Rock’n'roll icon, guitar genius, interactive progenitor, consummate singer/songwriter and record producer Todd Rundgren, will get up close and personal with four rare UK concerts in October 2011. Dates include HMV Ritz, Manchester on Saturday 1st October, and The London Jazz Café on Monday 3rd October, Tuesday 4th October and Wednesday 5th October.

Tickets are on sale from 10:00 on Tuesday 28th June. Ticket Hotline: 08700 603 777, www.seetickets.com.

This year’s intimate dates mark Rundgren’s first UK shows since 2010’s sold-out London Hammersmith Apollo concert where he performed the entirety of his 1973 milestone album
A Wizard, A True Star. These will be Todd’s only UK concerts in 2011.

Todd will be performing “An Evening with Todd Rundgren”, universally described by the US press as “The greatest hits tour his fans have been waiting to see for years”.

ROCK’S ORIGINAL RENAISSANCE MAN

An acclaimed record producer, composer, songwriter, and recording artist, Rundgren is widely regarded as the acknowledged godfather of the marriage of music and multimedia. Having founded and fronted The Nazz, the quintessential `60′s power-pop psychedelic band, in 1969 he left that band to pursue a solo career, recording his debut offering, the classic Runt.

It was 1972′s seminal Something/Anything?, on which he played all the instruments, sang all the vocal parts, and acted as his own producer, that catapulted Todd into the superstar limelight. Among Rundgren’s impressive 50+ production projects are albums by Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Psychedelic Furs, XTC, Grand Funk Railroad, Hall & Oates, and Meat Loaf’s perennially multi-platinum debut “Bat Out Of Hell.”

A Wizard, A True Star. The title of Todd Rundgren’s 1973 solo album aptly sums up the contributions of this multi-faceted artist to state-of-the-art music. As a songwriter, video pioneer, producer, recording artist, computer software developer, conceptualist, and, most recently, interactive artist (re-designated TR-i), Rundgren has made a lasting impact on both the form and content of popular music.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Rundgren began playing guitar as a teenager, going on to found and front The Nazz, the quintessential `60′s cult group. In 1969, he left the band to pursue a solo career, recording his debut offering, the legendary Runt. But it was 1972′s seminal Something/Anything?, on which he played all the instruments, sang all the vocal parts, and acted as his own producer, that catapulted Todd into the superstar limelight, prompting the press to unanimously dub him ‘Rock’s New Wunderkind’.

It was followed by the landmark albums Hermit of Mink Hollow,  A Wizard, A True Star, and the hit singles – I Saw The Light, Hello It’s Me, Can We Still Be Friends, and Bang The Drum.

In 1974, Todd formed Utopia, an entirely new approach to the concept of interactive musicianship, and embarked on an extensive round of touring and recording. Standout Utopia offerings included Oops! Wrong Planet, Adventures in Utopia, and Oblivion. Utopia combined technical virtuosity and creative passion to create music that, for millions, defined the term "progressive rock."

Rundgren’s myriad production projects include albums by Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Psychedelic Furs, Meatloaf, XTC, Grand Funk Railroad, and Hall and Oates. Rounding out his reputation as rock’s Renaissance Man, Rundgren composed all the music and lyrics for Joe Papp’s 1989 Off-Broadway production of Joe Orton’s Up Against It (the screenplay commissioned by The Beatles for what was meant to have been their third motion picture). He also has composed the music for a number of television series, including Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Crime Story.

Early last year Rundgren performed his iconic 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star in concert in its entirety for the first time ever, and recently did the same with a double bill: Todd and Healing.  His latest studio album, Todd Rundgren’s Johnson, a collection of classic Robert Johnson songs, was released in America in April.

In 1998 Todd debuted his new PatroNet technology which for the first time allows fans of a musical artist to subscribe directly to the artist’s musical output via the Internet. This caps a long history of groundbreaking early multimedia "firsts", including:

