Five modern classic Bruce Springsteen albums are coming to vinyl February 21. 18 Tracks, Live In New York City, The Rising and Devils & Dust will be pressed on LP for the first time since their original releases between 1999 and 2005; additionally, Live In Dublin, recorded with The Sessions Band, will be available on vinyl for the first time ever here.
Big Sugar Releases “The Better It Gets” The First Single From Their Upcoming New Album ‘Eternity Now’
Platinum-selling band Big Sugar drops “The Better It Gets” today, the first track from their brand-new album Eternity Now set for release on March 27, 2020. This anticipated new track comes five years after their last album and Big Sugar is thriving with a new wave of energy, enthusiasm and optimism.
Grammy-nominated Gordie Johnson applies his signature 1970s thump and psycho-acoustic dub effects throughout the production of Eternity Now. Recorded and mixed at his Soundshack Studio in Austin, Texas, the album was written and composed entirely by Gordie and his wife Alex, resulting in a deeply personal record. Each track is rooted in his history of depression, addiction, self-destruction and redemption. After band-member defections and dealing with the death of Rasta elder and longtime band member Garry Lowe in July 2018, Eternity Now as an album and “The Better It Gets” as the first single, represent the next chapter in their personal lives and that of Big Sugar.
“‘The Better It Gets’ is an anthem to the power of neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to build new neurological pathways. I’ve lived it,” states Gordie Johnson. “If the message in our song can help even just one other person out there, it gives me inspiration to keep howling into the microphone.”
And howl he does. You can hear the magic flying between Johnson and his diverse troupe, this is a new kind of magic: a shiny alchemy that complements their hard-won transformation. A leaner, cleaner sound that swings from Tejano border rock to prog and psychedelia thanks in part to a guest appearance by Alex Lifeson of Rush on the title track. Gordie Johnson’s Big Sugar includes longtime friend and bassist Big Ben Richardson, keyboard and percussionist Alex Johnson, Rey Arteaga a master of Afro Cuban rhythms on congas, and Reggae drummer Richard Brown.
In the 90s Big Sugar emerged clad in Hugo Boss suits as the antithesis to the grunge esthetic with a unique combination of Jamaican rhythms, blues tonality and heavy rock aggression. They dominated the airwaves and highways with songs like “Diggin A Hole”, “The Scene”, “Turn The Lights On” and “Roads Ahead”. Their roots-rock-reggae style has built a loyal following, earning Big Sugar a Road Gold Award as they continue to sell out concerts across North America. Gordie Johnson’s guitar playing continues to influence a new generation of young guitarists as well as peers. To quote lyrics from the first single off the upcoming new album Eternity Now, “The better it gets, the easier it gets to get better.”
Big Sugar will be announcing upcoming North American tour dates in the weeks to come.
Vanessa Carlton Announces Sixth Studio Album Love Is An Art; Premieres Single ‘the Only Way To Love’
Vanessa Carlton is excited to announce her much-anticipated sixth studio album, Love Is An Art, will be available March 27, 2020 via Dine Alone Records. Tying into the album announce, Vanessa unveiled her single “The Only Way To Love” now streaming HERE. Earlier this week, Vanessa unveiled the first leg of her Love Is An Art Tour featuring special guest Jackie O with tickets available now. The U.S. headlining dates kick off on April 2, 2020 and run throughout the month, with one Canadian stop in Toronto at The Drake on April 9.
Album and concert ticket bundles are available through Vanessa’s fan ticketing site and include a discount when purchasing a signed CD or vinyl along with a concert ticket. Signed albums will be available for pick up night of the show at participating venues at the merch stand. $1 for each ticket sold through Vanessa’s ticketing site will benefit the Nashville Ballet. “This tour is a seismic shift for me…” says Carlton. “I am bringing out a full band for the first time in 15 years! My goal is to bring the enormous landscape in the album to life, every night. The highs, the lows, the dreams in between. I am also thrilled to be sharing the stage with the fantastic songwriter Jenny O who will be opening all shows.”
Vanessa gave fans a first taste of the upcoming album with the track and music video for “Future Pain”. In the video, directed by Joshua Shoemaker (Margo Price, Hurray For The Riff Raff), Vanessa plays three versions of herself, a changing person within an unchanging tradition of having a drink alone at the bar. She sings, “I’ve got nothing to lose and nothing to gain but future pain,” paying homage to past mistakes of her former self while foreshadowing a familiar future.
