Prince as a perfume pusher ...
Purple reigns over all of the senses for Prince. The artist-musician has created a fragrance for women, called 3121. The name matches the name of his Las Vegas club and most recent album title, and it originates from the address of a home he rented in Los Angeles.
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The new Suzanne Vega album Beauty & Crime is mainly a portrait of New York. She reminisces about a conversation with graffiti artist in Zephyr & I (reusing the riff of Vicious from fellow New Yorker Lou Reed) and takes a walk down Ludlow Street. Vega depicts the city as an out-of-luck ladywho refuse to give in New York Is A Woman. Vega may sings in a whisper at some points, but her lyrics bite. She has assembled a wide variety of musicians to back her up on her seventh studio album, including Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) on guitar and Tony Shahanan (Patti Smith) on bass.
Suzanne Vega has delivered once again. No matter who is backing her up - her albums will sound like vintage Vega. She doesn't change much over the years, but sticks to her art - being one hell of a singer/songwriter. You can download the single Frank & Ava at iTunes. And incidentally - did you know that her most famous song Tom's Diner was used by Karlheinz Brandenburg, the big cheese in the team that created the MP3 format? She told the story when she performed it live at a Second Life concert.
Beauty & Crime is released on the Blue Note label. Release date: July 17.
Tracks:
Old people rock! The Zimmers go berserk and perform My Generation.
Danny Whitten was the Brian Jones of Crazy Horse.
David Briggs
Two more Mule shows for you.
Gov't Mule
2007/05/26
Washington & Lee University
Lexington, VA, USA
Gov't Mule
2007/05/27
99.1 Sound Festival
Outer Banks, OBX
Manteo, NC, USA
Anton Corbijn scores at the Cannes Flim Festival:
The new Ian Curtis biopic Control has won the prestigious Best European Film award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
First time filmmaker Anton Corbijn - more noted for his photography - has wowed the Cannes critics with his film about the Joy Division singer - who committed suicide at the height of the band's powers in 1980.
The jury said about the film, "This is a very impressive and assured debut from a renowned photographer, but he never allows the look of the film, beautiful though it is, to detract from the powerful story and character development. "
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A very special night at the BIMhuis in Amsterdam. Guitarist David Dramm presents a three hour show called The Last Jukebox on Earth and performs his own piece Orange Slice. The show is part of the Holland Festival.
This is 'The Last Jukebox on Earth' and David Dramm is picking the records. Dramm has assembled a top ensemble of international players to test out his extreme makeovers of everyone from Edgar Varèse to Western Swing mavericks Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. A marathon of volcanic piano eruptions of Iannis Xenakis and obscure pop jewels from Burt Bacharach, Pierrot Lunaire and Moon River, the Sex Pistols and Rodgers & Hammerstein. Or is it all just Dramm, whose music has been described as “kaleidoscopic” and “the ground-breaking terrain between Charles Ives, Jimi Hendrix and Lou Reed?” BIMhuis and Holland Festival offer a carte-blanche evening to the “Derrida among composers.” This unique evening ends with a performance of Dramm’s ‘Orange Slice’ which the Swiss press hailed as “monumental...the sound of ecstasy.”
David Dramm w/ Steamboat Switzerland
The Last Jukebox on Earth and Orange Slice
June 10
BIMHuis, Amsterdam
Tickets: 15 EUR (students 10 EUR)
DeVotchKa takes on Venus In Furs, the Velvet Underground classic written by Lou Reed. Recorded live at State Theater, Falls Church, VA, USA - 2006/06/21.
MP3: DeVotchka - Venus In Furs
» devotchka.net
» myspace.com/devotchkamusic
» The Velvet Underground Web Page
Yet another reunion for Cream? Billboard talked to Jack Bruce and it could happen again later this year.
Jack Bruce says Cream is once again rising to the top. The bassist for the legendary rock group told the Associated Press today (May 24) that he agreed recently to play an unspecified show or shows later this year with guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker. Bruce would not say when the reunion would occur, but that it would not be the seven-continent Live Earth shows on July 7: "It's a bit later than that," he said.
