Ray LaMontagne will celebrate 20th anniversary of his debut album at the Orpheum
Singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne is celebrating the 20th anniversary of his debut album, Trouble.
Along with a remastered vinyl release, he'll be hitting the road for a tour that will bring him to the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Minneapolis on Aug. 31.
The tour will have the troubadour playing all of Trouble, from start to finish, for the first time since its release in 2004.
"Twenty years. Two decades. That's a lot of water under the bridge," LaMontagne reflected on the anniversary. "Every cell in my body has changed three times over in that time. I have been three times reborn. There are moments in your life when you need to place a marker. Some people think that it is brave, or fearless, to never look back. I don't believe that. For the simple reason that if you never look back, you will never see how far you have come."
Elsewhere in the Midwest, the tour will take LaMontagne through Omaha (Aug. 29); Highland Park, Ill. (Aug. 30); and Iowa City, Iowa (Sep. 2).
Tickets go on sale March 21 at 10 a.m.

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5 days ago
- Yahoo
Why rock bands keep firing their drummers
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It's only when the rhythm section gets beneath it that it starts to take shape. As a result, the band only starts to feel like a band when the drums are there too. Otherwise it's just busking,' Jack explains. Try telling that to the singer. Drummers are also fall guys because they're the loudest, I'd argue. The sound they make sticks out like a sore thumb and therefore it's the easiest and most obvious element to change, even if someone else is at fault. As Sting and Frank Zappa drummer Vinnie Colaiuta euphemistically put it: 'Anytime you strike the drums, you have to be aware that you're creating a musical event.' For 'musical event' read 'almighty noise'. Drumming is primal. 'When you approach this instrument for the first time, what comes out of you is simply what you feel,' the Parliament and Funkadelic drummer Dennis Chambers once said. Pick up a guitar for the first time and what you feel are sore fingers. 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A 'big musical difference' was how Stradlin described the vibe shift. Recent tour footage suggests Guns N' Roses still have drummer issues. Introducing new drummer Isaac Carpenter recently, singer Axl Rose said: 'We've got a new guy. I'll think of his name in a minute.' Yeah, joking-not-joking. And at a Yokohama concert earlier this month, rookie Carpenter started playing the wrong song, leading to on-stage weirdness. 'Welcome to the bungle,' ran an unfair headline. But drummers have always been the butt of jokes. Here are two favourites. Q: How many drummers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Five. One to change the lightbulb and four to stand around talking about how Neil Peart would have done it. Or there's this chestnut. Q: What did the drummer say when he landed his first job? A: Do you want fries with that? Of course, the biggest drummer joke of all appeared in the 1984 Spinal Tap mockumentary. Famously, the spoof metal band lost a succession of drummers: one in 'a bizarre gardening accident' (John 'Stumpy' Pepys); another from choking on vomit (Eric 'Stumpy Joe' Childs); and yet another from spontaneously combusting on stage (Peter 'James' Bond). Expect drummer jokes to continue when the film's sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues comes out in September. Like all jokes, there's a kernel of truth in this. Plenty of famous drummers have died tragically young. The two best-known examples are The Who's Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin's John Bonham, both of whom died aged 32 when their bands were undergoing concerns. Moon died from a prescription drug overdose and Bonham died after a massive drinking session saw him consume an estimated 40 shots of vodka in a 12-hour period. Both men were large-than-life characters. 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Blink-182's Scott Raynor was kicked out of the US punk outfit for things 'going on' outside of the band that were 'affecting his performances', singer Mark Hoppus told Rolling Stone (some stories blamed drinking). And the late James Kottak was fired in 2016 as drummer of German hard rock band Scorpions two years after his arrest and brief imprisonment for public drunkenness in Dubai. But here's the rub. Beneath the bluster and the tomfoolery, drummers tend to be sensitive souls who are obsessed with their craft, Moon and Bonham included. Why else would they choose to play the most unwieldy and physically demanding instrument in existence? Unlike peacocking guitarists, you can't stroll down the high street with a drum kit on your back. You've got to commit to drumming and all the humping of gear that comes with it. Drummers also tend to have interesting hinterlands. 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San Francisco Chronicle
