 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
This musictoday feature highlights interesting tours and shows that our staff thinks you may enjoy. The Big 10 announce this week’s important large shows, while our Individual Picks aim to introduce some great acts that are "flying under the radar," so to speak.
Click on each artist’s name to see a complete list of tour dates! And please email us with any comments or events that we may have missed. Thanks, and enjoy the shows!
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
The Big 10:
It's surely been a tough holiday season for Kid Rock following the death of his good friend and sidekick Joe C. Hopefully, getting out on the road for a major tour will be just the thing to help the pimpalicious one heal and move forward. If not, his upcoming tour, set to kick off Wednesday, January 17, at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, South Carolina, will be a tough stretch of work to make it through.
SnoCore begins its twin tours this week, trotting out a jam band line-up and a heavy rock line-up, both sure to warm up winter's frost when they come to your town. The SnoCore Icicle Ball Tour features Galactic and Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, with Drums & Tuba and Lake Trout completing the bill, depending on where you live. That grooving combination of bands contrasts sharply with the SnoCore Rock Ball Tour, which gets right down to mosh pit with Kittie, Fear Factory, Slaves on Dope, Boy Hits Car, and Union Underground. Both tours should please the eclectic tastes of the snowboard and ski crowd it was designed for.
Is this great or what? Two superstar performers for the price of one…well, it's not exactly cheap, but at current rates, it seems the $150 ticket price is a bargain (alarming, but true), especially when it gets you Elton John and Billy Joel playing together. The two artists bring their Face to Face tour to a town near you starting January 19 at San Diego State's Cox Arena. After making lucrative stops up and down the West Coast, John and Joel close out their highly publicized tour in an appropriate place—Las Vegas—where the duo holds a two-night stand at the MGM Grand Hotel. Start saving your pennies now, kids!
Charity makes for strange bedfellows once in a while, and the upcoming Wyclef Jean Foundation Benefit more than proves this rule. Wyclef will be joined by reggae superstar Third World, rock legend Eric Clapton, diva Whitney Houston, R&B sensation Destiny's Child, and 14-year old Welsh opera singer Charlotte Church. Um, something sure to please everyone, we guess, though there is very little holding the whole thing together save for Wyclef's buoyant personality and stage presence. It all goes down January 19 at New York's Carnegie Hall.
It's rare these days to see Seattle's Mudhoney hit the road, so even when the group only has a couple of dates planned, we feel we have to add them to our staff picks. Time has done the inevitable trick of breaking up almost every original grunge band, leaving Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, and the Melvins as the only representatives still around from that industry-shaking scene of the late '80s and early '90s. Mudhoney was one of grunge's true pioneers, though they were left far behind groups like Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains when it came to actual chart success and record sales. That doesn't change the fact that Mudhoney, who plays two shows this week, made their mark on rock music and deserve a few more years of adulation.
Richard Ashcroft, the former frontman of Brit-rockers The Verve, will finally make it to the States after series of cancellations and subsequent delays last year. Most probably remember Ashcroft as the rock-star-in-training who penned "Bittersweet Symphony," a song that took the U.S. by storm in 1997. Although The Verve no longer exists, Ashcroft has found success as a solo artist. The talented songwriter will be touring in support of his first solo release, Alone with Everybody, beginning January 19 at the Double Door in Chicago, Illinois. The three-week tour, which focuses mostly on the East Coast, comes to a close February 7 at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Ex-Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles is an accomplished singer and songwriter in his own right, contributing a song to Jimi Hendrix's 1970 Band of Gypsys record, leading his own soul/rock groups since the late '60s, and producing one of the most successful television commercial campaigns of all time—the California Raisins ads from the mid-'80s. Miles takes his latest project out for a two-week East Coast jaunt, beginning January 16 at Black Eyed Sally's in Hartford, Connecticut. After stops in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, Miles and his crew wind up in Florida; there they will play a show in West Palm Beach and a January 30 finale at Jacksonville's Freebird. Buddy Miles' official Web site has the singer heading to Europe after his U.S. stint, with performances in Germany, Belgium, and Italy.
Traditional Celtic band the Chieftains hit the road for an extensive three-month U.S. tour, commencing January 15 at Denver, Colorado's Paramount Theatre. The outing winds through the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast, with the curtains drawn for the final time St. Patrick's Day, March 17, at New York's historic Carnegie Hall. The group's March dates also include stops at famed venues Boston Symphony Hall and Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center.
The unique sounds of Donna the Buffalo will be on display in January, as the band blazes a trail through the eastern U.S. The group's short trek kicks off January 18 at the Lion's Den in New York City. Out of the Lion's Den, the six-piece upstate New York outfit heads to the nation's capital, followed by stops in Maryland, Ohio, and North Carolina. DTB concludes its jaunt close to home with a February 3 gig at the Tralfamadore Café in Buffalo, New York. Donna the Buffalo will spend the Spring and Summer playing various festivals, including MerleFest (April), the Telluride Bluegrass Festival (June), and its own Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival (July).
It has been a bizarre ride for the once defunct, then reunited, later retired, now regrouped hip-hoppers The Pharcyde. The group, whose original four members is now down to two, takes to the road in support of a new album, Plain Rap, released late last year. The tour began last week and will span the West Coast and midwestern states for 13 dates before the group heads to England for a short five-date run.
| |
|
|
|
|
