From playboy to...playboy
Elvis Costello & the Impostors
with Allen Toussaint and his New Orleans Horn Section.
28th annual Playboy Jazz Festival
June 18 '06
Hollywood Bowl.
Los Angeles
California
« January 2006 | Main | March 2006 »
Elvis Costello & the Impostors
with Allen Toussaint and his New Orleans Horn Section.
28th annual Playboy Jazz Festival
June 18 '06
Hollywood Bowl.
Los Angeles
California
Elvis' 'official' site has been revamped , including this summary of recent activities -
( extract)
Elvis Costello and the Imposters made their South American concert debut in October 2005 with appearances in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires and had planned to record again in the spring of ’06. However, following the Katrina catastrophe, Costello was given the opportunity to perform at two benefit concerts with the great New Orleans piano player, songwriter and producer, Allen Toussaint.
They had first collaborated in the 1980’s, when Toussaint produced a commissioned version of Yoko Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice”. He later provided a wonderful piano part for “Deep, Dark Truthful Mirror”, a track on the album, “Spike”. Now, finding that Toussaint had temporarily re-located to New York City, following the loss of his home in the flood, Costello approached the Toussaint about a more substantial collaboration.
Following a short but intense period of writing they entered the studio with a combination of The Imposters lead by Toussaint at the piano and Steve Nieve playing Hammond B3. Toussaint’s regular guitar player, Anthony Brown and his horn section also augmented the band.
“The River In Reverse” was recorded in two weeks and produced by Joe Henry. Sessions began at Sunset Sound, Hollywood and concluded at Piety Street Studios in New Orleans. It is thought to be one of the first major recording project to take place in the city since the Katrina disaster. The album will include renditions of a number of songs from the Toussaint catalogue, including “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?” and “Freedom For The Stallion”.
The title track is one of the recent Costello compositions to feature a characteristic Toussaint horn arrangement. “Ascension Day” is Toussaint’s beautiful minor key variation of Professor Longhair’s “Tipitiina” with new words by Costello, while “International Echo” is the work of both songwriters.
“The River In Reverse” will be issued by Verve Forecast in May 2006.
A fan reports -
Mr. Costello was in rare form and high spirits last night in New York.
The event took place at Joe’s Pub (the tiny, intimate club venue attached to the Joseph Papp Public Theater in Greenwich Village) and was an industry preview sponsored by Verve (the label of their upcoming collaboration, The River in Reverse). The staff at Joe’s said that only 20 standing-room-only tickets were released to the general public, and the remainder of the audience consisted of guests invited by Verve and the performers (when he took the stage, the jovial Mr. Costello thanked those who had paid to get in and told the rest that they’d be picking their pockets later…).
The evening’s music began with 5 or 6 numbers by Ollabelle (the band of Amy Helm, daughter of Levon Helm). I was previously unfamiliar with their work, but I found their funky folksy-bluesy style enjoyable (my husband described it as “electrified traditional”). Playing guitar and violin at the rear of the stage was obviously none other than Larry Campbell (sans moustache), who Elvis fans will be very familiar with after last summer’s tour. However, sadly, none of the other performers ever acknowledged his presence or introduced him to the crowd.
Then Costello and Toussaint took the stage by storm. In a vibrant purple iridescent damask tie and matching purple shirt with rhinestone cufflinks, the energized Elvis launched into the first of the new songs (“The Sharpest Thorn”). It quickly became obvious that the two of them are an excellent creative match, and that they were very excited about unveiling the new songs. The set (and indeed, the new album) consisted of a mix of new numbers that they had composed together and older items from Toussaint’s back catalog (with a group rendition of “Scarlet Tide” thrown in at the end). Elvis struggled a little with hoarseness on a few of the high notes, but those moments were quickly lost in the energy of the evening.
The new songs they performed were: “The Sharpest Thorn,” which started the set with a bang; “Ascension Day,” a very powerful number that really brought out Elvis’ best razor-sharp edge; “The River in Reverse,” the compelling title track with dark overtones, both angry and mournful; and “International Echo,” their playful, lighthearted antidote to the other compositions.
The other numbers were from Toussaint’s back catalog, including “Freedom for the Stallion,” which they performed at previous Hurricane Katrina benefits; “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further”; and a fantastic rendition of the beautiful ballad, “Nearer to You.” They ended the evening by bringing all of the members of Olabelle and Larry Campbell back out (quite a feat on the tiny stage at Joe’s Pub), and the whole ensemble performed “Scarlet Tide” and finished with Toussaint’s “Yes We Can.”