23-05-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
'Parade' revival strikes chilling parallels between past injustice and present-day headlines
There's something terribly haunting about watching a work set in the past and being only able to think of the present. When the musical 'Parade' first premiered on Broadway in 1998, visuals like newspaper boys proudly waving confederate flags were a means of bringing audiences back to a dark political atmosphere from long ago. In 2025, such bone-chilling spectacles are emerging once again, marking the ominous and timely return of a show about Leo Frank, an American Jew falsely blamed, then lynched, in response to the murder of a 13-year-old girl in 1915. Theater titan Harold Prince co-conceived the original production, which won Tony Awards for best book and best original score. After undergoing significant restaging, the 2023 Broadway revival itself earned two Tonys (best revival of a musical, best direction of a musical), leading to a national tour that's currently playing San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre, in partnership with Broadway SF, from May 20-June 8. But the 2023 production's task in telling Frank's tale has changed from history lesson to alarm bell. Hopefully it's ringing loud enough for all to hear, especially in light of a ghastly killing of two Israeli Embassy aides outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., which happened less than 24 hours before Thursday's curtain rose. Led by stellar performances from Max Chernin, who continues his run from Broadway as the Brooklyn-born Leo, and Talia Suskauer as his devoted, daring wife Lucille, 'Parade' unfolds as a doomed love story set amid the deep-rooted racism and rising antisemitic sentiments of pre-WWI Atlanta, Ga. The pair provides genuine sparks as a couple that processes the false charges against Frank — first with genuine confusion, then calcifying resentment. Chernin and Suskauer add their impressive pipes to a talented cast that also includes longtime San Francisco actor Alison Ewing in the role of Sally Slayton, wife to Georgia Gov. John Slayton (played with aplomb by Chris Shyer). Staged with a high center square not unlike an elevated courtroom floor, elaborate backdrops and props are eschewed in favor of a screen that regularly projects archival photos of the real-life characters and settings from the time. It can feel like a lot, and though the music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown ('The Bridges of Madison County') never trade substance for frivolity, the need for song does occasionally feel forced by convention rather than warranted by plot. That said, some numbers do work quite well, including one led by Michael Tacconi as sleazy newspaper reporter Britt Craig. Employing an upbeat melody akin to the Pied Piper, Craig goes around enticing various townsfolk (including the victim's friends, the Franks' maid, and a security guard on duty at the factory where the girl was killed) to remember things that never happened. It's a clever way to portray how quickly disinformation can flourish — especially when it's being carried on the back of a deceptively sweet tune. Later, at the close of the show's first act, Brown plays with the convention of singing in the round to hammer home the identical wording and demeanor of three girls clearly coached to lie by the prosecution about Frank's alleged inappropriate conduct toward them. These are the moments where song and story most aptly collide, though a strong book from playwright Alfred Uhry ('Driving Miss Daisy') ensures the show never steers far off-course. If the first half of 'Parade' is an exercise in how to frame an innocent man, its concluding portion celebrates the tenacity of a woman desperate to free her husband from the ticking clock of a death sentence. Found guilty by a jury of his 'peers,' Frank loses hope in his jail cell following two years of failed appeals, inspiring Lucille to take her cause directly to Gov. Slayton. It's heart-wrenching to watch them inspire a host of witnesses to recant their testimonies while knowing the victory is ill-fated. Staged gracefully, the sequence of Frank being kidnapped from his cell and lynched in a nearby forest by a vengeful mob also offers one of the few moments in the entire show when he is free to speak his truth. After once again proclaiming his innocence, Frank uses his last breaths to recite the Sh'ma, a Jewish prayer often uttered as one's final words. It's a beautiful coda for a show that mostly finds the rest of its characters speaking on Frank's behalf.