To accompany this month’s Uncut (Take 181, June 2012), out now, which features the Bonnie “Prince” Billy/Palace icon fielding questions from fans and musicians, here’s an illuminating Album By Album piece with Will Oldham, talking to Andrew Mueller, from Uncut’s April 2009 issue. “I feel more confident about things now,” he says. “Which frees up space for me to feel insecure about a whole new range of stuff…”
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Josh Tillman had had enough. Enough of Seattle, enough of his alter-ego J Tillman (the name under which he released a number of solo albums), enough of his relationship, enough even of Fleet Foxes, the band he’d drummed with since 2008. So he “blew everything up”, filled his van with hallucinogenic mushrooms and headed for California, where he moved into a shack in Laurel Canyon and began writing a novel.
Duran Duran, Snow Patrol, Paolo Nutini and Stereophonics will all play a huge show in London's Hyde Park this summer to mark the start of the Olympics.
Paul Simon has insisted that he was no regrets over the recording of his album Graceland in South Africa.
Simon was widely criticised for travelling to the country and making the 1986 with South African musicians, for effectively breaking the cultural boycott of the country due to its racist Apartheid regime.
When he first toured the UK with The Blasters, in 1981 or thereabouts, Dave Alvin was a swaggering young yahoo in rockabilly duds with a 50s quiff, attitude to spare and the unblemished good looks of someone still fairly new to what the rest of his life would become, the bulk of it since spent mostly on the road, playing whatever bar, club, juke joint, tavern, theatre, festival, hootenanny or hoe-down that would have him.
How to tell whether Jack White has brought his male or his female band along to a show? As the suited roadcrew prepare the stage at the Forum, one suspects the answer might be in the drumkit, sheathed until the very last moment; something about the positioning of Daru Jones’ bass drum, perhaps?
A couple of years ago when I was in Woodstock to interview Simone Felice and his band, The Duke & The King, Simone drove me around the mountains where he’d grown up, pointing out places of local and historical interest. These included Big Pink, the house on Parnassus Lane in West Saugerties, where Dylan and The Band recorded The Basement Tapes.
Blur are set to celebrate the 21st anniversary will a comprehensive reissue campaign.
All seven of the band's studio albums are to be re-released on July 30 in expanded Special Edition formats, each featuring a bonus disc of previously unreleased material, booklets, and more.
