Classic Rock News

The Eagles recently announced that they extended their Hotel California 2022 Tour with a run of six Canadian dates in September, and now comes word that “due to overwhelming demand,” the band also will be playing six more shows in the U.S. in November.

The newly added stateside concerts are scheduled for November 15 in St. Louis; November 17 in Des Moines, Iowa; November 19 in New Orleans; November 21 in Birmingham, Alabama; November 23 in Kansas City, Missouri; and November 25 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Tickets for their shows go on sale to the general public on Friday, August 19, at 10 a.m. local time, while a limited number of VIP packages will be available that day. Presale tickets will be available starting Thursday, August 18, at 10 a.m. local time. Visit Eagles.com for more information.

As previously reported, the tour features the Eagles performing their classic 1976 Hotel California album in its entirety, as well as other memorable tunes by the group, accompanied by an orchestra and a choir. The band’s current lineup includes founding singer/drummer Don Henley, longtime guitarist Joe Walsh, bassist Timothy B. Schmit, and country star Vince Gill on vocals and guitar.

The Eagles’ Canadian outing is plotted out from a September 9 concert in Toronto through a September 22 show in Vancouver. The band wrapped up a series of European dates in June and also mounted an extensive U.S. leg earlier this year.

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The 10th anniversary Global Citizen Festival will take place on September 24 in both New York City and in Accra, Ghana. And, as usual, the lineup is very star-studded.

The New York edition of the fest will be held in Central Park, and its bill will include Metallica, as well as Mariah Carey and Jonas Brothers. The event, which will be hosted by Global Citizen ambassador Priyanka Chopra Jonas. also will feature performances by Italian rockers Måneskin, pop singer Charlie Puth, Latin star Rosalía and country star Mickey Guyton, with more artists to be announced later.

Meanwhile, the concert in Accra, Ghana, will commemorate the 65th anniversary of African nation’s independence, and the show will feature such stars as Usher, SZA and H.E.R.

The concerts will be broadcast and streamed on ABC, ABC News Live, FX, Hulu, Twitter, YouTube and more. A primetime special, Global Citizen Festival: Take Action Now, will air September 25 at 7 p.m. ET on ABC.

As always, tickets to the concerts are free, and can be earned by downloading the Global Citizen app or visiting GlobalCitizen.org and taking action on the charity’s issues.

Global Citizen is calling for world leaders to work to fight extreme poverty and specifically is asking the leaders attending the United National General Assembly to invest $600 million in the future of women and girls worldwide, to close the annual $10 billion climate financing shortfall and to provide $500 million to help African farmers respond to the global food crisis.

According to Global Citizen, as many as 1.2 billion people now live in countries experiencing food, energy and financial crises and as many as 200 million more may experience extreme poverty by November if action isn’t taken now.

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Talking Heads guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison and former King Crimson guitarist/singer Adrian Belew are among the artists who have been added to the lineup of the 2022 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, which takes place from September 30 to October 2 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Harrison will be joined by Belew, who toured and recorded with Talking Heads during the early ’80s, and a group of backing musicians for a performance of the band’s classic 1980 album Remain in Light. Their set will also feature select other Talking Heads tunes, as well as songs from their respective solo careers.

Other artists confirmed to play the festival include Emmylou Harris, Marcus Mumford, Lucius and Buddy Miller. For more info about the festival, which is a free event, visit HardlyStrictlyBluegrass.com.

Ahead of their performance at the festival, Harrison and Belew will come together for a special concert and Q&A event celebrating the Remain in Light album on September 29 at the famed Los Angeles theater The Wiltern.

The show will begin with a conversation between Harrison, Belew and actress/singer Tawny Newsome about the Talking Heads’ heyday, and the group’s influence on the musical and cultural landscape. Harrison and Belew will then perform with a group of musicians that includes former members of the Brooklyn, New York-based band Turkuaz.

Tickets for the event are available now at LiveNation.com.

Harrison, Belew and members of Turkuaz previously gave a series of performances celebrating Remain in Light in 2021 and earlier this year.

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Blondie was scheduled to play a concert Wednesday night at the Paramount theater in Huntington, New York, but the show has now been postponed “[o]ut of an abundance of caution due to a recent positive COVID test,” according to a message on the band’s social media pages.

The performance has been moved to August 31, and a new show has been added at the same venue on September 1. Meanwhile, an August 12 concert at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut, which was to have marked the launch of a new U.S. leg of Blondie’s Against the Odds Tour, has been canceled.

Tickets that were purchased online for the Foxwoods show will be automatically refunded within 30 days, while tickets bought at the box office can be returned there for an immediate refund.

Blondie’s trek is now slated to kick off on August 14 at Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston. Most of the band’s upcoming shows through an August 27 performance in Chicago will feature veteran British punk group The Damned as the support act.

The Against the Odds Tour gets its name from Blondie’s upcoming box set, Against the Odds: 1974-1982, an expansive collection that delves into the early part of the influential New Wave band’s career. The box set will be released on August 26 and can be preordered now.

Meanwhile, in celebration of the Against the Odds collection, Blondie has launched a contest offering the chance to win one of 30 prints of photos of singer Debbie Harry taken by guitarist Chris Stein, all of which have been signed by Debbie and Chris.

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Steely Dan winds down its current U.S. trek, The Earth After Hours Tour, with a three-show residency this week at the historic Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees have revealed that each of the shows, scheduled for Wednesday night, Friday and Saturday, will feature them playing a different album from their catalog in its entirety.

Wednesday night’s concert will include a full performance of Steely’s Dan’s sixth studio album, 1977’s Aja, which features such classic tunes as the title track, “Deacon Blues,” “Peg” and “Josie.”