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Crawdaddy sat down with Jonathan Richman for 20 minutes. Interviewer Tony DuShane has captured the ever evasive Bostonian in a stylish piece.
Richman's answering machine is him playing a few riffs on guitar, then a beep. It actually says more than, "This is Jonathan Richman, please leave a message." It's like his music: joyful sing-a-longs with a sprinkle of longing, moments of loneliness and despair.
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Modern Guitars Magazine has reprinted the classic 1977 Jimmy Page interview conducted by Steven Rosen. As a bonus you can listen to the complete unedited thing that was recorded on a small hand-held micro-cassette recorder. Oh yes, The Rosen piece On the Road with Led Zeppelin, covering an 11 day trip with the band, is up too.
Thirty years ago, I spent 11 days on the road with Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page was 33, I was 24, the year was 1977, and the English quartet ruled the world. The band had released Presence, their seventh studio album (discounting the live concert recording, The Song Remains the Same), about a year earlier, and it had become their sixth record in a row to attain the Number One chart position in both the US and the UK. No one could touch them and no one dared try.
Two hours of live John Cale on German radio:
John Cale
Deutschlandfunk
26 May 2007, 1:05 to 3:00 a.m. (CET)
Soundcheck: Abgründe und Höhenflüge - Konzertaufnahmen von John Cale
Am Mikrofon: Michael Frank
Live stream and audio on demand: dradio.de/dlf/vorschau/20070526
(Thanks: Gerd Meyer)
It's been 40 years since the Summer of Love. Jerry Garcia gets a big write-up in NY magazine The Fader. You can download the full magazine as a PDF and listen to a Grateful Dead podcast. All for free, man.
The Grateful Dead was an incredible musical force that defined its generation, with Garcia as its de facto leader, to the point that the band is almost synonymous with the '60s. Yet the Dead-and Jerry especially-remained an active force well into the '90s, and the band's power and influence has anything but diminished since their final show. In fact, Jerry and the Dead are as relevant now as they've ever been-a constant inspiration and obsession for the current generation of musicians that The FADER celebrates issue after issue.
The podcast:
» thefader.com
» Download The Fader #46 (PDF)
» Download the podcast
Yet another Frank Zappa goodie from the good folks at zappateers.com. An upgrade of the performance with the Ensemble Modern.
Frank Zappa / Ensemble Modern
The Yellow Shark
Alte Oper, Frankfurt, Germany
1992/09/17
1h 29mn 22s (trailer + intro: 2mn)
Recording & encoding by CosmikD
TV sat > SkyStar2 > DVBDream > PVAStrumento > TMPGEnc Plus > Synchro with TVP audio source.
Video (Classica source): DVD PAL MPEG-2 720x576 25 i/s CBR 6000kbps
Audio (TVP Kultura source): 48000 Hz 384 Kb/s)
Authoring & animation by unicrayon
Menu with Chapters
The 2008 edition of Jam In the 'Dam line-up is completed. Four nights, six bands:
Jam in the 'Dam
Melkweg, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
March 16-17-18-19, 2008
First off, we want to thank everyone for participating in our additional artists' poll. The poll on our message board has gotten around 13,000 views in less than three weeks. We tried to narrow the choices to artists that had expressed interest in past years, and who would also contribute to an amazing show.
Well, as hard as we tried, we couldn't narrow it down to two more bands. So, we're bringing three! Six bands, you ask, how is that going to work in three nights? It won't. So we are expanding the festival to four nights!
We are very excited to add the Disco Biscuits, Dark Star Orchestra, and Perpetual Groove. These were the top three vote-getters in the poll. You spoke, we listened. But we had to get very creative to accomplish this lineup. Here's how:
The festival will now span four nights, March 16-17-18-19, 2008. We are also taking the unusual step of announcing the schedule concurrent with this announcement, so folks can get a gander at exactly how it will work. In short, DSO will only play the first two nights in the Max. Umphrey's McGee and the Disco Biscuits will each have one night off out of four to potentially come and act as fans/guest musicians. We will play Tea Leaf Green, PGroove, and Lotus in the Old Hall each night, but only for March 16-17-18. On the 19th, the only show will be Umphrey's McGee and the Biscuits in the Max, doing slightly longer sets.
