Bob Dylan Releasing Music From ‘Shadow Kingdom’ Film as an Album in June

Gordon Lightfoot, often called Canada’s greatest songwriter and known worldwide as one of the founding fathers of folk-rock, has died at age 84, a representative for his family said Monday.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Aerosmith has announced a 40-date farewell tour for this fall, saying in an announcement Monday morning that the band is calling it quits on road dates after a more than five-decade career. Their “Peace Out” tour begins Sept. 2 in Philadelphia and is scheduled to wrap up Jan. 26, 2024 in Montreal. The hometown show for Boston on the tour is slated for New Year’s Eve. The Black Crowes will open the Live Nation-produced trek. All dates go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. local time. There was little — actually, no — sentimentality in the group’s announcement. “It’s not goodbye, it’s peace out!” said a statement jointly attributed to the band members. “Get ready and walk this way, you’re going to get the best show of our lives.”

Monica Barbaro has flown in the skies with Tom Cruise‘s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Now she’ll sing alongside Timothée Chalamet‘s Bob Dylan.

PJ Harvey has announced her upcoming 10th album, ‘I Inside The Old Year Dying’ with the release of the lead single, ‘A Child’s Question, August’. Check out the track below.Shared today (April 26), the new single follows a series of teasers shared by Harvey on social media, and follows on from her last full-length LP with 2016’s ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’.According to the double Mercury Prize-winning artist, ‘I Inside The Old Year Dying’, was written over a period of three weeks, although stemmed from ideas dating back to 2017 when she felt she had lost her connection with music.Seeking to revive her connection with songwriting, the inspiration for the new tracks was uncovered following advice from film-maker Steve McQueen, who told her to ignore the ‘process of writing an album’, and instead rediscover why she first fell in love with “words, images and music”.The album will see the singer-songwriter return to her roots – inspired by the likes of Nina Simone and Bob Dylan – and provide fans with “a resting space, a solace, a comfort, a balm” which is created to feel “timely for the times we’re in.”Today also sees Harvey share the first single from the LP, ‘A Child’s Question, August’.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Kelly Clarkson celebrated her 41st birthday Monday night with a ceremonial purge, performing for fans all 14 songs from “Chemistry,” a project he’s been working on for three years that has been described — quite accurately, as it turns out — as putting her feelings about her divorce on the record, in every way. “I was really nervous about releasing the record,” Clarkson said at an early point in the emotionally powerful but good-humored two-hour concert at downtown L.A.’s Belasco, which was being filmed for future use. The singer said she felt emboldened when one of her crew members of three years told her, “I was listening to your record and, boy, did you nail that — loss and grief. And even the part where you remember the good; that’s what keeps you going back.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Park City Song Summit will return to Utah this September for another installment in its annual mixture of performances and panels, featuring an array of guests from different genres, with those set to speak or sing ranging from Grateful Dead veteran Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros. to rising star Joy Oladokun. This year’s festival takes place Sept. 7-9. The 50th anniversary of hip-hop will be explored, as evidenced in the booking of progenitors like Grandmaster Flash, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Chuck D, amid other veteran artists like folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Standout younger artists featured include Adia Victoria, Danielle Ponder, Celisse, Cimafunk, Joe Pug, Ruby Amanfu and Matisyahu.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Metallica came in strong on this week’s Billboard 200 with a No. 2 bow for the group’s latest album, “72 Seasons,” which came in almost within sight of the chart’s recently indomitable leader, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time.” Wallen extended his run at No. 1 to seven weeks at a time, and counting, with 166,000 more album-equivalent units added to his tally, while Metallica debuted with 146,000 units. On the Billboard Hot 100, meanwhile, SZA finally landed in the No. 1 spot she’s been circling for many weeks with “Kill Bill.” The song had spent eight weeks at No. 2, then dipped to No. 4 last week, before getting the boost it needed to finally become a chart-topper in this latest frame.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Eric Clapton announced Monday that his recurring Crossroads Guitar Festival will take place in Los Angeles this fall, with a roster of 41 guest musicians or bands set to take the stage across two nights at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles Sept. 23-24. Musicians due to perform one or both nights include Santana, the War on Drugs, the John Mayer Trio, ZZ Top, Sheryl Crow, Gary Clark Jr., H.E.R., Buddy Guy, Los Lobos, Vince Gill, Stephen Stills, Jimmy Vaughan, Robbie Robertson, the Del McCoury Band and Joe Bonamassa. Others announced include John McLaughlin, Albert Lee, Doyle Bramhall II, Keb’ Mo’, Roger McGuinn, Robert Randolph, Jakob Dylan, Sierra Hull, Marcus King, Eric Gales, Sonny Landreth, Pedro Martins, James Bullard, Andy Fairweather Low, Samantha Fish, Ariel Posen, Ben Haggard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, the Bros. Landreth, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Gustavo Satnaolalla, Danial Santiago and Bradley Walker.

