Not content with only fronting the Chris Robinson Brotherhood – an excellent jam band bringing the spaciousness of Grateful Dead to other retro styles – Chris Robinson, the one-time Black Crowes frontman – has formed a new band, As The Crow Flies. The main reason for this? He’s got a great catalogue of songs that deserve live performances; much loved songs that wouldn’t necessarily fit the Brotherhood ethos.
What’s more, there’s a string of US live dates scheduled for April and May.
For the past few years, prog legends Twelfth Night have been raiding their archives. Their cassette only release ‘Smiling At Grief’ has seen a much-loved expanded CD reissue, while their classic live albums ‘Live At The Target’ and ‘Live & Let Live: Live at The Marquee’ were afforded a wealth of bonuses on thoughtfully created deluxe sets.
It’s been a long journey for Big Big Train. From early gigs and their first proper album ‘Goodbye To The Age of Steam’, the elusive ‘Bard’, work with vocalist Sean Filkins and beyond, their first decade or so was about constant growth and change. While often recording great material, it seemed the band just couldn’t settle. With the release of ‘The Underfall Yard’ and the addition of vocalist David Longdon to their ranks, the band’s fortunes changed.
Another new compilation of material authorised by the Hendrix Family estate will be released in the first quarter of the new year.
Following 2016’s ‘Machine Gun’, a live set which made the whole of the Band of Gypsys’ early Fillmore show available for the first time, ‘Both Sides of the Sky’ concentrates on the Gypsys line up in the studio. The new release features thirteen tracks, ten of which will are previously unreleased. Among the highlights is an early take of ‘Angel’ (then still provisionally titled ‘Sweet Angel’) recorded in January 1968.
Irish sludge metal merchants Zhora have recently posted a live video from this year’s Bloodstock Festival, which you can watch in full below. In the words of vocalist Colin Bolger, “Turmoil does exactly what it says on the tin. It takes you and your precious feelings and drags them through the mud and blood until you can’t take no more.”