• 1978: The first interactive television concert, broadcast live over the Warner/QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio (the home audience chose each song in real time during the concert by voting via QUBE’s 2-way operating system).
• 1978: The first live nationally broadcast stereo radio concert (by microwave), linking 40 cities across North America.
• 1979: The opening of Utopia Video Studios, a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art facility. The first project produced by Todd there is Gustav Holst’s The Planets, commissioned by RCA SelectaVision as the first demonstration software for their new videodisc format.
• 1980: Creation of the first color graphics tablet, which was licensed to Apple and released as The Utopia Graphics Tablet.
• 1981: Time Heals, the first music video to utilize state-of-the-art compositing of live action and computer graphics (produced and directed by Todd), becomes the second video to be played on MTV (after Video Killed the Radio Star).
• 1982: The first live national North American cablecast of a rock concert (on the USA Network), simulcast in stereo to over 120 radio stations.
• 1982: The first two commercially released music videos, one of which was nominated for the first-ever Grammy awarded for “Best Short Form Video” in 1983.
• 1992: The release of “No World Order”, the world’s first interactive record album on CD-i. Also the first commercially available music downloads via CompuServe.
• 1994: The release of “The Individualist”, the world’s first full-length Enhanced CD.
• 1995: The world’s first interactive concert tour. The London Forum shows were filmed and released on DVD.
• 1998: Launches PatroNet, the world’s first direct artist subscription service

Ruby Electric is a unique album that features a collection of songs divided into two different volumes. All the songs were recorded with some of Sayce’s favourite musicians and friends. The album is currently #2 in Amazon UK’s official Blues pre-sale chart.

Volume 1, recorded at Sunset Sound and Lion’s Share, Hollywood, was produced by Dave Cobb and mixed by Mark Rains. The songs were recorded live in the studio through a collection of vintage equipment and musical instruments, utilizing Cobb’s signature recording and production techniques.

Volume 2, recorded on tour in France, Germany, and Holland in 2010, was mixed by the legendary recording engineer Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin) in April 2011.

“I’d been looking for the right circumstances to release all of these songs,” says Sayce.  “The studio tracks on Volume 1 remained unavailable internationally. We remixed and re-mastered the tracks, picked some alternate takes, and included a live version of Daydream Tonight (the latter originally appeared on Sayce’s 2010 album Innerevolution). As soon as we paired the songs up with the recent live recordings from last year’s European tour, the album became Ruby Electric.

Ruby Electric features Kenny Aronoff (drums), Joel Gottschalk (bass), Fritz Lewak (drums), and Fred Mandel (piano, organ), and as previously mentioned, Melissa Etheridge signs a duet with Sayce on the first single Let The Love In. The album was produced and recorded by Eddie Kramer, Dave Cobb, and Mark Rains.

Says Sayce – “I hope you feel the passion, joy, excitement and honesty that went into each of these performances, both in the studio and live in concert.”

Philip Sayce was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, and grew up in Toronto, Canada, where his family moved to when he was two years old. He grew up in a musical household and was exposed to his parents’ eclectic record collection that included Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder and Dire Straits. When his parents took him to an Eric Clapton concert, he was awestruck. He was instantly drawn to the guitar.

At the age of 15 he was playing guitar in his first band. He soon became a regular fixture on the Toronto club scene, where his fluid soloing and guitar skills won him many fans. With an insatiable appetite for jam sessions at the likes of Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto, Sayce began rapidly distilling his own guitar style and tonal palette from a melting pot of influences that included Clapton, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Cray, and in particular Stevie Ray Vaughan, to whom he is most often compared.

As a teenager, Sayce was held in such high regard that, after jamming on stage with one of his heroes, guitar player and fellow Canadian Jeff Healey, he was invited to join Healey’s band. After three-and-a-half years with Healey, playing gigs at the Montreux Jazz Festival and around the world, Sayce felt it was time to move on.

In 2001 he moved to LA and joined Uncle Kracker, and was with the band when they had their massive US No.1 Drift Away. He starred in and wrote the music for the short film Cockroach Blue, directed by the award-winning Robert Crossman, which received high acclaim when it was shown at the Woodstock Film Festival. Then, in 2003, Grammy and Oscar winner Melissa Etheridge came calling (“very talented – like Stevie Ray Vaughan,” she enthused), and he enjoyed an “awesome” time playing and recording with her band until 2008.

During his stint with Melissa, in 2005 Sayce released his debut solo album, Peace Machine, using what he describes as Etheridge’s “shit-hot” band. Recorded live in the studio, it’s full of raw, high-energy, low-maintenance retro-blues delivered with startling punch and real style, and showcases Sayce as soulful, powerfully expressive vocalist as well as a supremely talented guitarist. The album includes a stunning version of the Neil Young classic Cinnamon Girl, the song that always makes an appearance in Sayce’s live shows.

With his jam-club years in his pocket, live is where Sayce shines brightest.  His band performs with a potent mixture of power and finesse, and as the focal point he regularly pulls the trigger and unleashes visceral, unforgettable guitar solos.