The Steepwater Band is a power trio from Chicago, keeping the flame of blues rock alive. Their album Revelation Sunday is a 101 for rockers who are into acts like the Bachman Tuner Overdrive, Rory Gallagher and Gov't Mule. They will be sharing the bill with the Mule in Spain this summer. The Steepwater Band are traditionalists who have no trouble finding new licks and riffs that sound familiar and refreshing. Their high energy playing is for real. Like it says on their manager's business card: "Better living through rock and roll music". Plug in your air guitar and turn it up.
The Steepwater Band:
Jeff Massey: vocals & guitar
Tod Bowers: bass guitar & backing vocals
Joe Winters: drums
Revelation Sunday is distributed through Diamond Day Records (USA) and Evangeline Records (Europe). Buy the album at CD Baby or iTunes.
USA tour dates
European tour dates
More USA tour dates
Electronica is a tricky genre. There is a thin line between cool an uncool. One-man band Svoy crosses that line way too often. His album Eclectric would have a lot better if he would break out of the dreamy stuff. His programming skills are a lot better than his vocal range. Put the vox through some nerdy gizmos and try again.
Eclectric is released thru Rendezvous Entertainment.
Singer/songwriter Andrew Bird plays the Paradiso in Amsterdam. No ticket? Watch the webcast on fabchannel.com.
Andrew Bird
Webcast 2007/05/24
Starts: 8:30 PM local time (GMT +1); 2:30 PM (NYC); 4:30 AM (5/25) Tokyo
» fabchannel.com/andrew_bird_2007
» andrewbird.net
» myspace.com/andrewbird
The new LCD Soundsystem/John Cale/Franz Ferdinand package All My Friends is available as of May 28:
As a stalwart of the New York Avant Garde, it's no surprise that the hugely influential and celebrated New York indie-electro outfit LCD Soundsystem asked John Cale to rework their incredible new single "All My Friends".
"All My Friends" is a relentless, guitar driven showpiece in the vein of Bowie's "Heroes" Or Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" and Cale brings to his version his trademark sound making it an instant classic.
Yet another seminal sixties band goes digital. The Kinks back-catalog is open for downloading as of May 28.
Including classic hits such as, "You Really Got me," "Sunny Afternoon," and "Lola," the release of the hits library coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Kinks' smash hit, "Waterloo Sunset," which is also available as part of the catalogue.
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It's been awhile since I fell in love with a CD, but Tom Hagerman pulled it of. The multi-instrumentalist of DeVotchKa created a magnificent solo album The Breakfast Playground, an almost 100% instrumental affair that flows and bubbles like a gentle stream with the distant sounds of a train to remind you that this is 21st century music. The Breakfast Playground is a big time chill out album, not the kind of lounge crap that is peddled as such.
Hagerman plays accordion and violin and created a soundtrack for a movie that has not been made yet. If you liked the French movie Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, this record is the perfect accompaniment for a sequel.
Buy The Breakfast Playground at CDBaby or at devotchka.net.
Shrek 3 is loaded with covers, including an really lame version of Barracuda. Eat your Heart out and watch the the real thing on German TV
EMI is sold to private equity for $6.3 billion. So fucking what. EMI is a BIG spender crying about profit losses. Read this post by David Hepworth on his And Another Thing blog:
The other week I got a call from EMI asking me to do a voiceover for a John Cale ad to run on a couple of digital rock stations. I turned up at the appointed time at one of those flash Soho sound studios where there are two leggy girls on reception and they bring you coffee in designer cups. When the rep from EMI turned up - late because for some reason they'd ordered a car to deliver them into the West End during rush hour - it took about two minutes to do the ad. The studio is bound to have put in a four figure bill for their services, on a job that I could have done on my Mac at home.
No show in Liverpool for Datarock tomorrow:
Datarock have been forced to cancel a gig on Wednesday night due to a clash with the Champions League final.
The Norwegian duo were due to play the Carling Academy in Liverpool but the show has been pulled as it is on the same night that Liverpool play AC Milan.