Throughout the evening Mr. Costello told stories of the different Katrina benefits, explained the genesis of some of the new songs (the lyrics of “Ascension Day” are Elvis' verbal expression of the images engendered for him by the Professor Longhair classic “Tipitina”) and was just an all-around gracious and engaging host, receiving a thank-you from the audience by way of two standing ovations.
After the performance (which lasted about an hour and 15 minutes) Elvis and Allen were available “backstage” to chat (which at Joe’s Pub consists of the hallway outside of the ladies room; I have met a number of fine artists there on the way back from freshening up). Mr. Costello was gracious and charming as always, and he seemed energized by the performance and eager for feedback on the new material.
All-in-all it was an excellent evening that served its purpose admirably, whetting everyone’s appetite for the May release of The River in Reverse.
Setlist (E.C. and A.T.)
The Sharpest Thorn
Freedom For the Stallion
Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further
Ascension Day
River in Reverse
Nearer to You
International Echo
With Olabelle/Larry Campbell:
Scarlet Tide
Yes We Can
I didn't track the Olabelle songs (was unfamiliar with most), but there was a mix of what I assume were their own compositions and traditional folk/bluegrass classics.
On a more personal note, the Elvis gods smiled on us once again. We were one of the first in line, and when the host at the podium asked us if we had dinner reservations, I told him that we always make reservations when we come there, but when we called this time we were told that we couldn't, that the members of the public could only stand at the bar, and that all of the tables were reserved for industry folks. The host said "Well, if you want dinner, I have a table for you." He sat us stage-side, dead-center, immediately in front of Elvis, who was literally inches away from us. Thank you gods of Elvis and thank you Joe's Pub. Another great evening with the master.
Rolling Stone reports-
NEW ORLEANS PIANIST, songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint stands at a microphone, waiting for his cue, in the vocal booth at Piety Street Recording, a studio in the city’s Bywater section, near the Mississippi River. Toussaint , 68, is the picture of immaculate Southern comfort in a gray suit jacket, brown slacks, cream white shirt, perfectly knotted caramel brown tie and open. toed sandals. But there is no missing the gently surging indignity in Toussaint’s voice as the tape rolls and the funk kicks in:
“What happened to the Liberty Bell/I heard so much about/Did it really ding dong/It must have dinged wrong/It didn’t ding long.”
Five months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through Toussaint’s hometown, much of it is still in ruins,a victim of collapsed levees and chaotic relief efforts. Hurt and fear are in every silken note he sings.
Elvis Costello listens in the adjacent control room, shaking his head in awe. Toussaint is putting vocal overdubs on “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further,” a rhythmic plea for a helping he originally wrote and produced in 1970 for Lee Dorsey. The song is also one of seventeen that Toussaint and Costello, 51, have recorded together for The River in Reverse, to be released in May on Verve Records. Like everything else the duo has written and cut for the album — new songs like the title track, “Broken Promiseland” and “Ascension Day”; poignant covers of vintage Toussaint gems such as “Freedom for the Stallion” and “On Your Way Down” — “Brother” reverberates with the power of emotional eyewitness, born of the devastation just outside the studio’s front door.
Sitting with Costello during a session break, Toussaint politely insists that this “is not a sympathy record. These songs can live in war and peace, anytime, anywhere. This recording is far more important, and bigger, than Katrina.”
Costello agrees. “This was a chance to make something positive out of something dispiriting,” he says of the album, produced by Joe Henry and featuring Costello’s group the Imposters with local musicians from Toussaint’s band. “It’s also forward-looking. It is representative of the culture here. And Allen is one of the most important people in that culture.”
Costello and Toussaint’s sessions at Piety in early December (following a week’s work in Los Angeles) are one of the heartening signs of life in this otherwise ravaged city. The Lower Ninth Ward, a short drive from the studio, on the other side of the Industrial Canal, is a wasteland; rushing water from breached levees pushed houses off their pilings, flattening them. Bywater itself was severely damaged by wind and water; Toussaint’s own home in Gentilly was flooded, destroying a lifetime’s worth of personal archives.
“I was feeling bad one day,” Henry says, “because I was keeping Allen’s horn players around, waiting for a take. I said, ‘Do you want to go out and come back later?’ They said, "We don’t want to go out there. We know what it looks like.”
