Billy Joel will headline the first day of the two-day ATLive festival, which will take place November 11-12 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Joining the Piano Man on the November 11 bill will be Lionel Richie and Sheryl Crow. Day two of the festival will be a country-themed show headlined by Chris Stapleton,featuring Miranda Lambert, Dwight Yoakam and Katie Pruitt.
Tickets for the third annual ATLive event go on sale Friday, August 12, at 10 a.m. ET at Ticketmaster.com, while presale tickets will be available starting this Wednesday, August 3, at 10 a.m. ET.
Joel currently has six other U.S. concerts lined up this year — August 11 in Pittsburgh; September 23 in Houston; and August 24, September 9, October 9 and November 23 at Madison Square Garden as part of his ongoing monthly residency at the famed New York City venue.
Bruce Springsteen paid a visit to the Asbury Park, New Jersey club The Wonder Bar on Sunday to help the historic venue celebrate the 20th anniversary of its renovation and reopening.
NJ Advance Media reports that The Boss showed up at the club several hours before a concert by original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez and his current group The Wonderful Winos.
A video posted on Wonder Bar manager Debbie DeLisa‘s socialmedia sites shows Springsteen, with his arm around her, sending out a special message in honor of the milestone.
“It is the 20th anniversary of The Wonder Bar,” Bruce declares in the clip. “I just want to congratulate the Wonder Bar on being an Asbury Park institution and bringing so much love and character to our town.”
Springsteen then embraces DeLisa, who thanks Bruce “for everything that you do.”
Stan Goldstein, who gives Springsteen-related tours of the Jersey Shore, told NJ Advance Media that he spotted Springsteen hanging out at The Wonder Bar for a while on Sunday with late E Street Band sax player Clarence Clemons‘ son Jarod and also taking a stroll on the Asbury Park boardwalk.
“He hasn’t been around Asbury Park, it’s the first I’ve known of it happening in a few years,” Goldstein said. “It’s a big deal, that he’s hanging out in Asbury Park enjoying himself on a Sunday in the summer.”
Bruce has been known to occasionally give surprise performances at The Wonder Bar, the most recent being a July 2015 appearance at a show by his friends Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, during which he played for nearly two hours.
Joe Walsh‘s sixth annual VetsAid benefit concert is scheduled for November 13 in Columbus, Ohio and will feature a reunion of his old band James Gang — with drummer Jim Fox and bassist Dale Peters — for what’s being billed as their final performance or “One Last Ride.”
The event’s lineup also features Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, Nine Inch Nails, The Breeders and The Black Keys.
Walsh, who spent part of his youth growing up in Columbus and went to college at Ohio’s Kent State University, wanted to create an all-Ohio bill for the concert, which this year will specifically support Ohio veterans and their families.
The James Gang and NIN formed in Cleveland, The Black Keys are from Akron, The Breeders hail from Dayton, and Grohl was born in Warren.
“It all started in Ohio,” says Walsh. “Picking up my first guitar as a kid in Columbus set me on a musical journey to Kent State, Cleveland and then the world. Now it is a great privilege and humbling opportunity for me to share the stage once again with my original James Gang buddies and with this absolutely incredible group of Ohio rock legends.”
The 2022 VetsAid concert will be held at Nationwide Arena in Columbus. Tickets go on sale this Friday, August 5 at 10 a.m. ET atTicketmaster.com. Pre-sale tickets will be available on Wednesday, August 3, starting at 10 a.m. ET. For more info, visitVetsAid.org.
This marks the first time since 2019 that the show will be held live and in person after being aired as a streaming event in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So far, VetsAid has distributed $2 million in grants to charities that support veterans and their families.
Over the years, Melissa Etheridge has flirted with Broadway: In 2011, she played the role of St. Jimmy in the musical American Idiot, and in 2019, it was reported that she was writing the music for a stage version of the movie Mystic Pizza. It turns out, she’s also got plans to bring her own songs and story to the Great White Way.
Unlike, say, Jersey Boys, which tells the story of The Four Seasons through the group’s songs, or Mamma Mia!, which uses ABBA‘s songs as part of an original story, Melissa tells ABC Audio that what she has in mind was inspired by something one of her musical heroes did.
“The first thing will be more like Springsteen on Broadway,” Melissa says, referring to the hugely successful run of shows Bruce Springsteen did on and off from 2017 to 2021. “It will be me. It’ll be my songs and my story.”
So, did Melissa just go to see Bruce and figure, “I can do that?” She laughs, “Exactly. I went, ‘I can do that, and I can do it my own way.'”
She explains, “I mean, he did a very specific thing and my story is certainly different. And the way that I would unfold it is going to be different too.”