Love Is An Art, produced by Dave Fridmann (MGMT, Flaming Lips), explores the eternal seesaw that is human connection: the push, the pull, the balance, the bottoming out. It’s that constantly evolving nature of love, expectations and compassion that Carlton analyzes from all angles on Love Is An Art, from romantic, to parental, to the friends that hold us up and the leaders that repeatedly let us down.
“Love is the energy you put out into the world,” says the Nashville-based Carlton, who was inspired in part by the 1956 book The Art of Loving by philosopher Erich Fromm, and by stories and struggles both in her interior world and the world around her. “And it can be so incredibly messy at times.”
Love Is An Art finds Carlton reckoning with toxic relationships (the confessional “Miner’s Canary”), eternal partnership (“Companion Star”) and the children who fill the world with love and grace while politicians fill their pockets (the passionate “Die, Dinosaur,” written after the shootings in Parkland, Florida). And true to Carlton’s skill as both a lyricist and an instrumentalist, the arrangements on Love Is An Art tell these tales as vibrantly as the words themselves: piano parts that speak of rage and tenderness, synths that burst and glow like dawn.
The album doesn’t just explore connections – it was also born of one. Carlton wrote the album with the acclaimed Nashville-based singer-songwriter Tristen, camped out and working while her daughter napped. “This record is about being out of my comfort zone,” says Carlton. “What’s going to happen when we do things that people assume are not naturally a match, like working with Dave Fridmann? I loved the idea of working with someone who’s known for a palette that isn’t associated with me, but it was a fit the second we started working together. Or what could happen when I sit with another writer, and just collaborate?”
The result is an extremely dynamic LP filled with sticky melodies and haunting phrases as well as experimental constructions: super high highs, super low lows, and song structures that break the mold from the expected. Unlike her previous, critically-acclaimed 2015 album Liberman, which Carlton describes as having a calming, almost meditative palette, Love Is An Art reads, and sounds, “red.” Huge. Passionate. The color of a beating heart.
Carlton has constantly challenged both herself and the expectations that surround her throughout her lengthy, accomplished career: she attended both the School of American Ballet and Columbia University, and was discovered as a singer-songwriter/pianist when a cassette tape demo was given to legendary music impresario Ahmet Ertegun. With her debut single “A Thousand Miles,” Carlton soared to the top of the Billboard charts and garnered multiple Grammy nominations, though that song is only a small fraction of the body of work and artistic identity she’s developed since then, ever evolving and growing as a performer and songwriter. In the summer of 2019, she pushed that even further, making her Broadway debut as Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
Love Is An Art Tracklisting:
1. I Can’t Stay The Same
2. Companion Star
3. I Know You Don’t Mean It
4. Die, Dinosaur
5. Love Is An Art
6. Future Pain
7. Back To Life
8. Patience
9. The Only Way To Love
10. Salesman
11. Miner’s Canary
Love Is An Art Tour
April 2 – St. Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill
April 3 – Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room
April 4 – Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theatre
April 5 – Chicago, IL @ City Winery
April 6 – Chicago, IL @ City Winery
April 8 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark
April 9 – Toronto, ON @ The Drake
April 10 – Homer, NY @ Center for the Arts of Homer
April 11 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Jergels
April 13 – Cleveland, OH @ Music Box Theatre
April 14 – Washington, DC @ Birchmere
April 16 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
April 18 – Boston, MA @ Sinclair
April 19 – New York, NY @ City Winery
April 20 – Annapolis, MD @ Rams Head Tavern
April 22 – Charlotte, NC @ The Underground
April 23 – Atlanta, GA @ City Winery
April 24 – Atlanta, GA @ City Winery
April 25 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
Ron Sexsmith Announces Canadian Tour
Canada’s most accomplished singer-songwriter, Ron Sexsmith has returned with new music. The single, “You Don’t Wanna Hear It” is the first single from his forthcoming album HERMITAGE, Ron’s first album since his move from his longtime home of Toronto to a more bucolic life in Stratford, Ontario. Ron partnered with producer Don Kerr to create HERMITAGE; the two set up in Ron’s living room to record the album, with Ron playing all the instruments except the drums. This album marks Ron’s 25th year as a recording artist.
Describing the new single Ron says, “It’s a song about someone who has their nose all out of joint about something and are not in the mood to hear the truth.”
In addition to the new music, Ron will be heading out on a Canadian tour in May of 2020. The 7-date run will bring him from Victoria to Ottawa, with stops in Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Toronto.