Toussaint evacuated the city after the storm, basing himself in New York, where he and Costello -- with whom he had collaborated on Costello’s 1989 album Spike — ran into each other at Katrina benefit gigs, often doing Toussaint’s songs together. “It used to be common to see ‘songbook’ records,” Costello says, “before rock & roll singers wrote their own songs. I thought, ‘Maybe it’s time for an Allen Toussaint songbook album. Maybe we could do it together.’”
Toussaint not only said yes, he co-wrote five songs with Costello. “To be invited out of an enforced semiretirement,” Toussaint notes with a sly smile, “was a wonderful opportunity.” And Costello “was tireless. As we wrote, he gave vocal performances of the kind that you would give in the studio.”
The two work together with the easygoing warmth of mutual fans and old friends. On their first day of recording in LA., they got master takes of “Greatest Love” and “Nearer to You” in fifteen minutes. But at Piety, it is fascinating to watch Toussaint’s attention to detail, an instinct for soulful perfection that ran through the Sixties and Seventies hits he wrote and produced for, among others, Irma Thomas, Ernie K-Doe and the Meters.
“It’s the closest thing in my life to being around a Duke Ellington,” says Henry, who produced Toussaint’s contributions to the recent I Believe to My Soul and Our New Orleans collections. “After a take, he’ll say to his horn section, ‘That was right, but that’s all it is. Now it has to be alive.”
There is no better word to describe the music Costello and Toussaint have made, especially during their week in this city coming back from near-death. On the night they finish “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further,” they also turn to the dark Costello ballad “The River in Reverse.” Costello wrote it within weeks of the flooding. His love for New Orleans and his rage at its betrayal are explicit in his lyrics and vocal:
“There must be something better than this/I don’t see how it can get much worse/What do we have to do to send/The river in reverse?’
It is hard working, Costello admits, amid so much loss: “You think it’s a bit frivolous.” But the healing is obvious as Toussaint listens to the urgency in Costello’s song and smiles. For now Toussaint has little but this record to call his own, and he’s grateful for it. “At the moment, I have no past and no future,” he says. “I wake up in the morning to do this. This is all that I am.”
Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris
Opry at the Ryman
Ryman Auditorium
Nashville
Tenn.
18 Feb. '06
featuring -
Gillian Welch, guitar , vocals
David Rawlings guitar , vocals
Viktor Krauss, bass guitar
Fats Kaplan, steel guitar and fiddle
Early show ( for TV broadcast , March 4th )
1. Wheels - w. Emmylou Harris (EH), Gillian Welch (GW) & Dave Rawlings (DR)
2. Love Hurts - w. EH
3. Must You Throw Dirt In My Face - w. EH
4. Long Journey Home - w. EH, GW & DR
5. I Still Miss Someone - w. EH
6. My Baby's Gone - w. EH
7. Dear Someone - GR & DR
8. Keys To The Kingdom - GR & DR
9. Green Pastures - EH, GR & DR
10. American Without Tears - w. EH
11. Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet - w. EH
12. Mystery Train - w. EH, GW & DR
13. The Scarlet Tide - w. EH
Late Show: ( listen to radio broadcast archive)
01. Wheels (All)
02. Sin City (Elvis and Emmylou)
03. Must You Throw Dirt In My Face (Elvis and Emmylou)
04. My Baby's Gone (Elvis and Emmylou)
05. Mystery Train (All)
06. The Scarlet Tide (Elvis and Emmylou)
( Submitted by Arlene)
Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris
Opry at the Ryman
Ryman Auditorium
Nashville
Tenn.
17 Feb. '06
featuring -
Gillian Welch, guitar , vocals
David Rawlings guitar , vocals
Viktor Krauss, bass guitar
Fats Kaplan, steel guitar and fiddle
1. Wheels
2. Love Hurts
3. Must You Throw Dirt in My Face
4. Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet
5. Mystery Train
6. Scarlet Tide
NEW ORLEANS - Jazz & Heritage Festival
2006 Heritage Fair Daily Lineup
First Weekend - April 28 - 30, 2006
Incl.
Allen Toussaint with special guest Elvis Costello
The Times-Herald reports -
Woodstock, Feb. 11th - – An hour after Elvis Costello and Levon Helm strapped on their acoustic guitars, Helm leans into the microphone and says: "Let Elvis do one."