The August 12 show will feature a performance of the group’s entire fifth album, 1976’s The Royal Scam, which includes “Kid Charlemagne” and “Haitian Divorce.”

Bringing the residency, and the tour, to a close, the August 13 concert will feature a performance of Steely Dan’s 2021 live album Northeast Corridor, which was recorded during recent tours by the band at four venues in the Northeastern U.S. The album showcases renditions of some of Steely Dan’s most popular tunes, including “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “Hey Nineteen,” “Aja,” “Peg” and “Reelin’ in the Years.”

Opening all three shows with be jazz outfit The Dave Stryker Trio.

Visit TheCapitolTheatre.com to purchase tickets to the concerts and for more details.

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Queen‘s Brian May and ex-Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman are among the musicians who will participate in the 2022 Starmus festival, which is scheduled to take place in Yerevan, Armenia, from September 5 to September 10.

May co-founded the festival in 2011 with Dr. Garik Israelian, one of the world’s leading astrophysicists, who had helped Brian complete his PhD thesis in astrophysics in 2007. The event promotes science communication and music. It features speeches from Nobel laureates, astronauts, scientists and authors, as well as musical performances.

The festival seeks to inspire and educate a new generation of explorers and spark their interest in making new discoveries.

The sixth annual Starmus festival will mark May’s first visit to Armenia. In 1988, May participated in the Rock Aid Armenia campaign, a humanitarian project organized to help those affected by a devastating earthquake that hit the country.

Wakeman, who has taken part in several previous Starmus festivals, joins May on this year’s lineup of performers, which also includes contemporary prog-rock group Sons of Apollo and Armenian-American rock singer Serj Tankian of the band System of a Down.

For more information about the festival, visit Starmus.com.

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Former Yes frontman Jon Anderson just finished a U.S. tour with the Paul Green Rock Academy celebrating the 50th anniversary of his old band’s classic album Close to the Edge. Now the 77-year-old singer has revealed he’s got potential plans for a new trek with a different group of musicians.

Anderson tells ABC Audio that he recently discovered a group called The Band Geeks that he says “do very, very good interpretation[s] of Yes music.” The group is led by Richie Castellano, who’s been Blue Öyster Cult‘s bassist since 2004.

“It kind of freaked me out how good they were,” Anderson notes. “So last November, I got in touch with the bass player, and I said, ‘Guys, would you be interested in going out and doing epics and classics?’ And they said, ‘Yes! We would!'”

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer continues, “They actually sound just like Yes. It’s kind of wonderful and frightening at the same time. The bass player, perfect Chris Squire sound … [The] guitarist, perfect Steve Howe. And [the drummer sounds like] Alan White, Bill Bruford-y Alan White.”

Anderson says he’s hoping to put together a set that includes the epic “Close to the Edge,” as well as some lesser-known Yes songs, among them “The Ritual,” “The Gates of Delirium” and “Mind Drive.”

“These are really, to me, very special Yes pieces of music that got lost in the quagmire of life,” Anderson maintains. “And I think they’re brilliant.”

Anderson says he recently shot a video of him singing some Yes material with The Band Geeks that he’s planning to use “to promote the idea” of the tour. However, no official plans for the trek have been confirmed.

Find out more about The Band Geeks at RichieCastellano.com.

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Blondie has debuted a 1978 home recording of a previously unreleased song called “Mr. Sightseer” as the latest advance track from the band’s expansive forthcoming box set, Blondie: Against the Odds 1974-1982, which is due out August 26.

The song was recorded on a four-track reel-to-reel machine in the bedroom of singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. It will be featured on the B-side of a 7-inch vinyl single that boasts Blondie’s recently rediscovered rendition of The Doors‘ “Moonlight Drive,” which previously was made available as an advance track.

Reflecting on “Mr. Sightseer,” Harry says, “The lyric is not good at all … The song’s not too bad. It’s just a little simplistic. It didn’t ever get really developed or finished.”

As previously reported, Against the Odds focuses on the influential New Wave band’s original heyday and is fully authorized by the group.

The retrospective, which can be preordered now, will be available in multiple formats and configurations, including an eight-CD set and a Super Deluxe Collectors’ Edition that features 10 12-inch vinyl LPs, a 10-inch LP and the aforementioned vinyl single.

The vinyl box set features 124 tracks, 36 of which are previously unreleased. The collection contains remastered versions of Blondie’s first six studio albums — 1976’s Blondie, 1977’s Plastic Letters, 1978’s Parallel Lines, 1979’s Eat to the Beat, 1980’s Autoamerican and 1982’s The Hunter — and four LPs of outtakes, demos, remixes, alternate versions, home recordings and other rarities.

The box set also includes extensive liner notes and track-by-track commentary from current and former Blondie members.

Blondie: Against the Odds will also be available as a four-LP package, a three-CD set and digitally.

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Alice in Chains‘ discography just got a whole lot shinier, thanks to new Platinum certifications from the RIAA.

The grunge titans’ 1992 sophomore effort Dirt is now five-times Platinum in recognition of 5 million units certified, while their 1990 debut Facelift has been certified triple Platinum.

For Dirt, the new certification comes a month before the album will celebrate its 30th anniversary.

Meanwhile, AiC’s 1994 EP Jar of Flies has been certified four-times Platinum, and their 1996 Unplugged release is now double Platinum.

Additionally, a number of singles have earned new certifications, including the triple-Platinum “Man in the Box,” and the double-Platinum “Would?” and “Rooster.” The songs “Them Bones,” “Down in a Hole” and “Nutshell” have also been certified Platinum for the first time.

Alice in Chains’ most recent album is 2018’s Rainier Fog. The band is set to launch a U.S. tour this Wednesday, August 10, in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, alongside Breaking Benjamin and Bush.

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