Ron Sexsmith is one of Canada’s greatest singer songwriters. He has collaborated with the likes of Daniel Lanois, Mitchell Froom, Ane Brun, Tchad Blake, and Bob Rock. His songwriting appears on albums from Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris and Feist. He has been awarded 3 Juno Awards, having been nominated 15 times including 8 nods for Songwriter of the Year.
At 56, Canada’s foremost well-heeled troubadour has made a most unlikely discovery: domestic bliss. All it took, it turns out, was leaving the city he loved.
Following 30 years as an emblem of Toronto’s west end, Ron Sexsmith reluctantly uprooted to the serene hamlet of Stratford, Ontario, and the melodic, playful, theatrically vivacious Hermitage came gushing out.
“Almost immediately after arriving here I just felt this kind of enormous stress cloud evaporate and all these songs started coming,” recalls Sexsmith. “I’d walk along the river every day into town and feel like Huckleberry Finn or something. It had a really great effect on my overall state of being.”
This new zen can be heard from the first moments of Kinks-esque album opener, “Spring of the Following Year,” as the serene sound of birds situate the listener into Sexsmith’s state of grace.
“We’d moved in the wintertime and I was imagining how pretty it was going to be in the spring,” he explains. “We have this sort of idyllic kind of existence — we have bunnies in the yard and are surrounded by trees on all sides, so we get tons of birds. Every morning I hear these cardinals and we had a duck in the yard; I’d never really noticed birds in Toronto.”
It’s not like he was planning to write his 16th long player as soon as he arrived, he adds. After all, Sexsmith was already quite busy turning his first novel, Deer Life, into a prospective musical. But when melodies as infectious as the Chi-Lights-inspired “You Don’t Want to Hear It” or the ear-worm inducing “Lo and Behold” entered his mind, he had to get them on record. Adding his signature mischievously astute worldplay (in “Dig Nation,” for example) to ground the album firmly in the Sexsmith oeuvre. Even the album’s title is a coy subversion of the 15 time Juno nominee’s own expectations upon arriving in Justin Bieber’s hometown. “I felt I’d reached the age where I could be a hermit finally, but it didn’t really work out that way,” he laughs.
Further reflecting Sexsmith’s new confidence, Hermitage is the first album on which he played nearly all the instruments, an idea he credits to producer and longtime drummer Don Kerr. “Don said ‘Why don’t you make one of those sort of Paul McCartney-type records?’ and it’s like a light bulb went on over my head,” he says. “That had never occurred to me.”
The result is the songwriter’s most self-assured collection, still charmingly subtle yet increasingly full of musical vigor, as on “Chateau Mermaid,” an ode to his own Stratford Graceland, or the surprisingly hopeful “Small Minded World,” (originally penned for the Addams Family film), in which Sexsmith croons, “Oh now don’t feel blue ‘cos they don’t get you, you’ll win this small minded world.”
“I think it’s a very upbeat album, lyrically,” he confirms. “It’s reflective of the sort of peacefulness that I’d recently felt. I’m getting more comfortable in my own skin.”
Tour Dates
May 3 – Victoria, BC – Alix Goolden Performance Hall
May 5 – Vancouver, BC – Rio Theatre
May 6 – Calgary, AB – The National Music Centre
May 8 – Saskatoon, SK – Broadway Theatre
May 9 – Winnipeg, MB – West End Cultural Centre
May 28 – Ottawa, ON – National Arts Centre
May 30 – Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall
A Live Performance Of Super Mario Music
The Super NES Band ensures that your feet – and hands – don’t stay still as they perform video game music using the actual tone generators classic consoles. Listen as they prime up for live medleys of tunes from Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario Land.
The ballet that incited a riot
Dive into the history and controversy of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, “The Rite of Spring,” which shattered the conventions of classical ballet.
Ballet is typically thought of as harmonious, graceful and polished— hardly something that would trigger a riot. But at the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” audience members were so outraged that they drowned out the orchestra. People hurled objects at the stage, started fights and were arrested. What caused this shocking reaction? Iseult Gillespie explains the controversy.
Lesson by Iseult Gillespie, directed by WOW-HOW Studio.
Award-Winning Contemporary Jazz Artist Fiona Ross Releases ‘Raw & Real’ New Single, “For My Dad”
Award-winning contemporary jazz artist Fiona Ross is out today with her newest single, “For My Dad” — available now! The second track on her newest album, Fierce and Non-Compliant, ‘For My Dad” is especially noteworthy for being one of two especially raw and pared-down productions as live, musically pared-back takes completed in a stairwell.