Melissa has shows scheduled through September — including her destination festival Etheridge Island over Labor Day weekend — but the Broadway plan is looming.
“There might be something at the end of this year; we’ll see,” she teases.
The singer/guitarist was the de facto leader of The Dead, inspiring an entire subculture of “Deadheads” who’ve embraced the San Francisco area group’s mix of rootsy, laid-back music and psychedelic jams, as well as the counterculture lifestyle the band espoused.
Garcia co-wrote most of The Dead’s songs, usually in collaboration with lyricist Robert Hunter, including well-known tunes like “Casey Jones,” “Ripple,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Truckin’,” “Bertha,” “Alabama Getaway” and “Touch of Grey.”
Outside of The Grateful Dead, Garcia was involved in a variety of solo and side projects, including the Jerry Garcia Band, the bluegrass group Old and in the Way and as a duo with mandolinist David Grisman. He also lent his talents to many other artists’ recordings.
Garcia was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Grateful Dead in 1994. When he declined to attend the ceremony, his bandmates jokingly brought a life-size cutout of him to the event.
Jerry died of a heart attack on August 9, 1995, at age 53. Since his passing, Garcia’s surviving Dead bandmates have carried on his legacy by continuing to perform and record — together, individually and in varying combinations.
In 2015, Garcia was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Hunter, who died in 2019 at age 78.
A variety of events have been scheduled to commemorate Garcia’s milestone birthday. Among them, three Major League Baseball teams will be hosting Jerry Garcia-themed celebrations at their home games in the coming days — the New York Yankees on Monday, the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday and the Boston Red Sox on August 9.
Jimy Sohns, lead singer of the 1960s garage-rock band The Shadows of Knight, died Friday after suffering a stroke earlier in the week. He was 75.
Sohns’ death was announced by the band’s official Facebook page, which shared a note from Sohn’s daughter, Rachael, that reads, “My dads is gone at 5:10pm! He wired for me to go outside and left us! Fly high my rock n roll [ruler].”
Conor Mahoney, who manages the Shadows of Knight Facebook page, added, “Absolutely devastated. My thoughts go out to Jimy’s family and friends at this time. My best friend is gone, and I will miss running this page with him. His legend will live on forever.”
The Shadows of Knight are best known for their hit cover of the Van Morrison-penned 1964 Them classic “Gloria,” which reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. The Chicago-based band also scored a top-40 hit with their follow-up single, a cover of Bo Diddley‘s “Oh Yeah.”
The band released three albums during its original 1960s heyday. Sohns continued to lead various lineups of the group over the years.
In 2006, The Shadows of Knight took part in the “Little Steven” Van Zandt-organized Underground Garage Tour with The Romantics and also released a new studio album called A Knight to Remember.
In 2020, The Shadows of Knight released a new single — “Wild man”/”I Ain’t Got You” — on Little Steven’s Wicked Cool Records label that featured Sohns recording with the band’s early guitarist Jerry McGeorge for the first time since the ’60s.
In March, Sohns released his first solo single, a collaboration with former Pretty Things keyboardist Jon Povey and the Italian psychedelic group Technicolour Dream.
The deluxe CD version of America co-founder Gerry Beckley‘s latest solo album, Aurora, was released Friday. Coinciding with the disc’s arrival, a capsule collection of T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts showcasing the singer/songwriter’s photography is now available.
Beckley partnered with New York-based fashion designer Todd Snyder to create the limited-edition apparel collection, which features three T-shirts and three hoodies, each boasting a different photo taken during Gerry’s travels. The pieces can be purchased now at ToddSnyder.com and select retail stores.
Beckley is a longtime photography enthusiast, and while touring, he began snapping a photo each day and emailing it to family and friends. Some of Gerry’s photos are included in the packaging of the physical versions of Aurora.
“Gerry is this total style maven — cars, clothes, eyewear. He’ll email me out of the blue to suggest a classic item we should make, and his photographs are an extension of this unique point of view,” says Snyder, who’s a longtime friend of Beckley’s. “He makes normal things look artful, and his pictures are modern takes that get us to reconsider places we might otherwise take for granted.”
As previously reported, Aurora is an 11-song collection that Beckley recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic at his two home studios — in Sydney, Australia, and Venice, California. The album’s tracks include tunes that began as unfinished demos and scratch recordings that date back as far as the early 1970s, as well as new songs written during the past two years.
One of the tunes, “Tickets to the Past,” was co-written by Gerry’s co-founding America bandmate Dewey Bunnell, who also sings on the track.
