STING'S NEW ALBUM,
THE LAST SHIP,
To Be Released Today, September 24, 2013
10 Concerts To Benefit The Public Theater in NYC From September 25 - October 9
Performing Songs From The Last Ship
Cherrytree/Interscope/A&M Records is pleased to announce a new album of original material from Sting entitled The Last Ship to be released today, September 24, featuring "And Yet" and "Practical Arrangement," both available now for digital download.
The new album is inspired by Sting's forthcoming play of the same name, which will debut on Broadway in 2014. A paean to the shipbuilding community in the North East of England where he was born and raised, The Last Ship explores themes of homecoming, self-discovery and the complexity of love and familial relationships, drawing upon Sting's childhood memories growing up in the shadow of the Swan Hunter Shipyard in Wallsend.
In celebration of the album's release, Sting will perform a limited 10-night run (September 25 - October 9) to benefit The Public Theater in New York City. An evening of music and storytelling in the intimate 260-seat Anspacher Theater, these performances will offer insight into the creative process of both the new album and forthcoming play. A lottery drawing for a limited number of free tickets will be held before each concert. For more information, please visit http://www.publictheater.org/content/view/296.
Sting is also scheduled to perform on The Today Show (Tuesday, September 24), the Late Show with David Letterman (Monday, September 30), and Charlie Rose on PBS next month. On October 30, he will sit down with Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis as part of the 92Y Talks series (details at http://www.92y.org/Event/Sting-with-Anthony-DeCurtis.aspx). For the latest information on upcoming TV appearances, please visit www.sting.com.
Produced by Rob Mathes (Sting, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Lou Reed, Carly Simon) and engineered and mixed by Donal Hodgson, The Last Ship also features several musicians hailing from the North East of England, including Kathryn Tickell, Peter Tickell, Julian Sutton, The Wilson Family, The Unthanks and special guests Jimmy Nail and Brian Johnson.
The Last Ship will be available as both a digital and physical release in two configurations - a 12-song album and a 2-disc deluxe version featuring 5 additional tracks. (The 12-song version will also be available on vinyl.) A super deluxe edition, containing 2 discs comprised of 20 tracks within special packaging, will also be sold as a physical product exclusively at Amazon.com. AmazonMP3 will be the exclusive retailer for the 20-track, super deluxe digital edition.
All physical CD formats, including the vinyl edition, are now available for pre-order at Amazon.com (www.amazon.com/sting).
For more information, visit:
www.sting.com
GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING AND WORLD RENOWNED CELTIC FAMILY GROUP CLANNAD TEAM UP WITH ARC MUSIC/NAXOS TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM NÁDÚR AVAILABLE TODAY, SEPTEMBER 24
Clannad, the legendary Irish family group responsible for the timeless hit “Harry’s Game”, which was prominently featured in the 1992 blockbusterPatriot Games and a Volkswagen commercial, make a welcome return to the U.S. with their new album, Nádúr (pronounced: Ned-dur), the Gaelic word for Nature. The album will be available September 24th on ARC Music/NAXOS. View the Nádúr EPK below:
Nádúr is a fitting title as the album sees the family band – siblings Moya, Ciarán and Pól Brennan and their twin uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan – back together on record as the full original line-up for the first time since the 1989 albumPast Present. Following Pól’s departure after that album, the band continued to release four highly successful albums – the last being the Grammy-winning albumLandmarks in 1998. In an extended hiatus over the following decade, there was only the rare occasional performance.
In 2011, Clannad were invited to perform a series of concerts at Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral. With the intimate and historic nature of these shows, Pól was invited along to be part of the event. The concerts were a huge success and they were filmed and recorded for a DVD and CD which were released following airings on PBS in America. This event provided the catalyst for the five of them to start seriously considering a new album but before going into the recording studio they decided to embark on an extensive tour across North America and Europe. This time together on the road helped shape the ideas they had forNádúr.
"The fact that we'd toured quite extensively in the months leading up to recording really had an effect on the album,” says Moya Brennan. “Playing live across various countries gave us a really good indication of not just what we wanted from a new album but also what the audience out there wanted to hear. We feel this record touches on every aspect of our forty year career. Every track is different yet every track is pure Clannad".
Indeed, Nádúr is a very natural progression to the Clannad sound, which has been to fuse the traditional with the modern, the past and the future, with stunningly beautiful results.
It is perhaps best summarized by the Irish author Colum McCann, who concludes his liner notes for the album by saying, “Clannad – the family – have taken the local and made it universal once again. Is é seo nádúr dhúchasach ...this is their inherent nature.
“It will always be so.”