So Costello, who had been content to play acoustic guitar and sing backup with the former Band drummer and singer, steps up to the mic. In a voice as meaty as a thick sirloin steak and as sharp as a knife, Costello wails: "You better help me baby/I can't do it by myself."
As he stretches "help" into a six syllable plea that ricochets off the bluestone walls of Helm's home studio, you can almost see the goose bumps popping on 150 stunned fans.
This was Saturday night at one of Helm's Midnight Rambles, where Costello was the surprise guest. This was two of the greatest voices in rock 'n' roll making music for the sake of music. This was music that was as down home as the Ramble's homemade brownies (with Helm's name on the icing) and hot popcorn.
This was Costello driving up from the city and down Helm's dirt road for one of the jams that have featured guests like Dr. John, Donald Fagen and Emmylou Harris. In a midnight blue suit with a matching shirt and tie, Costello walked out on the floor-level stage like he was one of the guys. No announcement. No spotlight. Just a slight smile, a little wave and an "all right, we're gonna try one for ya right now" from Helm, his voice strong, but still a bit frayed from his bout with throat cancer.
This was unrehearsed music – "wrong key,'' Helm said after a false start on "Man of Constant Sorrow," the fourth song of the set and the first with Costello singing fervent harmonies to Helm's fertile lead.
Costello would smile after he helped sing the first chorus of "Atlantic City:" "Everything dies/Baby that's a fact/But maybe everything that dies/Someday will come back." He would holler "Don't Ya Tell Henry." And he'd shout "ooh" as Port Jervis blues man Little Sammy Davis led Helm and the band in a "have some fun tonight" version of "Long Tall Sally."
But he waited an hour until he led the band. This wasn't a greatest-hits set. He introduced new tunes he just recorded with another surprise guest, New Orleans' pianist Allen Toussaint, who's produced singles like "Mother in Law," arranged horns for the Band and played the rippling roly-poly piano lines that, on Saturday night, glistened like his bright red shirt.
Toussaint and Costello teamed up on a mouth-dropping ballad with the lyric: "How long does a promise last/How long can a lie be told." Costello hushed the standing room only crowd with these words: "There must be something better than this/Because it can't get much worse/What do we have to do/To send a river in reverse."
And then, just after midnight, Elvis Costello and Levon Helm went back to having fun.
Helm shook a fist. Costello cracked a smile. And they invited their 150 new friends to join them with these words that, on this February night, didn't seem one bit corny: "Everybody just sing, sing, sing/Let's all begin to do our thing/And make a better world to live in."
Costello makes surprise stop in Woodstock
Rocker plays at Helm's place
By John W. Barry
Poughkeepsie Journal
Delivering the punch and flash of a headlining stadium tour while maintaining the intimacy of a garage band jam session, three icons of modern music Saturday night shook the rafters of a Woodstock recording studio.
Those who attended the latest edition of former Band drummer Levon Helm's "Midnight Ramble" house concerts — typically sold out at $100 a ticket — were simply left shaking their heads.
Helm for his semi-regular concert Saturday welcomed two surprise guests — Elvis Costello and New Orleans composer, singer and pianist Allen Toussaint, an anchor of that city's music scene.
Costello played acoustic guitar but did not sing for a good part of the evening. He played none of his hits and looked like a rumpled college professor late for class. But he was obviously very pleased to be playing Helm's sideman on songs he was learning on the spot.
When Costello did sing, he stopped the show.
Costello and Helm's band members discussed chord progressions and keys of songs seconds before launching into a tune. But Costello never seemed to miss a beat and maintained that suave, debonair air of a showman that is a linchpin of his on-stage persona.
New Orleans style
Toussaint, an old friend of Helm's who worked with The Band, joined in well into the set, tickling out of the ivories some hard-core Crescent City Dixieland that brought the crowd to its feet. His style of music was deep like the Delta and combined classical, gospel and Motown into a melange that is perhaps rarely heard so far north of the French Quarter.
Through it all, Helm sang, played guitar, mandolin and drums. He rarely stopped flashing the blinding grin of a child who had just pulled off a schoolyard prank.
Costello's star power radiated when he assumed leadership of the ensemble and took over lead vocals.
One highlight was the preview of new material that he and Toussaint recently recorded. In fact, that collaboration played a big role in bringing the two to Helm's studio.
After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Helm sent his old friend Toussaint a bouquet of flowers. Fast forward several months and Helm gets a call from Toussaint saying he would be in New York working with Costello and the two have some time available to come to Woodstock.