April 2010 saw the release of, Innerevolution, Philip Sayce’s most recent studio album recorded with keyboardist Fred Mandel (Queen, Supertramp, Elton John, Alice Cooper), bassist Joel Gottschalk and drummer Ryan MacMillan (Matchbox 20). Some of the songs co-written with Richard Marx, Mike Bradford, Dave Cobb and Marti Frederiksen, establishes Philip Sayce not only as one of the finest blues guitarists, but also as a musician, singer and songwriter with tremendous talent.

There’s the driving, exhilarating opener Changes, with its guitar-motif nods to Hendrix and The Beatles; the broken-heart questioning of Are You Ready, and the thrown-it-all-away regret of the pulsing Bitter Monday. The funked-up, get-down Little Miss America, on which Sayce pushes his voice to the edge, and at the other end of the intensity scale is a diamond among other gems on the album: Daydream Tonight, a mid-tempo, slow-burning ballad delivered with passion.
More varied than Peace Machine, and overall more sophisticated and more polished in terms of songwriting, sonics and performance, Innerevoltion is a stylish, engaging and thrilling album which brought Sayce to the attention of a lot of new fans of guitar music.

In July 2011, Sayce will release the album Ruby Electric, featuring a duet with Melissa Etheridge on the song Let The Love In.

The album is a combination of studio and live recordings (the latter were recorded in France, Germany and Holland during Sayce’s 2011 Innerevolution European tour).  Sayce is currently in Nashville recording his next studio album which is set for March 2012 release.

Joanne Shaw Taylor – UK dates.

When you first see Joanne Shaw Taylor play the experience comes with the uncomfortable (to some) realisation that one of the last few bastions of male dominance is being ripped up by a young woman with an axe. Guitar heroes are almost universally men and this is never more so than in the worlds of rock, rhythm and blues and blues. JST has put paid to that well and truly. When I say she is good, I mean REAL GOOD. She has technique, feel and a sense of accomplishment that comes with being a genuine guitarist and I say this as a blues guitarist with thirty years gigging experience.

Nothing will ever persuade me that the best guitarist are the million notes an hour merchants like Satriani, Petrucci and Van Halen – not that I don’t like and admire them, it’s just that I prefer axe-men.. and err women who offer something more than just a Mixolydian blur, which is why when I absolutely, positively need to chill with a malt and music, RnB will always find its way to my deck. When I say RnB, I mean the original and the best, not the manufactured bastard child of some marketing man’s fevered imagination that postures as RnB these days. But before I digress into a rant about nicking genres, let me tell you about Joanne Shaw Taylor.

Joanne has been around a while for a youngster, having been gigging since her teens, but as she’s matured, so has her playing and singing… and what a voice it is. There are female blues tonsileers a plenty, but how many of them can sing AND play this good? Very few, I reckon. She has a rich, raw edged voice that is reminiscent of Joplin at her very best, and even though her range is limited, she uses it to good effect in the context of quite a wide range of Blues styles. Similarly, her guitar playing is a melange of routines that are stitched together in a very pleasing patchwork quilt of sound without stretching the boundaries of the art. What Joanne does is plain and simple: she makes great music and does it in a comprehensively adept manner. This is music to listen to rather than be in awe of; it’s aural pleasure without cerebral encumbrances. This is music from the heart, by the heart and for the heart. It’s savvy blues.

Make no mistake, JST is going to be a star of the Blues boards for a long time to come. Indeed, she has the potential to be a legend of British Blues. Realising that potential is going to take a lot of shoe leather around the concert halls of the world, and her latest tour itinerary is testament to her determination to make that happen.

If I were you, I’d book your tickets now – next time around they’ll be hard to come by. RockRebels will be at the Bristol gig – we’ll let you know how it goes.

Tour dates

17 May 2011 – The Robin 2, Bilston, Wolverhampton, UK
18 May 2011 – Buxton Opera House, Buxton, UK with Glenn Hughes
20 May 2011 – The Caves, Edinburgh, UK
21 May 2011 – O2 Academy, Glasgow, UK
22 May 2011 – The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, UK
23 May 2011 – York Opera House, York, UK with Glenn Hughes
25 May 2011 – O2 Academy, Newcastle, UK
26 May 2011 – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, UK
27 May 2011 – O2 Academy, Sheffield, UK
28 May 2011 – Manchester Academy, Manchester, UK
29 May 2011 – The Tunnels, Bristol, UK
31 May 2011 – O2 Academy, Islington, London, UK

Formerly the front-man of Preston School Of Industry, and guitarist, singer and founding member with Pavement, Scott Kannberg returns to our turntables with his first solo album, The Real Feel, credited to his long-running nom-du-rock, Spiral Stairs.