Track listing:
1. Vellum
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8. Tobar an tSaoil
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2. Rhapsody na gCrann
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9. A Song in your Heart
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3. TransAtlantic
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10. A Quiet Town
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4. Turas Domhsa chon na Galldachd
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11. Hymn (To Her Love)
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5. Brave Enough
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12. Setanta
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6. The Fishing Blues
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13. Cití na gCumann
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7. Lámh ar Lámh
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Extra track for iTunes exclusive: River Of Dreams
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| First Aid Kit, photo credit: Annika Berglund |
FIRST AID KIT
OCTOBER US TOUR DATES
HARDLY STRICTLY BLUEGRASS & WAY OVER YONDER FESTIVALS,
RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL SHOW SUPPORTING RODRIGUEZ
DRUNKEN TREES DEBUT EP VINYL REISSUE OUT OCTOBER 15TH, 2013
VIA WICHITA RECORDINGS
First Aid Kit return to the US for a handful of tour dates in October, marking Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg's first stateside shows since the fall of 2012. The four-show run will launch with a headlining show at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, CA on October 3rd ahead of two festival plays at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco on October 4th and Way Over Yonder Festival in Los Angeles, CA on October 6th. First Aid Kit will wrap up the tour by supporting Rodriguez at the historic Radio City Music Hall in New York, NY on October 10th. A current itinerary is below.
On October 15th, First Aid Kit's debut EP Drunken Trees will be reissued on vinyl in the US via Wichita Recordings. The EP will be pressed on 180 gram white vinyl and include an accompanying digital download card. The Drunken Trees EP was first released by The Knife-owned label Rabid in 2008 when the Söderbergs were only teenagers, and re-released by Wichita Recordings in 2009.
2012 was a breakout year for First Aid Kit around the January release of their acclaimed Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Monsters Of Folk)-produced sophomore album The Lion's Roar, which has sold over 75,000 copies in the US to date. In addition to two North American headlining tours featuring multiple sell-out shows, the duo and their band performed at the Coachella, Newport Folk, Lollapalooza, and Austin City Limits festivals. The Lion's Roar reaped First Aid Kit praise from the press, including American Songwriter, BUST, Entertainment Weekly, Foam, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, NPR, Nylon, Paste, Pitchfork, Relix, Rolling Stone ('Band To Watch:' "The songs shuffle styles, but the voices transcend genre distinctions - you may not hear a more beautifully sung record this year"; "Emmylou" chosen as #10 'Single of the Year' 2012), Rookie, SPIN, Teen Vogue, Under The Radar, and Village Voice, among others, and the duo made their US television debut on Conan in April 2012. First Aid Kit also released an exclusive iTunes Session and limited edition deluxe package of The Lion's Roar - featuring additional tracks as well as a DVD of live on-the-road documentary Follow You Down and music videos for three album tracks, among other items - in September and October of last year.
First Aid Kit tour dates:
OCT. 3 BIG SUR, CA HENRY MILLER LIBRARY
OCT. 4 SAN FRANCISCO, CA HARDLY STRICTLY BLUEGRASS
OCT. 6 LOS ANGELES, CA WAY OVER YONDER FESTIVAL
OCT. 10 NEW YORK, NY RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL*
* supporting Rodriguez
"The Lion's Roar" official video: http://youtu.be/gekHV9DIjHc
"Emmylou" official video: http://youtu.be/PC57z-oDPLs
"Blue" official video: http://youtu.be/oRxZK17iCdI
"Wolf" official video: http://youtu.be/Czj7SyPNRto
JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR
THE NEW LIVE ALBUM: SONGS FROM THE ROAD
2-Disc CD/DVD Set
U.S. Release Date on Ruf Records:
November 12, 2013
ATLANTA, GA - One night. One shot. No safety net. If there was pressure afoot as Joanne Shaw Taylor walked onstage at The Borderline club in the U.K. on May 12, 2013, then the bandleader used it as rocket-fuel, channeling the vibe into the set of her life. Now, that explosive performance is captured on Songs From The Road: a live album with the soul power to jostle the greats off the podium, coming November 12 on Ruf Records.
“I’m really pleased with it,” says Joanne. “It’s everything I wanted it to be.”
As the latest release in Ruf Records’ acclaimed Songs From The Road series, this CD/DVD set is the live album her fans have been screaming for. “The timing is good,” agrees Joanne. “My fans, and especially the blues fans, have been asking me for a live album for a while now. I’m glad that we waited, and didn’t do it two years ago, because hopefully I’ve improved. We’ve done three studio albums now, so I think the live album ties all the albums together.”
A seasoned road-warrior since 2009’s debut album, White Sugar, Joanne has nothing to fear from the stage, but the demands of her diary meant Songs From The Road presented a logistical challenge. “We only had one chance to do it because of my schedule,” she reflects. “If I’d have played terribly – which fortunately I don’t think I did – it would have been unusable. It worked out really well, and I think a big part of that is because the fans were so good.
“We wanted to do it in London,” Joanne continues, “and the reason for picking The Borderline was because I wanted something small and intimate. I grew up being inspired by those small Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins club gigs, and I wanted to have that same ‘everyone-packed-in-like-sardines’ vibe – as opposed to a big production and losing some of that intimacy.”