Bob Dylan recorded and released a performance film titled Shadow Kingdom via the Veeps platform for just one week. Now, that performance is set to be released as a live album in June.Set to be released on June 2 via Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, ‘Shadow Kingdom’ will include all 13 songs that were in the film, along with the instrumental that closed it out, now identified as ‘Sierra’s Theme’.The album version will be released on streaming platforms and as a CD and double-LP and can be pre-ordered here.

Bob Dylan has debuted a live cover of The Grateful Dead‘s 1970 hit ‘Truckin” while on tour in Japan.Dylan, who is currently on the ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ tour in Japan, pulled out the surprise cover at the Tokyo Garden Theater on Wednesday (April 12). It marks the first time that Dylan has performed the song, as well as one of Dylan’s rare surprises in an otherwise standard setlist for the tour, which began in 2021.Dylan wrote about The Grateful Dead’s ‘Truckin” in his recent book The Philosophy of Modern Song, noting that it has “a fantastic first verse, which doesn’t let up or fizzle out, and every verse that follows could actually be a first verse.”You can listen to an audio recording of Bob Dylan’s ‘Truckin” cover below.The cover also marks just the fifth Grateful Dead cover Dylan has performed throughout his long and esteemed career, following ‘Friend of the Devil’, ‘Alabama Getaway’, ‘West L.A.

Metallica have responded to the recent revelation that Bob Dylan has seen the band perform live twice.Last December, the legendary singer-songwriter recalled in a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal that he has attended two Metallica concerts previously, as well as gigs by Oasis and Klaxons.Speaking to NME this week, drummer Lars Ulrich said: “I saw that.”He continued: “I don’t know if Bob reads the NME or not, but I have one thing to say to him: ‘Bob, you’re welcome at any Metallica show anywhere in the world at any time – but please come backstage and say hello. We’d love to meet you and pay our respects!'”The same WSJ interview saw Dylan reveal that he’d “made special efforts” to see Jack White and Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Paul Simon has announced a new album, “Seven Psalms,” a suite-like conceptual album that he says is meant to be listened to as one 33-minute piece of work, containing seven distinct but interlinked songs, or “movements.” The May 19 release will mark the first all-new collection he’s put out since 2016’s “Stranger to Stranger” and the first studio album of any sort since “In the Blue Light” in 2018, an album of re-recordings of older songs. The release is also due to have a companion documentary, “In Restless Dreams,” directed by Alex Gibney, according to a title card at the end of a trailer Simon has released for the upcoming album. No official announcement of that film has yet been made.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Amazon has come on board this month’s Stagecoach Festival in California to provide a livestream of the country music gathering. Live action from the April 28-30 festival in Indio will be streamed on both Prime Video and Amazon Music’s Twitch channel. It marks the second year that the festival will be extensively streamed, albeit the first involving Amazon. In 2022, Stagecoach livestreamed most of the main attractions on its own YouTube channel. In some years prior to that, Yahoo had had exclusive rights to stream select artists’ sets. Coverage from the festival will begin at 3 p.m. each of the festival’s three days. Stagecoach and Amazon did not immediately reveal how many or which sets will be streamed from the festival; a press release promised that performances from the Mane Stage will be seen.

Timothée Chalamet stays busy in 2023, with Denis Villenueve‘s “Dune: Part Two” and Paul King‘s “Wonka” in theaters later this year. But what about after that? Well, he and James Mangold team up for a Bob Dylan biopic, and according to the director, Chalamet will do his own singing as the legendary folk musician.

Timothée Chalamet is ready to play Bob Dylan on the big screen and he will be doing his own singing.

Timotheé Chalamet will soon be able to add ‘singer’ to his Hollywood resume.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic A touring production of the stage version of “The Bodyguard” was brought to a halt and canceled in Manchester, England on Friday night after patrons would not stop singing along with the musical’s songs, leading to house lights coming up during the climactic number “I Will Always Love You.” Two women were forcibly pulled out of the theater by security, and several police cars arrived to oversee the evacuation of the theater after what patrons on social media described as “fights in the aisles” and even “a mini-riot.” According to news reports out of Manchester and tweets from those inside the Palace Theatre, the show — based on the hit 1992 film — had already been temporarily halted once during the first act because of the disruptive audience sing-alongs, but was resumed. Later, though, with only about 10 minutes to go before the end, it was put on pause again while its star, Pussycat Dolls member Melody Thornton, attempted to sing the climactic song made famous in the movie by Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You,” over the sound of semi-tuneless howling coming from audience members. Thornton’s mic was cut mid-song, the house lights came up and offenders were evicted — struggling against being pulled out by their shoulders, in video footage captured by attendees — and the show was officially called off.