“I wanted the production to reflect the honesty of the song: raw and real,” Ross confides. “This album ended up being a really personal journey, and this song just happened. I was going through my songwriting book and found a list of chords. I had no idea what they were for, and they had no lyrics with them.
“So I turned them into a song for my dad.”
Based in London and resonating throughout the International scene, Ross is known for her illustrative songwriting and unique fingerprint of sound that blends a Latin Jazz with vintage club styles, plus a touch of Neo soul for good measure.
“Her style is poetic and the messages ooze with Millennial angst,” says Jazz Weekly of Ross’ heart-wrenching ballads and demonstrable lyricism.
The album is not merely a sonic sojourn into Ross’ songwriting journal, but also her jotter notes as an esteemed jazz journalist. “I’ve interviewed some incredible people,” she shares, including Maxine Gordon, Steven Gadd, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Terri Lynne Carrington, and Kyle Eastwood, to name a few. “I’d wanted to include some people on the album that have really inspired me as a person and as an artist. I was truly blown away they said yes.”
Latin GRAMMY Award-nominated bassist Snow Owl (Antonio Sanchez, Hans Zimmer, Elton John) is another particularly special guest on two tracks within Fierce and Non-Compliant — “Don’t Say” and “I Don’t Want It.” “We recorded two songs in a castle in Vienna,” Ross recalls of working with Internationally influential bassist. “(It was) the same castle Snow Owl recorded his album, The Blue Road, in.
“(There were) no real rehearsals, live takes…” she continues of the experience. “It was an overwhelming experience I will never forget.”
Adding to the roster is award-winning dancer, choreographer, and director — not to mention long-time friend of Ross’ — Adam Cooper. The duet was a throwback to their early school days when the pair would sneak out of class, break into the rehearsal room, and sing George Gershwin songs together, Ross recalls.
Featuring album artwork by Chris Cunningham and sleeve notes from renowned author, educator, and wife of Dexter Gordon, Maxine Gordon, other guests on Fierce and Non-Compliant include Kim Cypher, and Marco Piccioni.
Since the age of two, there has rarely been a day for the award winning vocalist, pianist, composer, producer, educator, and journalist that hasn’t entered around music. Storied highlights include fibbing her age at 14 years old to elbow her way onto jazz club stages throughout London to gig on weekends, and attending England’s prestigious Arts Educational School. As Head of British Academy of New Music for nearly a decade, Ross is credited for having a hand in training the likes of Ed Sheeran, Rita Ora, and Jess Glynne, to name a few.
“Finding the album cover photo of me as a child made me reflect on my childhood and my upbringing,” she continues of Fierce and Non-Compliant. “My parents always wanted me to be an artist, and my whole childhood was based on that. My mum wanted me to be the next Julie Andrews, even sending me to the same school, and my dad wanted me to be some kind of Judy Garland/Bette Davis combo.
“Now that I am finally doing my thing, I do find it sad that they can’t see it. My mum is still around, but in a home with Alzheimer’s, so… She’s not really here, in most ways.”
In her artistic career, Ross has previously released Black, White and a Little Bit of Grey, Just Me (and sometimes someone else), and A Twist of Blue.
But Fierce and Non-Compliant has been the contemporary virtuoso’s most challenging artistry yet, she says.
This album “has been a huge challenge on many levels,” Ross says, having completed all of the writing, arrangement and production, save for two of the 13 tracks produced by Snow Owl. “I have reached into places I have just not been before.
“The ‘fierce’ is coming from many different angles,” she continues. “It has been emotional!”
“For My Dad” and Fierce and Non-Compliant are available now.
Photo Gallery: Chris Janson at Niagara Falls’ Fallsview Casino
All photos by Mini’s Memories. You can contact her at minismemories@hotmail.com
My Next Read: Liberation Through Hearing by Richard Russell
For almost 30 years as label boss, producer, and talent conductor at XL Recordings, Richard Russell has discovered, shaped and nurtured the artists who have rewritten the musical dictionary of the 21st century, artists like The Prodigy, The White Stripes, Adele, M.I.A., Dizzee Rascal and Giggs. Growing up in north London in thrall to the raw energy of ’80s US hip hop, Russell emerged as one part of rave outfit Kicks Like a Mule in 1991 at a moment when new technology enabled a truly punk aesthetic on the fledgling free party scene. For most of the 90s identified with breakbeat and hardcore, Russell’s stewardship at the label was always uncompromising and open to radical influences rather than conventional business decisions.