“I guess Spiral Stairs is my name now,” he laughs. “It had been so long since the last Preston School Of Industry album, it made sense to call this a Spiral Stairs record. Everybody knows me as Spiral, it’s weird when someone calls me ‘Scott’. I’m not sure anyone knows who Scott Kannberg is.”

Despite the pseudonym, however, The Real Feel is, lyrically, Spiral’s most personal and honest recording yet, the songs’ loose, late-night vibe, soulful ache and charmingly vulnerable optimism very much shaped by his experiences in the years between the last Preston School Of Industry album, 2004’s Monsoon, and today.

an album heavy with haunted blues and bruised soul

It’s an album heavy with haunted blues and bruised soul, with a soused late-night ambience that perfectly fits both its scuffed and sad-eyed ballads, and its more strident rockers. ‘Wharf-Hand Blues’, closing the first side, is a standout, with stricken slide guitar and ghostly backing vocals, and Spiral’s smouldering, sad refrain of “What was wrong for you / might’ve been right for me”; the lyrical, pedal steel-gilded country of ‘A Mighty Mighty Fall’ is a sunnier glide, and easily charms. Foot-stomping opener ‘True Love’ and the brooding, blistering ‘Subiaco Shuffle’ rock out with the ragged glory of Neil Young and his Crazy Horse, unkempt and heartfelt, while the sunshine jangle of ‘Cold Change’ offers more of the lilting, beguilingly-unkempt pop Spiral’s spent a career perfecting.

“People who’ve heard the album told me they weren’t expecting it to sound the way it does,” says Spiral. “It’s been a few years since the last album, and I’ve heard a lot more music in that time, and been influenced by it. I was listening to Richard Thompson’s Shoot Out The Lights a lot, and mid-period Fleetwood Mac, and Bob Dylan records from when he was in his mid- to late-thirties. I was listening to those records at home, with my guitar in my hands, and thinking, I want to write songs with that same weird vibe.”

While the album sounds like the work of a group playing in simpatico, camped out in the studio together some way past midnight, the recording sessions actually spanned months and oceans. Spiral first recorded the bare tracks with some of his former bandmates in PSOI, including bassist Matt Harris and drummer Darius Minwalla, before hooking up with friend and fellow Seattle-ite Jon Auer (The Posies, Big Star), who helped Spiral record further overdubs and background vocals, and added touches of organ and mellotron to the proceedings. Next, Spiral took the tapes with him to Australia – where, of late, he’s been spending his winters – and recorded further instrumentation and backing vocals with friends out there. (He has become so enamoured with Down Under that he will soon be emigrating there, and marrying his Australian fiancé).

Spiral ascribes the five year delay between Monsoon and The Real Deal to the personal upheavals he experienced after touring the last Preston School Of Industry album, experiences which fed the mood and lyrics of these new songs. “I split up with my wife,” he says, “and went through some dark times here in Seattle. I had some songs written, but I just never really got out of my doldrums enough to get it together. It’s weird how five years can go by so quick: a lot of shit went on.”

Spiral wrote the songs for The Real Feel during this period, in Seattle and in Australia. “I was just playing music with these guys, making up these songs. It’s a more personal record than I’ve made before; they’ve all been personal, but this one’s pretty dark. The song material was very emotionally-tinged, very personal, all about what’s been going on with me. I knew that I wanted to deal with what was going on, what with my break-up, and the lost years after that. I wanted to deal with that in the songs.”

The result is an album that’s dark and potent, vulnerable and unflinchingly honest, an album unafraid to rock and to roll. Spiral describes it as having an “Australian” sound, and says it reminds him of the Bad Seeds and the Go-Betweens. Cathartic and powerful and uplifting, it’s the sound of Spiral making sense with that which makes no sense, making peace with his demons, and celebrating the life that follows. Certainly, despite the emotions that fuelled the record, making The Real Feel was an experience that proved entirely positive for Spiral.

“This is the best record I’ve ever made,” he says. “I spent so long on it that, once I finally listened back to the completed record, it was exactly how I wanted it all to be; that was a good feeling. There were moments in the last five years when I thought I didn’t want anything to do with music anymore… But you hear a good record, and it pumps you back into it again. It takes a lot to make a record, but it feels so great, and makes me want to make another, real quick.”

Elevation - new single

Razoreyes…

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