News - Page 417

Hal Leonard has released Volume 18 of their Bass Play-Along series. Blues Rock is a 72 page, 8 song book featuring tab and CD tracks for each classic blues tune. The melody and lyrics for each tune are also included. The CD includes audio with and without bass, so you can hear the bassline first, and play along with the...

Toph-E and the Pussycats have released a new album, No Ordinary Day, featuring Will Lee on bass and vocals. The band’s sound has been described as “R n’ B-bop,” as they play a mix of originals and R&B classics while paying homage to jazz greats such as Art Blakey, Thelonius Monk and Herbie Hancock. The rest of the band includes...

Seattle filmmaker Jamie Burton Chamberlain is gearing up to make a movie based on a new album by Duff McKagan’s Loaded, which is soon to be completed. The album is yet to be titled, though a single from it is being played in rotation during the MLB World Series coverage. McKagan, who played bass for 12 years in Guns N’...

Charlie Haden has just released latest album with Quartet West, entitled Sophisticated Ladies. The title is a play on the Duke Ellington tune, as the 12 tracks feature jazz standards sung by the genre’s best female vocalists, including Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall, Melody Gardot, Norah Jones, Renée Fleming, and Haden’s wife, Ruth Cameron. Haden, who had a long standing association...

Legendary prog-rock band Yes has signed to a new worldwide recording deal with Frontiers Records, based out of Italy. The group will be recording their first new studio album in nearly a decade, following 2001’s Magnification. According to the release, fans can expect a release date in 2011, sometime before summer. The current Yes band members include founding bassist Chris...

Twelve years after his last album, jazz bassist Michael Formanek has released his fifth CD as a leader, entitled The Rub and the Spare Change. The project started Formanek recruited a few musicians just to play with, and ended up being a recording of his quartet featuring saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. “Beforehand, I just...

Nearly a year and a half after the passing of basketball star and jazz bassist Wayman Tisdale comes the release of his final album, The Fonk Record. The 11-song album was 12 years in the making, with three funk legends lending support, including George Clinton, George Duke and the late Ali Woodson. Tisdale collaborated over those 12 years with Derek...

After bassist Allen Woody‘s untimely passing in 2000, a tribute concert called “One for Woody” was held to honor him, featuring the Allman Brothers Band, Phil Lesh & Friends and more. Now, ten years after the original concert, a second show aptly titled “Another One for Woody” will take place to honor the fallen four-stringer and raise money for music...

Jack Bruce has a new DVD out, entitled City of Gold: Live Performances. The 22 minute long DVD is a snapshot of Bruce between two performances over 10 years in 1991 in Sevilla, Spain and 2001 in Donington, UK. Bruce is joined by musicians including Phil Manzanera, Michael Schenker, Uli Roth and others on the four tracks that include “City...

Free improv bassist Joelle Leandre has teamed up with violinist India Cooke for a new album entitled Journey on NoBusiness Records. The new CD contains a real-time improvised performance split into six tracks from a conference called “Improvisation and Identity: Discovering Self and Community in a Trans-Cultural Age,” which was held in Denver, Colorado. Drawing from free jazz, modern classical...

In April, 2010, Jeff Beck won his fifth Grammy award and celebrated with a concert for a small audience at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Beck and his band, including bassist Rhonda Smith performed a mix of songs from Beck’s latest studio album Emotion and Commotion (an album featuring bassist Tal Wilkenfeld), as well as classic Beck tunes. A...

After reuniting last year for a Japanese tour, the shred kings in Mr. Big have announced that a new album will be released in January 2011. The band, which was originally formed by bassist Billy Sheehan in 1988, has not released a studio album since 2001’s Actual Size, and the new album will be the first to feature all original...