Liberation Through Hearing (out April 2 through Hachette publishing house White Rabbit) tells the remarkable story of XL Recordings and their three decades on the frontline of innovation in music; the eclectic chorus of artists who came to define the label’s unique aesthetic, and Russell’s own story; his highs and lows steering the fortunes of an independent label in a rapidly changing industry, his celebrated work with Bobby Womack and Gil Scot Heron on their late-career masterpieces, and his own development as a musician in Everything is Recorded.
Always searching for new sounds and new truths, Liberation through Hearing is a portrait of a man who believes in the spiritual power of music to change reality. It is also the story of a label that refused to be categorised by genre and in the process cut an idiosyncratic groove which was often underground in feel but mainstream in impact.
The 1975 Announces North American Headline Tour
The 1975 unveiled plans for an extensive North American tour and shared “Me & You Together Song” – the new song from Notes On A Conditional Form. Named as one of 2020’s most anticipated albums by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and Vulture, Notes On A Conditional Form will be released on April 24.
Produced by Live Nation, the headline tour will kick off on April 27 at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in Houston, TX. The run will include shows at The Forum in Los Angeles (May 7), Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO (May 11) and New York City’s Madison Square Garden (May 26). Phoebe Bridgers and Beabadoobee will support on most dates. The 1975 will also be performing at numerous 2020 festivals, including Bonnaroo. See below for itinerary.
One dollar from each ticket sold will go to One Tree Planted, a non-profit organization that plants trees all over the world to fight climate change, protect biodiversity, empower communities and restore our planet. Their aim is to reforest the planet, one tree at a time.
“Me & You Together Song” debuted as the Hottest Record in the World earlier today when The 1975 performed it live on BBC Radio 1’s “Future Sounds with Annie Mac.”
Fans who pre-order Notes On A Conditional Form will instantly receive “Me & You Together Song” plus the opening track – “The 1975,” which features a Greta Thunberg monologue – and the singles “People” and “Frail State of Mind.” Placing “People” on its list of “The 100 Best Songs of 2019,” Pitchfork said, “The song is both a wake-up call and an admission of defeat—a balls-out strut to be played for the indifferent masses as the world burns.”
Notes On A Conditional Form is the follow-up to 2018’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, the Manchester-based quartet’s third consecutive album to top The Official U.K. Albums chart. In the States, it claimed the No. 1 position on the Top Album Sales, Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums charts. The single “Give Yourself A Try” has received a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Rock Song. The 1975 took honors for best British Group and British Album of the Year at the 2019 BRIT Awards and received two Ivor Novello awards – Songwriters Of The Year and Best Contemporary Song (“Love It If We Made It”).
After being named one of the best songs of 2018 by critics at The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Vulture and NPR, “Love It If We Made It” also appeared on the Best Songs of the 2010s recaps. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships and the band’s second studio album, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, were included on Pitchfork’s 200 Best Albums of the 2010s list.
The 1975 Spring 2020 North American Tour Dates
April 27 Houston, TX The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
April 29 Austin, TX Germania Insurance Amphitheater (formerly Austin360)
May 2 Dallas, TX Dos Equis Pavilion
May 3 El Paso, TX Don Haskins Center
May 5 Phoenix, AZ Gila River Arena
May 7 Los Angeles, CA The Forum +
May 8 Irvine, CA FivePoint Amphitheatre +
May 11 Morrison, CO Red Rocks Amphitheatre
May 13 Omaha, NE Baxter Arena
May 14 St. Louis, MO Enterprise Center
May 16 St. Paul, MN Xcel Energy Center
May 18 Milwaukee, WI Fiserv Forum
May 19 Columbus, OH Schottenstein Center
May 21 Toronto, ON Budweiser Stage
May 23 Washington, DC The Anthem
May 26 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
May 29 Hanover, MD The Hall at Live! Casino and Hotel
June 2 Pittsburgh, PA Petersen Events Center
June 3 Cleveland, OH Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
June 5 Virginia Beach, VA Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater
June 6 Charlotte, NC Spectrum Center
June 8 Jacksonville, FL Daily’s Place
June 9 Miami, FL Bayfront Park Amphitheater
June 11 Atlanta, GA Infinite Energy Center *
June 12 Manchester, TN Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival * +
Phoebe Bridgers will be direct support on all dates except *
Beabadoobee will be support on all dates except +