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A Brazilian band in New York - meet Forro in the Dark. Plugging a great sounding album Bonfires of São João (with guest spots from David Byrne and Bebel Gilberto) they will set the stage on fire in Europe and North America with their forró, the music and dance of Northeastern Brazil.
Forró lyrics are usually about love and romance, passion, jealousy, or reminiscing about an ex-lover. They often are about Northeastern themes and the longing or homesickness (saudades) that was often experienced during migrations in search of work. An example of this are the lyrics to perhaps the most beloved song by Luiz Gonzaga "Asa Branca" (White Wing) in which the singer says he will return home when the rains fall again on the dry, barren land. They will know he is coming when they see the certain white winged bird of the savanna (sertão) that only arrives when it rains.
Forro in the Dark is:
Mauro Refosco: Zabumba and Vocals
Gilmar Gomes: Percussion and Vocals
Davi Vieira: Percussion and Vocals
Guilherme Monteiro: Guitar and Vocals
Jorge Continentino: Pifano, Baritone Sax and Vocals
Smokey Hormel: Baritone Guitar, Slide Guitar and Vocals
European tour dates
North America tour dates
Bonfires of São João is released on the Nublu label.
Orange Is In goes digital,. You can buy their Another Lame Semi-Tragedy at iTunes.
Buy their Another Lame Semi-Tragedy album (OutboundMusic).
» orangeisin.com
» myspace.com/orangeisin
HCTF review of Another Lame Semi-Tragedy.
San Franciso based quartet Sir Salvatore has a new song for you:
We just wanted to mention how grateful we are for the support and excellent feedback we've gotten recently. As a thank you, we want to share with you a song from our upcoming EP, "Ambalina". It was recorded at Piazza De Rosa, SF and mastered by Carl Saff (Cocorosie, We Ragazzi, Modey Lemon)
» sirsalvatore.com
» myspace.com/sirsalvatore
HCTF review of Those Men Are Not Astronauts.
Guitar Tech Larry Cragg talks to tonequest.com about the sound of Old Black and more in a great article about Neil Young:
It does if I tune it. When he tries it’s impossible. You can see him wildly wiggling the vibrato and then play the last chord in the song and it’s still in tune, and you can get through a lot of songs before it has to be tuned. What you have to do is not check to see if you’re in tune until after you wiggle the vibrato and see what note that is. If I can get him to wiggle the arm instead of trying to re-tune it with the tuning keys, it will go right back.
» tonequest.com
» Dwonload the interview (PDF)
(Thru: Neil Young News)
Patti Smith on the Later with Jools Holland show:
Later With Jools Holland
BBC2 TV broadcast
2007/05/18
Source: BBC2 DVB-S, logo free
Format: 16:9 PAL MPEG-2, audio 48/256 mp2
Swati is a singer/songwriter with Indian roots from New York who takes on the world with 12 string guitar heavy laden collection of songs called Small Gods. Most of the material is pretty laid back, but she is not afraid to explore the feedback and electronica niches of post rock. Her songs sounds familiar and different at the same time. India meets indie. Nothing wrong with a bit of mystery in modern music. She might as well become the Joni Mitchell for the 00ties.
Small Gods is released on bluhammock music.
Phish
1998/07/03
Midtfyns Festival
Dyrskuepladsen, Ringe, Fyn, Denmark
This is the 48 khz version direct from my DAT Clone of the DAT master. I have decided to no longer resample my recordings for posting as a growing number of people would rather have the original version anyway. After all, we are in the 21st century and audio has moved beyond the CD.
If you want to put this on CD, you will have to resample to 44.1khz... plenty of programs will do that for you.
Adrian Belew has a blog! Adrian who? The Adrian who played with David Bowie, Frank Zappa and the Talking Heads. He shares anecdotes about his life on the road.
my first phone conversation with frank went something like this:
frank: "do you read music?"
adrian: "no, I don't, but I can learn from records pretty well."
frank: "alright, here's a list of 12 songs. try to figure out how to sing and play as much of them as you can. I'll see you here next week."