"My long-time, dear friend," a gushing Toussaint said on-stage about Helm. "I'm so glad to be in his neck of the woods ..."
John W. Barry can be reached at jobarry@poughkeepsiejournal.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 13, 2006
Helm gets Elvis into building
By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
sisrael@th-record.com
Woodstock – An hour after Elvis Costello and Levon Helm strapped on their acoustic guitars, Helm leans into the microphone and says: "Let Elvis do one."
So Costello, who had been content to play acoustic guitar and sing backup with the former Band drummer and singer, steps up to the mic. In a voice as meaty as a thick sirloin steak and as sharp as a knife, Costello wails: "You better help me baby/I can't do it by myself."
As he stretches "help" into a six syllable plea that ricochets off the bluestone walls of Helm's home studio, you can almost see the goose bumps popping on 150 stunned fans.
This was Saturday night at one of Helm's Midnight Rambles, where Costello was the surprise guest. This was two of the greatest voices in rock 'n' roll making music for the sake of music. This was music that was as down home as the Ramble's homemade brownies (with Helm's name on the icing) and hot popcorn.
This was Costello driving up from the city and down Helm's dirt road for one of the jams that have featured guests like Dr. John, Donald Fagen and Emmylou Harris. In a midnight blue suit with a matching shirt and tie, Costello walked out on the floor-level stage like he was one of the guys. No announcement. No spotlight. Just a slight smile, a little wave and an "all right, we're gonna try one for ya right now" from Helm, his voice strong, but still a bit frayed from his bout with throat cancer.
This was unrehearsed music – "wrong key,'' Helm said after a false start on "Man of Constant Sorrow," the fourth song of the set and the first with Costello singing fervent harmonies to Helm's fertile lead.
Costello would smile after he helped sing the first chorus of "Atlantic City:" "Everything dies/Baby that's a fact/But maybe everything that dies/Someday will come back." He would holler "Don't Ya Tell Henry." And he'd shout "ooh" as Port Jervis blues man Little Sammy Davis led Helm and the band in a "have some fun tonight" version of "Long Tall Sally."
But he waited an hour until he led the band. This wasn't a greatest-hits set. He introduced new tunes he just recorded with another surprise guest, New Orleans' pianist Allen Toussaint, who's produced singles like "Mother in Law," arranged horns for the Band and played the rippling roly-poly piano lines that, on Saturday night, glistened like his bright red shirt.
Toussaint and Costello teamed up on a mouth-dropping ballad with the lyric: "How long does a promise last/How long can a lie be told." Costello hushed the standing room only crowd with these words: "There must be something better than this/Because it can't get much worse/What do we have to do/To send a river in reverse."
And then, just after midnight, Elvis Costello and Levon Helm went back to having fun.
Helm shook a fist. Costello cracked a smile. And they invited their 150 new friends to join them with these words that, on this February night, didn't seem one bit corny: "Everybody just sing, sing, sing/Let's all begin to do our thing/And make a better world to live in."
THE RIVER IN REVERSE: A BENEFIT FOR NEW ORLEANS HURRICANE RELIEF FEAT. APPEARANCES BY ELVIS COSTELLO AND ALLEN TOUSSAINT. ALSO FEAT. OLLABELLE
Joe's Pub ,
New York
Monday February 20 '06
7:00 PM
$50.00
A special sneak preview of the forthcoming Verve Forecast release "The River in Reverse" by Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, to support Musicares Hurricane Relief Fund. The evening will feature appearances by Costello, Toussaint and Ollabelle. Costello's partnership with New Orleans'legendary pianist, songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint, was recorded in Los Angeles and New Orleans at the end of 2005, the first major sessions to take place in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, and "reverberates with the power of emotional eyewitness, born of the devastation just outside the studio's front door." (David Fricke, Rolling Stone)
THE RIVER IN REVERSE: A BENEFIT FOR NEW ORLEANS HURRICANE RELIEF FEAT. APPEARANCES BY ELVIS COSTELLO AND ALLEN TOUSSAINT. ALSO FEAT. OLLABELLE
Monday February 20
7:00 PM
$50.00
Buy Tickets
Tickets available at The Public Theater box office or through Telecharge: www.telecharge.com or 212.239.6200.
