Beginning this September Van Halen will embark on a national concert tour throughout the U.S. and Canada with its original lead singer David Lee Roth for the first time in 22 years. Roth, guitarist Eddie Van Halen and drummer Alex Van Halen will perform with Eddie’s 16 year old son, Wolfgang, who joins the line-up as the band’s bass player. “This is not a reunion. This is a new band,” said Roth at a news conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, and later added, “This is not ‘rockers with walkers’.”

Van Halen and David Lee Roth have not performed or recorded together since 1984’s classic multi-platinum album 1984 and subsequent tour. Twenty five dates have been announced for the tour which is scheduled for a September 27th kick-off in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tickets for select dates on the tour go on sale beginning on Saturday, August 18th and are available on www.LiveNation.com. A complete list of confirmed dates can be found HERE.

After seven years of separation, Rage Against the Machine made its first appearance in New York this past Saturday, July 28, at the “Rock the Bells” festival. This was the first of two shows in a festival that drew around 70,000 fans and included hip-hop artists Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, the Roots and Talib Kweli. Another concert featuring Rage Against the Machine at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin on August 24 has also been announced with Queens of the Stone Age. However, when asked if the band were planning on recording a new album, Morello answered:

“There are no plans to do that. That’s a whole other ball of wax right there. Writing and recording albums is a whole different thing than getting back on the bike (laughs), you know, and playing these songs. But I think that the one thing about the Rage catalog is that to me none of it feels dated. You know, it doesn’t feel at all like a nostalgia show. It feels like these are songs that were born and bred to be played now.”

Last May 8, 2007 Living Colour released a DVD called “On Stage At World Cafe Live!”. The DVD includes material from their latest record “CollideOscope” as well as material from previous albums (“Desperate People” has been posted on YouTube). It was recorded at the “World Cafe Live” in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 16, 2005. Reid, Glover, Calhoun and Wimbish have announced that a new record will be released sometime this year..

They have also announced more tour dates for 2007:

Jul. 06 – Main Stage at Drava River – Lent Festival – Slovenia
Jul. 07 – Porgy & Bess – Wien, Austria
Jul. 08 – Zolt Pardon – Budapest, Hungary
Jul. 09 – Transilvania – Milano, Italy
Jul. 10 – Treibhaus – Innsbruck, Austria
Jul. 11 – Bluesiana Summer Stage @ Casineum – Austria
Jul. 13 – Stravinski Hall – Montreux Jazz Festival – Switzerland
Jul. 14 – Plato, Netherlands
Jul. 15 – Jazz Cafe, London, UK
Jul. 16 – Spirit of 66 Verviers, Belgium
Jul. 18 – New Morning – Paris, France
Jul. 19 – New Morning – Paris, France
Jul. 20 – Waerdse Tempel, Grote Zaal, Netherlands
Jul. 21 – Colos Saal Aschaffenburg, Germany
Jul. 22 – Spectrum – Augsburg, Germany
Jul. 25 – San Sebastian Jazz Festival – San Sebastian, Spain
Aug. 11 – Sully’s Pub – 2nd annual Wimbash – Hartford, CT

George Lynch is introducing his new Randall “Lynch Box” head and cabinet. A 5 minute video of George Lynch trying out his new gear has been posted at YouTube. It was recorded during a guitar clinic at a Sam Ash store in Chicago last month. For those interested, Lynch is offering online classes through a guitar program known as the George Lynch Dojo: “Every month begins with a Syllabus outlining the calendar of events happening each day – office hours, to lessons revealed, to unreleased tracks, to student song reviews” (check out the free tour). The 1st annual end of semester seminar will be held June 9th and 10th at a Four Points Sheraton in Los Angeles, California. Tickets can be reserved online through George Lynch’s Mob Shop.