Aurora was released on digital formats last month, while a deluxe vinyl version is due at a later date.
Neil Young has made available a live version of his 1995 song “Throw Your Hatred Down,” recorded with his backing group Promise of the Real while on tour in Europe in 2019, as an advance digital track from his upcoming album Noise & Flowers.
“Throw Your Hatred Down” originally appeard on Mirror Ball, Young’s 1995 collaborative album with Pearl Jam.
As previously reported, Noise & Flowers will be released on August 5 on audio and video formats. The album and film, which were recorded during Young’s nine-date 2019 European tour with Promise of the Real, are dedicated to Neil’s longtime friend and manager Elliot Roberts, who died at age 76 just a couple of weeks before the trek was launched.
Noise & Flowers, which can be preordered now, will be available on CD, as a two-LP vinyl set, via digital formats and as a deluxe CD/two-LP/Blu-ray collection featuring the film on the Blu-ray disc. In addition, a standalone Blu-ray can be purchased exclusively at Young’s Greedy Hand Store. The film was co-directed by Young and his wife, actress Daryl Hannah, under their Bernard Shakey and dhlovelife pseudonyms.
Those who purchase Noise & Flowers at the Greedy Hand Store will receive a high-res digital download of the album from Young’s Xstream Store at his Neil Young Archives website.
Here’s Noise & Flowers full track list:
“Mr. Soul”
“Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”
“Helpless”
“Field of Opportunity”
“Alabama”
“Throw Your Hatred Down”
“Rockin’ in the Free World”
“Comes a Time”
“From Hank to Hendrix”
“On the Beach”
“Are You Ready for the Country”
“I’ve Been Waiting for You”
“Winterlong”
“F***in’ Up”
On Wednesday, David Lee Roth posted a previously unreleased solo song called “Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway” on his official website and YouTube channel. The song pays homage to Van Halen, and now Roth’s main collaborator on the track, one-time DLR Band guitarist John 5, has debuted a music video for the tune.
The clip, which you can watch now on John 5’s YouTube channel, features archival performance footage, home movies and rare photos of Van Halen during the band’s early years.
In a message accompanying the video, John 5 writes, “Honored to be a part of this amazing piece of history. When I wrote the song with Dave, I knew it was something very special. I created this video on the tour bus as a tribute with [director] Mike Savage. Very proud to share it with everyone.”
As previously reported by the Van Halen News Desk fan site, “Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway” is one of a number of songs that Roth recorded with guitarist John 5 several years ago. Over the last couple of years, Diamond Dave has released a number of other tunes from those sessions, including “Somewhere over the Rainbow Bar and Grill,” “Giddy-Up!,” “Low-Rez Sunset” and “Pointing at the Moon.”
“Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway” is available now via select streaming services.
A limited-edition vinyl reissue of David Bowie‘s 1977 album “Heroes”will drop on October 14 in celebration of its 45th anniversary. Pressed on gray vinyl, the reissue will only be available at brick-and-mortar stores.
“Heroes,” Bowie’s 11th studio album, was released in October of ’77 and is best known for its classic title track, which was one of four songs Brian Eno co-wrote on the record. It was released as a single and became a minor hit in the U.K. Though it didn’t chart in the States, it’s become one of Bowie’s most enduring and widely covered tunes. The album peaked at #3 in the U.K. but only reached #35 in the U.S.
The “Heroes” album was the second of what is known as Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy,” which also includes 1977’s Low and 1979’s Lodger, but it’s the only one that he recorded entirely in the German city. The album, which Bowie co-produced with frequent collaborator Tony Visconti, features the same group of musicians who recorded Low, with the addition of King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp.
Also on October 14, the mini album Live in Berlin (1978) will be released via digital formats for the first time. The eight-song collection, which was recorded at a May 1978 concert at the Deutschlandhalle in West Berlin, was previously only available as a limited-edition orange vinyl LP, sold in 2018 at the “David Bowie Is…” exhibition in Brooklyn, New York.
The performance included versions of three songs from the “Heroes” album, as well as the Bowie hits “Fame” and “Rebel Rebel.”
Here’s the full “Heroes” track list:
Side 1
“Beauty and the Beast”
“Joe the Lion”
“‘Heroes'”
“Sons of the Silent Age”
“Blackout”
Side 2
“V-2 Schneider”
“Sense of Doubt”
“Moss Garden”
“Neuköln”
“The Secret Life of Arabia”
And here’s the complete Live in Berlin (1978) track list:
“‘Heroes'”
“Be My Wife”
“Blackout”
“Sense of Doubt”
“Breaking Glass”
“Fame”
“Alabama Song”
“Rebel Rebel”