Good news for the Brooklyn based books and music lovers:
A Book Expo America Party
With Special Guests
Harry & The Potters
Plus Special Guest DJ's
Friday, June 1st
5pm - 10pm
Bar 13 :: 35 East 13th Street
Free Admission
2 For 1 Drink Specials
Give-aways include C-Span2 tote-bags, signed books, music and candy! Don't panic if you can't make the Brooklyn show. Check their MySpace page for lots more book store shows.
» Harry and The Potters
» myspace.com/harryandthepotters
» Harry at the archive.org
Patti Smith is on the Later with Jools Holland show tonight:
Tune in to see a truly amazing performance from Patti. Together with her band she performs "Gimme Shelter", "Soul Kitchen" and "Gloria". You cannnot afford to miss this. Plus, exclusively at the Later... website, you can watch Patti perform her version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
Friday 18TH May
11.35PM on BBC2
Episode 74 in the podcasts section Live Jambands in Holland: part #04 of a vintage soundboard recording of The Grateful Dead.
Live Jambands in Holland #74:
Grateful Dead
City Hall
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1972-05-11 (part#04) (click to download)
Running time: 44:53 -- 128 kbit
Source: 10" MR@7.5ips > DAT > CDR
» dead.net
Download this show in lossless format from bt.etree.org
Aussie outfit The Cat Empire embarks on an European tour in June followed by a string of dates in North America.
European Tour:
North American Summer Tour:
» thecatempire.com
» myspace.com/thecatempire
HCTF review of Two Shoes
Gary B & The Notions is an indie quartet from Baltimore, Maryland. Think of a band that mixes Weezer with Elvis Costello and a singer that wavers like Thurston Moore. Got it? Good, that's what they sound like. Their 8 song CDEP Get Those Crazy Notions! is a homemade product that will make their mothers feel proud. "What are you guys up to down there in the garage?" "Rock, mum, erhm ... indie rock." "O, OK, just make sure to clean up after you've finished." Addictive!
Gary B & The Notions are:
Gary Lee Barrett Jr.: vocals, guitar, tambourine
Kris Heath: bass, vocals, organ
Timothy Sullivan: guitar
Paul Turowski: drums
The release date for Get Those Crazy Notions! is June 2nd. You can stream the full album.
Are you sitting down for this one?
Former Hobbit Elijah Wood is to star as Iggy Pop in "The Passenger," a biopic of the legendary rocker. (...) "Passenger," which follows Pop's early years with his band the Stooges, is to be helmed by Nick Gomez ("Drowning Mona") from a script by Eric Schmid.
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Songwriting was like sex to me. I didn't like to do it in front of other people.
Paul McCartney
A Patti Smith photo exhibition in Gateshead, UK starts tomorrow. She will open the exhibition at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art:
Legendary American musician, singer, and poet Patti Smith, will present a series of her photographs at BALTIC to coincide with her concert at The Sage Gateshead.
DeVotchKa hits the road his month. They're weird, they're fun. Folk, klezmer, gypsy, balkan beats, it's all in there. On stage sit a sousaphone, accordion, piano, violin, a bouzouki, an upright bass, percussion, a trumpet, drums, and a theremin. This unusual band will start recording their next album in the winter of 2007.
NYC duo They Might Be Giants have done it again. Their new album The Else is a collection of crafty pop songs with off beat subjects like an Upside Down Frown, Feign Amnesia, The Mesopotamians and The Shadow Government.
I have nearly worn out my advance listening copy (alas, no MP3s allowed), but you have only to wait until tomorrow to get it at iTunes. A regular CD release will be in stores July 10 on the Idewild/Rounder label. The first run of CDs includes a full length bonus disc.
The setlist of the John Cale show in Valencia:
John Cale
2007/05/11
Observatori Festival, Valencia, Spain
Open air show with Joseph Karnes on synthesizer and bass (acoustic and electric) and Dustin Boyer on guitar. "Antartica Starts Here " develops into a 10 minute techno/hardcore jam with a Nina Simone sample from Lilac Wine.
