Published on March 12th, 2013 | by greg

ANDREW BIRD SETS SUMMER TOUR DATES

Andrew Bird is hitting the road this summer performing in select markets across the U.S. Tour highlights include the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Newport Folk Festival and the Sasquatch! Music Festival; please see below for a list of dates. The tour comes on the heels of a successful fan-funded Latin American run—the first of its kind—in collaboration with Songkick and their new crowdsourcing platform Detour. Bird also recently taped an episode of PBS’ “Bluegrass Underground” to air this fall.

Andrew Bird was recently featured on Tumblr’s Storyboard Blog (http://bit.ly/XGjo1t) and performed for Billboard’s “Tastemakers” (http://bit.ly/WxgpdQ) in support of his latest album Hands of Glory (out now on Mom + Pop Music), a companion piece to his critically acclaimed 2012 Mom + Pop release Break It Yourself. The two records are now available together in a deluxe edition two-disc set with new artwork, available for purchase at http://amzn.to/VsKYgn.

Hands of Glory is the product of a pair of recording sessions prompted by the overwhelming response to Bird’s “old-time” sets on recent tours. Reinterpreting songs from Break It Yourself and featuring covers of classic country tunes, these “old-time” performances find Bird and his full band playing to a single microphone with an entirely acoustic setup. The press continues to praise Hands of Glory, calling it a “must hear album” (TIME), “beautiful” (NPR Music), “a short, sweet collection of country-tinged music that’s both humble and hummable” (Los Angeles Times) and “simple and well-crafted” (GQ).

Since its Billboard Top 10 debut, Break It Yourself has continued to receive rave reviews as well, hailed as “a quiet, careful grower…it blooms into something beautiful” (NPR Music), “perfect for the sensitive souls among us” (Newsweek) and “a shimmering collection of clever and carefully constructed songs,” (The New Yorker), while Rolling Stone raves that “[Bird’s] emotional urgency energizes his fluid multi-instrumental elocution,” USA Today calls it a “swoon-worthy set of rapturous tunes that bristle with embraceable eccentricities” and TIME praises Bird’s “delightful pop songs disguised as beautiful violin and whistle-laden ballads.”

Chicago-based film score composer, multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Andrew Bird picked up his first violin at the age of four and spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear. As a teen Bird became interested in a variety of styles including early jazz, country blues and gypsy music, synthesizing them into his unique brand of pop. Since beginning his recording career in 1997 he has released 11 albums, his first solo record Weather Systems coming in 2003. Bird has gone on to record with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Most recently Bird composed his first ever film score for the movie Norman (hailed as “a probing, thoughtful score” by The New York Times; available now on Mom + Pop), contributed to the soundtrack of The Muppets and collaborated with inventor Ian Schneller on Sonic Arboretum, an installation at New York’s Guggenheim Museum and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

ANDREW BIRD TOUR

April 11 City Opera House Traverse City, MI
April 12 Calvin College Grand Rapids, MI
April 27 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival New Orleans, LA
April 28 Tipitina’s New Orleans, LA
May 10 Bottlerock Napa Valley Napa, CA
May 24-27 Sasquatch! Music Festival George, WA
May 26 Boston Calling Boston, MA
July 28 Newport Folk Festival Newport, RI
August 2-4 Pickathon Portland, OR