news, Neil Young will get the royal treatment at Carnegie Hall on Feb 10th as part of a benefit for Music and Arts Programs for Underprivileged Youth. The show will feature a gang of artists paying tribute to the music of the giant, including Patti Smith, Living Colour, Devotchka, Bettye LaVette, Bebel Gilberto, Aimee Mann, The Roots, Cowboy Junkies, Antibalas, St. Vincent, J Mascis, with "additional artists to be announced". Tickets are on sale.

Full tour dates are below, as well as some video taken the other night at Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia.

Continue reading "Bert Jansch is now on tour w/ Pegi Young --- Neil Young is being covered at Carnegie Hall (dates)"

DOWNLOAD: Son Volt - Down To The Wire (MP3)

Aquarium Drunkard: The new record seems like it's a combination of everything within Son Volt, all the way back to Trace [the band's 1995 debut] - it seems like something that spans the 13 or 14 years of the band.

Jay Farrar (of Son Volt): That's interesting. Perhaps that's true. I'm not sure. [laughs] All I do know is that I follow wherever inspiration takes the writing and you have to get away from certain kinds of instrumentation, like violin, in order to really feel like starting to use it again.

AD: The new album has this prevalent dark feel to it - in a certain sense - even though there are songs that escape that. There's this sense of, as one of the songs says, that there's "no turning back." You talked about this being a more focused record, but can you explain how the album title ties in with that?

JF: Basically they are three words that were pulled from three different songs - "American," "central" and "dust." I've done that before, but it seems like that's the best way to come up with a representative title for all of the songs.

Son Volt's new album, American Central Dust, its sixth, comes out July 7th on Rounder Records. That's a week after Farrar's ex-Uncle Tupelo bandmate Jeff Tweedy & Wilco put out their seventh LP, Wilco (The Album).

Tweedy & Co. are on tour this summer. So are Son Volt. They'll play a co-headlining tour with the Cowboy Junkies in July. Then, Son Volt picks up for a second leg in September. Those dates include a show at NYC's Irving Plaza on September 17th. Tickets are on sale now.

American Central Dust's twelve songs include "Down to the Wire," which is posted above, and "Cocaine and Ashes," a song allegedly about Keith Richards and that incident that happened a few years ago. Album art and tracklist are below with all tour dates...

Continue reading "Son Volt - new album, MP3, 2009 Tour Dates (Irving Plaza) "

this was Monday's post. Sorry it's late...

Singer-songwriter Tift Merritt releases Another Country, her strongest and most diverse album yet tomorrow.

The most interesting release this week is the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Revisited, where the band returned to the church they recorded The Trinity Session and re-recorded the songs from that album with the help from Ryan Adams, Natalie Merchant, Vic Chesnutt, and more guest artists.

Other discs I can strongly recommend include Beach House's Devotion, the Dirtbombs' We Have You Surrounded, and Ghostland Observatory's Robotique Majestique.

Bob Pollard fans can pick up his latest Psycho & the Birds release, We've Moved.

Interesting reissues available this week include three early Apples in Stereo albums, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, Fun Trick Noisemaker, Her Wallpaper Reverie and the Jason and the Scorchers debut album and EP, Fervor/Lost & Found.

Continue reading "Largehearted Boy's Interesting CD Releases This Week"