(Thanks: Frederic Somers)
:
A short film about Don van Vliet by Anton Corbijn:
Don van Vliet, alias "Captain Beefheart", is one of the most influential, misunderstood, talked about, admired, copied, treasured, loved and quoted musicians and yet he is still an obscure and mysterious artist. His quite abrupt artistic transformation from working with a microphone to a paintbrush in 1982 and his consequent move from the desert to the ocean meant even less direct contact with the outside world than before. Subsequently there is very little information about Don from this time onwards and this short black-and-white film made in 1993 is an unique opportunity to see and hear this unique man. The film is approximately 13 minutes long, directed and photographed in black and white.
R.E.M. have officially begun work on their next album. The group is in Vancouver, British Columbia, with producer Jacknife Lee, and they plan to spend a few weeks there laying down tracks.
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The Eurythmics take on Satellite Of Love, the Lou Reed classic. Recorded live in Glasgow, Scotland (Radio Clyde FM) - 1983/02/25.
Band of Horses ...
If these horses were in a band the one up front would be the lead singer/guitarist and that's the drummer rolling up from the back. The bassist is in the shed, but nobody cares about him because, well, he's the bassist.
(Thanks: Triple-B)
A guy naming him self Inverarity has started a blog called Fragments of a Cale Season:
So, stealing a perfectly wonderful idea from Pop Songs 07 (appropriately facilitated by Hans Werksman) I figured it would be a worthwhile use of five minutes here and there to review a vast, unwieldy, and hard-to-find catalog. Hard for me to find, anyway.
In the time since I've discovered him, John Cale has become one of my favorite musicians. His catalog is one of the most eclectic (eccentric?) out there, and his changes in sound and mood between (or within) albums make even Neil Young look predictable. He has recorded for around ten record labels, which makes his catalog hard to find in print. I have, if memory serves, 31 of his albums. Of those, I think five are currently in print in the US.
This makes him a difficult artist to get into if you want to, not to mention a difficult artist to even be exposed to. His most famous recording by far is a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" - used in the soundtracks of Basquiat, Scrubs, and Shrek, not to mention the Cohen tribute 'I'm Your Fan.' It's the best version of a great-if-overplayed song, but there's so much more to his catalog.
Not all of which is good, mind you. My wife's convinced that my definition of "good Cale" is far too wide, but even I have some standards. Anyway, I'll try to be objective. There are a few recordings that I consider essential to a decent record collection, but the power and uniqueness of some of his best work intrinsically limits its appeal.
Anyway, there's not nearly enough writing about his work, and it's hard to get a sense of what it's all about. Not that I know, but I have some ideas at this point. And there you are.
Where do you start after you have listened to re-release of The Benefit Concert Vol. 1 and the new The Benefit Concert Vol. 2? Amazing? Awesome? Essential? Started by Warren Haynes 18 years ago the annual Christmas Jam brings together a superb selection of players who are enjoying themselves immensely on stage. The yearly event is hot ticket - the 2006 edition sold out in 20 minutes, but thanks to these two 2CDs you can get a glimpse of what happens on a 'Benefit' night: people sitting in and stretching the tunes like only the seasoned pro's can.
This re-issue of Vol. 1 comes stocked with two brand new mixed and mastered tracks from Gov't Mule's electrifying set that have never been heard before. This was the Mule's last X-Mas Jam with original bass player Allen Woody.
So, how did the Christmas Jams get started? Warren Haynes explains:
I created the event because local musicians were home around Christmas to jam together. Instead of being locked away in some rehearsal room, I thought it would be fun to make a public event out of the jam session and since it was holiday time I decided to donate all profits to charity.
That's right. All proceeds from the Christmas Jam and CD sales will benefit Habitat For Humanity, an international non-profit organization dedicated to building affordable housing in partnership with those in need of adequate shelter. So good music for a good cause. Now you go out and buy these discs.
Warren Haynes Presents: Benefit Concert Vol. 1. Recorded live at Warren Haynes' 11th Annual Christmas Jam, December 22, 1999, in Asheville, NC, at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium.
Disc 1:
Disc 2:
Warren Haynes Presents: Benefit Concert Vol. 2. Recorded live at the 12th annual X-Mas Jam, December 21, 2000, in Asheville, NC.
Disc 1:
Disc 2:
Warren Haynes Presents: The Benefit Concert Vol. 1 and Vol 2. are released through Evil Teen Records.