Featured artists include:
Ollabelle http://www.ollabellemusic.com
Allen Toussaint http://www.nynorecords.com
Elvis Costello http://www.elviscostello.com
VERY LIMITED NUMBER OF STANDING ROOM TICKETS AVAILABLE
TWO PER PERSON LIMIT
TICKETS ON SALE WEDNESDAY FEB. 8 AT 1:00PM
VIA WWW.TELECHARGE.COM
A special sneak preview of the forthcoming Verve Forecast release "The River in Reverse" by Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, to support Musicares Hurricane Relief Fund. The evening will feature appearances by Costello, Toussaint and Ollabelle. Costello's partnership with New Orleans'legendary pianist, songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint, was recorded in Los Angeles and New Orleans at the end of 2005, the first major sessions to take place in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, and "reverberates with the power of emotional eyewitness, born of the devastation just outside the studio's front door." (David Fricke, Rolling Stone)
In addition to recent surprise appearances by Elvis Costello at previous Allen Toussaint post-Katrina benefit brunches at Joe's Pub and other benefits at Madison Square Garden and Jazz @ Lincoln Center, Toussaint previously produced a 1983 Costello cover of Yoko Ono's "Walking on Thin Ice" with the Attractions and The T.K.O. Horns. Toussaint also contributed piano to the New Orleans-recorded "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror" from Costello's 1989 album 'Spike.'
Drawing both inspiration and materials from a deep well of rural American roots music--including gospel, blues, bluegrass, and country--Ollabelle reimagines these sounds for contemporary audiences, honoring the spirit and substance of the original sources while allowing this music to live and flourish in a post-modern era.
The Recording Academy's MusiCares Foundation, which provides a safety net of critical services for music people in crisis, with assistance, including basic living expenses such as shelter, food, utilities, transportation; medical expenses including doctor, dentist and hospital bills, medications; clothing; instrument and recording equipment replacement; relocation costs; school supplies for students; insurance payments and more.
Billboard reports -
(extract)
New Orleans natives Allen Toussaint, Dr. John and Irma Thomas will be joined by Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello tomorrow night ( Feb.8th) as the Grammy Awards pay tribute to the hurricane ravaged city. The segment will also feature participation from Bonnie Raitt, U2 guitarist the Edge and soul music great Sam Moore.
Grammys To Pay Tribute To New Orleans
February 07, 2006, 10:50 AM ET
Toussaint, Dr. John, Costello & Springsteen Among Participants
Barry A. Jeckell, N.Y.
New Orleans natives Allen Toussaint, Dr. John and Irma Thomas will be joined by Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello tomorrow night (Feb. 8) as the Grammy Awards pay tribute to the hurricane ravaged city. The segment will also feature participation from Bonnie Raitt, U2 guitarist the Edge and soul music great Sam Moore.
"Our Academy represents thousands of music people across the country, many of whom were directly affected by the New Orleans tragedy," says Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, noting that the 48th annual ceremony "wouldn't be complete if we didn't take this unique opportunity to pay homage to a region with such rich musical history and culture."
As previously reported, the Edge and producer Bob Ezrin created the Music Rising initiative to provide instruments to musicians affected by last year's Gulf Coast hurricanes. The Recording Academy's non-profit MusiCares Foundation is in charge of managing the organization's grants process.
In November, Toussaint and Costello recorded an album in New Orleans with several other longtime collaborators. Dubbed "The River in Reverse," the project will be released in May via Verve Forecast.
In other Grammy Awards news, Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow and Sting have joined the lineup of artists and celebrities who will present awards or introduce performances during the event, which will be broadcast live on CBS from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
The show will also include one-of-a-kind performances by Madonna and Gorillaz, Linkin Park and Jay-Z, U2 and Mary J. Blige, Faith Hill and Keith Urban, Christina Aguilera and Herbie Hancock and Jamie Foxx with Kanye West.
A fan reports -
It's just officially announced that the orchestral shows in Tokyo scheduled on February 11 & 12 have been cancelled. There will be one replacement show on June 2nd in a bigger venue, Tokyo Kokusai Forum Hall A.
Watch a Deutsche Grammophon interview about 'My Flame Burns Blue(click on: multimedia / promo video).
Elvis Costello & the Imposters will be joined by Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Death Cab For Cutie & Fiona Apple , who will be among the eclectic mix of musicians paying tribute to Elvis at Atlantic City, New Jersey’s Trump Taj Mahal on May 19, 2006
Elvis Costello & the Imposters are among the acts lined up to play the fifth annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, to be held June 16-18 in Manchester, Tenn. Tickets go on sale Feb. 11.