If the crowd brought the atmosphere, then Joanne brought the songs. While some bands merely sleepwalk through the hits live, Songs From The Road finds the bandleader pulling her back catalogue around by the hair, ensuring that from early favorites like Going Home to current roof-raisers like Soul Station, these songs are very different beasts to the studio originals.
“I think there’s a very different energy live: that’s probably the main thing,” she notes. “I’m a live guitar player. There’s definitely more guitar in my live show than on any of the albums. I tend to lose all sense of control once I get onstage and everything is twenty beats faster than it’s meant to be! And there were no overdubs, so what you hear is what you get.”
Sold out venues. Screaming crowds. Her name in lights. Joanne Shaw Taylor never anticipated any of that at the start. Back then, she was just an ordinary “black country” schoolgirl, bored with the disposable pop she heard on the radio growing up in her native Birmingham, England, rifling through her father’s record collection for sunken treasure, and falling for albums by SRV, Albert Collins and Jimi Hendrix.
“Guitars were lying around the house,”recalls Joanne. At 13, she’d picked up her first electric and practiced every minute.
At 14, she defied her teachers to play at the legendary Marquee and Ronnie Scott’s clubs in London, and began to overcome insecurity about her voice. “I never set out to be a singer,” she modestly told Classic Rock. “I’ve always had a deep voice. I think it came from my influences as a kid. When I was singing to records, I was listening to Albert Collins and Freddie King. When I was a teenager, I became a big rock fan: Glenn Hughes, Skin, Doug Pinnick. I wouldn’t get far on The X Factor.”
Joanne left school at 16 and ran straight into her big break, as a twist of fate directed her demo into the hands of Eurythmics icon Dave Stewart after a charity gig.
Reflecting on his first impressions, Stewart recalls that “she made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.” His call the following day proved the start of a lasting friendship, with Joanne seeking his advice on the industry and even accompanying his DUP supergroup across Europe in 2002.
Stewart gave Joanne her first deal, but when the label ran into financial trouble, it gave her a chance to regroup and work on her songwriting. Until then, original material had perhaps been a neglected side of her talent.
“I never really wrote songs until I was 21.” Suddenly the dam broke. In 2008, Ruf won the rush for Joanne’s signature, and soon she was working with veteran producer Jim Gaines (Carlos Santana, Johnny Lang, SRV), bassist Dave Smith and drummer Steve Potts on the songs that became her debut album, White Sugar.
“We recorded it in this little backwater town in Tennessee,” she recalls, “and if we needed a break, we’d walk to the shop and buy root beer.”
When White Sugar dropped the following year, taking in gems like “Bones” and “Kiss The Ground Goodbye,” it turned out the press had a sweet tooth, with Classic Rock crowning it Blues Album Of The Month and Guitarist noting “she plays with more attitude and flair than most – massive potential here.”
Soon enough, the buzz was building, with Joanne both raising her profile supporting Black Country Communion, and honing her craft on 2010’s Diamonds In The Dirt. This second album was another step up, from the explosive lead breaks on “Can’t Keep Living Like This” to the heavier influence of her adopted Detroit hometown on the crunching country-blues of “Dead And Gone.” Not bad, considering she had written the material in just two days and recorded it in less than a fortnight: “It’s the dreaded second album curse. You have ten years to do the first one, and ten days to do the second!”
By then, she was unstoppable, with Diamonds In The Dirt proving not only a classic record, but also a skeleton key to every door in the industry. Having received a nomination for “Best New Artist Debut” at the auspicious British Blues Awards for White Sugar, Joanne scooped consecutive wins in the “Best British Female Vocalist” bracket at both the 2010/2011 events: a haul that cements her position, as Blues Matters put it, as “the new face of the blues.”
Since then, it’s gone stratospheric, with Joanne breaking into the notoriously hard-to-crack U.S. market, beating the stereotypes of her age and gender, and being watched by 17 million viewers as she played an angel-winged solo during Annie Lennox’s set at Queen Elizabeth’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee Concert. That same summer gave us Almost Always Never: a bar-raising third album that found Joanne dodging expectations, writing the songs her muse dictated, and diving in at the deep end with just her talent to keep her afloat.
Recorded in Austin, Texas, those 12 cuts on Almost Always Never moved from the savage Les Paul solos of “Soul Station” and the strutting hooks of “Standing To Fall,” to the failed relationship achingly depicted on “You Should Stay, I Should Go” and the title track’s refrain of “You crash, you burn/you live, you learn.” She’d never sounded more open and honest. “I’ve loved every album I’ve made for many different reasons,” reflects Joanne. “But I’m so proud of these songs. It’s the perfect and truest example of who I am as an artist to date.”
Maybe so, but if you only know Joanne Shaw Taylor as the songwriter and studio magician, then it’s time you heard Songs From The Road. Released in November, 2013 on Ruf Records, it’s a candid snapshot from the road that makes your front room feel like the front row. “That night was just really good fun,” she reflects. “And I think that translates on the album.”
Joanne Shaw Taylor - Official Website
Joanne Shaw Taylor - Official Facebook
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