Bob Dylan, Janelle Monáe, Wet Leg, Iggy Pop and Sam Smith all set to perform.Idles, Lil Nas X, Maisie Peters and Christine And The Queens will also perform alongside the likes of Lionel Richie, Simply Red and Seal.Taking place on the Lake Geneva shoreline between June 30 and July 15, the 57th Montreux Jazz Festival is set to “exemplify what the festival is all about; curating an eclectic, free-flowing programme that invites artists to come and perform with full creative freedom, generating unforgettable moments and legendary stories that are immortalised in music culture.”“Across two weeks at Montreux, music lovers can enjoy a dizzying panorama of sound at its two venues, the Stravinski and the Montreux Jazz Lab, in what is truly the pinnacle for live music,” said a press release.The complete lineup for the Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 is as follows:30 JuneJimi JulesSimply RedTom Odell1 JulyBob DylanRÜFÜS DU SOLKhaliSo La LuneKerchakSDMZola2 JulyBastian BakerChris IsaakStacey RyanCalum ScottDean Lewis3 JulyLionel RichieGayleCavetownCaroline Polachek4 JulyLil Nas XArya StarrRema5 JulySam SmithChristine and the Queens6 JulyGeneration Sex (Billy Idol, Steve Jones, Tony James & Paul Cook)Iggy PopEthan BortnickMaisie PetersThe Rose7 JulyRoberta Sá SambasáGilberto Gil & Family Aquele Abraço TourGuillame PonceletWorakls Orchestra8 JulyChilly GonzalesSofiane PamartKatie Gregson-MacleodHermanos GutiérrezTamino9 JulyJacob CollierJon BatisteFreya RidingsJuliette Armanet10 JulyMavis StaplesNorah JonesLovejoyWet LegIdles11 JulyEmiliaMalumaJoy OladokunJacob BanksThe Teskey Brothers12 JulySealLa ZarraAva Max13 JulyPat Metheny Side-Eyewith Chris Fishman & Joe DysonMarcus Miller European Tour 2023Olivia DeanGabrielsLoyle Carner14 JulyBudd

Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet is set to begin filming this summer, its director has confirmed.The project was announced in 2020, before being delayed indefinitely later that year with no release timeframe shared.The film is being helmed by Le Mans ’66 filmmaker James Mangold and is reportedly titled Going Electric. It will focus on Dylan’s controversial decision in 1965 to embrace the electric guitar, alienating many of his original fans.It was claimed by Deadline in 2020 that Chalamet was learning guitar for the role “so he can familiarise himself with the acoustic and electric guitar”.Now, Mangold has confirmed that the Dune actor will also sing all Dylan’s songs himself for the film, which is now on track to shoot this August.“It’s such an interesting true story about such an interesting moment in the American scene,” Mangold told Collider.Watch the interview below..@mang0ld tells us his @bobdylan biopic with #TimothéeChalamet starts filming in August and Chalamet will do his own singing in the film.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In 2002, director Sam Jones made what is widely considered a benchmark for 21st century music documentaries with “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco,” a movie that lucked into just about all the subject matter that could make B-roll footage of the making of an album into A-list material. It had conflict within the band, between an auteur and another member of great talent; conflict with the soon-to-be-ex-record label, over the basically unwanted classic-to-be “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel”); and said auteur doing his own demon-wrestling, outside foils notwithstanding. Now, it’s easier to see that Jones’ good fortune in happening upon all that wasn’t all luck. More than 20 years later, Jones has come up with another gold-standard music doc, in the form of “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed,” newly streaming on HBO Max. This time, as the creation of another amazing record — Isbell’s “Reunions” (recorded in late 2019 and released a few months later) — is put under the filmic microscope, there are no record-company bookkeepers as unseen baddies in the backdrop to a making-of. Major labels and the conflicts that come with them are so 2002, right? But one common thread is intra-band tension… as it probably will be in most good rock docs now or 20 years from now. It gets more interesting than that, though. In this instance, the difficult vibes are between bandmates who double as a married couple — Isbell and his fiddler-spouse, Amanda Shires. Here, unlike the by-now iconic beefing between Jay Tweedy and Jay Bennett, we know no one’s ultimately going anywhere, right?