The Nightwatchman is the solo act of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello. Described by him as “the black Robin Hood of 21st century music” and “a reaction against illicit wars, first strikes, torture, secret prisons and spying illegally on American citizens”, it resembles the music of artists like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Woody Guthrie. The Nightwatchman One Man Revolution Tour officially began on May 16, 2007 and Tom Morello has added more tour dates beginning on June 17 in Dallas and finishing up on June 27 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rage Against The Machine has confirmed four dates on the Rock The Bells tour, in late July in New York City and mid-August in California. While there have been rumors of a full tour or permanent reunion since Audioslave broke up, and the group has also reportedly scheduled a concert in East Troy, Wisconsin in August 24, a full tour is not planned (as of June 2007). In April 2007 the band performed together for the first time in 7 years at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

“Snakes & Arrows”, Rush’s first all new material album since 2002’s “Vapor Trails”, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart with sales of 93,000 copies. This is their highest charting debut album since 1993, when “Counterparts” debuted at No. 2. The disc, has sold 150,000 copies in the U.S. since its May 1 release. Rush will begin a North American tour on June 13 in Atlanta, ending September 22 in Toronto, Canada. They have selected “The Larger Bowl” as the second single from its CD. Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee and Neil Peart have been together since 1974. They recently spoke to the Artisan News Service about their career and recent release. See the YouTube report here.

The first G3 tour in 1996, featuring Satriani, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai, played to sold-out crowds throughout North America, Europe, South America, Japan and Australia. The most recent G3 tour in 2007 with Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and Paul Gilbert, marked the 5th North American G3 tour and the 12th one worldwide since its inception in 1996. Throughout these years Satriani’s G3 tours have showcased: Yngwie Malmsteen, Adrian Legg, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robert Fripp, Michael Schenker, and Uli Jon Roth. Special guest guitarists have also been invited to join at some point in the jam, including: Neal Schon, Gary Hoey, George Lynch, Billy Gibbons, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and Brian May.

After more than 10 years of G3 tours it’s impossible not to wonder who will come next? Some names come to mind: Steve Morse, Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Kirk Hammett, Vinnie Moore, Blues Saraceno and Nuno Bettencourt. Who knows, maybe even jazz fusion guitarists Allan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin. Hey, how about Eddie Van Halen?

Who would you like to see?

A Jeff Beck tribute album called “Freeway Jam – To Beck And Back”, will be released on July 17 by Tone Center Records. The album containing ten tracks, was produced by guitarist Jeff Richman and features quite a few big names in jazz/fusion, blues, and rock guitar. The guest guitarists are John Scofield, Adam Rogers, Mike Stern, Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Greg Howe, Warren Haynes, Chris Duarte, and Walter Trout. The rhythm section features names like bassist Stu Hamm, keyboardist Mitchel Forman and drummers Vinnie Colaiuta and Simon Phillips.

Track Listing:

• “Freeway Jam” – Steve Morse
• “Over Under Sideways Down” – John Scofield
• “Beck’s Bolero” – Eric Johnson
• “Led Boots” – Adam Rogers
• “El Becko” – Jeff Richman
• “Diamond Dust” – Mike Stern
• “The Pump” – Warren Haynes
• “Behind The Veil” – Chris Duarte
• “Blue Wind” – Greg Howe
• “Brush with the Blues” – Walter Trout

Dream Theater’s upcoming release “Systematic Chaos” will be out on Tuesday June 5th. The album containing eight tracks, will be available in two formats: a regular edition CD, and a special edition CD and DVD including a 90-minute documentary directed by drummer Mike Portnoy. You can find more information about this record and photos of the band at the Roadrunner Records site. A nine-minute video clip shot during the the recording of the song “The Dark Eternal Night” from “Systematic Chaos” has been posted at YouTube. You can watch John Petrucci and the band here. The North American tour will start July 24 in San Diego, following with an European tour in September and lastly with an Asian, South American and Australian tour.

Back in 2004 Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist, John Frusciante, along with bassist Joe Lally of Fugazi and drummer Josh Klinghoffer, released an album called AW (Automatic Writing). The name they gave to the band was “Ataxia”, which in Greek means “disorder”. These next words were taken from Frusciante’s website, where he talks about the Ataxia sessions:

“We played two shows and recorded two records. The first record was released in August 2004. It was named after the surrealist activity called Automatic Writing. That was where people like Andre Breton and Max Ernst would write words in the form of sentences and paragraphs, but with absolutely no conscious attempt at meaning. They would observe the structure of their subconscious and it’s peculiar methods of organization (or the lack thereof) this way. And if there is one sure answer I can give to the question, ‘How did you write and record two albums in a week and a half?’, it is that we gave absolutely no thought to what we were doing, whatsoever. This music is unblemished by any expectations of a specific result, on our part. The three of us simply got together to hear what music had to say that week. We had fun together and this is the record of that fun”.

The second half of these 2004 sessions, which includes five tracks, will be out in a couple of days, on May 29th.