Chris Cornell, not with Soundgarden, to tour acoustic in April
January 19, 2011 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Those expecting Chris Cornell and his reunited band Soundgarden to graduate beyond one-off reunion shows and launch a full-fledged tour can keep waiting. Cornell announced today that he will indeed be touring the country in April and May of this year – just not with Soundgarden. Instead the frontman will perform a series of solo acoustic dates kicking off in Austin, Texas on April 1st before hitting the north and south ends of both coasts.
Cornell’s tour, which is being referred to as Songbook, will see the singer perform solo acoustic renditions of songs spanning his career, ranging from Soundgarden to Audioslave to his various solo albums and everything in between. Despite announcing they were reuniting a little more than a year ago, playing a few gigs (including Lollapalooza), and releasing a compilation record last year, Soundgarden’s second go-round has yet to evolve into a full scale tour or any newly recorded material. In the mean time, however, fans of the band can see Cornell performing some of Soundgarden’s classics in a different setting. Here’s more on the Soundgarden reunion.
Carlos Santana, Chris Cornell, Gavin Rossdale, and Jonny Lang foreshadowed all this
September 22, 2010 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment
Sometimes all you have to do in order to figure out what an artist is going to do next is listen to what they’re telling you. I’m reminded of this as I sink my teeth into the new Santana album Guitar Heaven. A year and a half ago (was it really that long ago?), Carlos Santana and I sat down for an interview which found him at something of a career crossroads. His decade of pairing up with pop vocalists had run its course, and so I asked him what might be next for him musically. And while he gave no hint that his next album would be full of reinterpretations of rock classics fronted by famous rock vocalists, he did specifically mention that he wanted to work with violinist Yo-Yo Ma. Sure enough, the lead single from Guitar Heaven, a cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, features Yo-Yo Ma.
Ask any guitar virtuoso who does their own singing whether they’d choose to continue singing or continue playing the guitar if they could only do one or the other going forward, and nearly all of them will pick the guitar without hesitation. But when I posed that question to blues virtuoso Jonny Lang earlier this year, he had no hesitation in his answer: he’d rather keep singing. So it’s no surprise, then, that the new Lang-Santana collaboration on Guitar Heaven sees Carlos playing and Jonny singing.
But it’s not like you have to sit down and have a conversation with an artist to see some of these things coming. Chris Cornell, who’s been a solo artist on and off since the breakup of Soundgarden more than a decade ago, appears on Guitar Heaven to cover Whole Lotta Love. But even as Chris Cornell was working his way through his third solo record, his hair kept getting longer. Whether he was already consciously leaning in that direction or not, the hair screamed “I’m preparing myself for a Soundgarden reunion” – and sure enough, guess who just reunited?
And then there’s Gavin Rossdale who provides the vocals for Bang A Gong on Guitar Heaven. When I sat down with Gavin in early 2008, at the very beginning of his solo career, he flat out told me that he had wanted his then-forthcoming solo debut Wanderlust to be a reunited Bush album, but that Bush’s guitarist wasn’t interested in touring for the record, so Gavin decided to make it a solo album instead. Here in late 2010, Bush has reunited to make a new Bush album, but without their original guitarist. In light of what Gavin had to say the last time around, no surprise there.
What to know where an artist or a band is going to be in a year or two? There’s never any predicting with any certainty. But if you want a decent clue, you don’t need to read the tea leaves – all you have to do is watch and listen.
Soundgarden concert tonight in Seattle
Those who’ve been waiting twelve years (and that includes us) to finally see a reunited Soundgarden in concert won’t have to wait as long as originally expected. While the band has already confirmed a headlining slot at August’s Lollapalooza 2010, Billboard is reporting that Soundgarden will perform a show tonight in its native Seattle, at the Showbox at the Market.
Still no word on whether there will be a new album, or what the band’s 2010 tour plans might look like beyond the Lolla gig, but the mere fact that Soundgarden is performing somewhere in the world tonight leaves us with good feelings. The band is also giving away free tickets via its Twitter page. If any fans make it into the show, be sure to let us know how it went.
Update: a few minutes after posting this, we received additional information about tonight’s show directly from Soundgarden itself: “Please leave your camera and video recorders in the dungeon. There will be a VERY LIMITED number of tickets available. All tickets sold on line. No tickets available at the door. All tickets are will call only.”
photo courtesy SoundgardenWorld.com
Soundgarden, Lady GaGa, Green Day to headline Lollapalooza 2010
April 6, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Soundgarden, who announced its reunion on New Years Day of this year, has finally announced a scheduled live performance – and it’s a doozy. According to official site SoundgardenWorld.com, the band will be one of this year’s headliners at Lollapalooza, scheduled to take place in early August in Chicago. Lollapalooza’s official site confirms the news, and drops two more bombshells for headliners: Green Day and Lady GaGa. The three headliners are rife with Lolla history, as Soundgarden joined the Lollapalooza tour in 1992 and again in 1996 (Chris Cornell’s Audioslave made a return engagement in 2003), Green Day headlined in 1994, and in a sign of just how quickly she’s risen from obscurity, Lady GaGa performed on Lollapalooza’s BMI side stage in 2007.
This year’s Lolla lineup also includes Arcade Fire, Phoenix, The Strokes, Cypress Hill, The Black Keys, MGMT, Spoon, and dozens of others. Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell will host “Spinning At Perry’s” during which he will perform himself.
Interestingly missing from the Lollapalooza 2010 lineup: Chicago’s own reincarnated Smashing Pumpkins, and Farrell’s own Jane’s Addiction.
The full Lollapalooza lineup can be found here.
Lady GaGa appeared on the cover of Beatweek Magazine in 2009. You can read our full cover story interview with Lady GaGa here.
Soundgarden reunion in 2010
January 1, 2010 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment
Many of us had been hoping that the calendar-end of this largely wasted opportunity of a decade might symbolically signal a return to the cultural riches of the one that came before, but it’s doubtful that anyone was expecting such a return to happen in so soon – or so literally. As the clock was counting down to 2010 last night, Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell used his Twitter account to inform the world of his intentions to get the old band back together:
The 12 year break is over & school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!
While his post includes a link to new official website SoundgardenWorld.com (did the band even have an old official website?), the new page includes no details as far as tour plans, whether the reunion will involve a new album, or even which band members will be participating (bassist Ben Shepherd replaced Hiro Yamamoto in 1990, and drummer Matt Cameron has been a member of Pearl Jam since 1998).
Although Cornell had always deflected questions about a possible reunion by stating that he liked how the band ended its long run the first time around, the door for a return seemed to be wide open after the recent rebirth of fellow Seattle rockers Alice in Chains (despite the death of singer Layne Staley) along with recent re-ups from other 90′s rock bands like Stone Temple Pilots and even Creed.
Despite the lack of details given regarding the Soundgarden reunion, and the casual nature of the announcement (on a holiday no less), the news appears to be generating significant interest and discussion; although Cornell hasn’t made any additional Twitter posts since last night, the word “Soundgarden” has been been used on Twitter today at a rate of about once every ten seconds.
More news when there is any.
UPDATE: Twitter user Jared Rose, who currently possesses the (never been active) @Soundgarden username on Twitter, has publicly offered the name to Chris Cornell, stating “I didn’t think you’d ever need it!”
