From the Promoter

Fresh off performing a string of December radio shows, British quintet Foals have announced that they will return to North America for a spring tour with Cage The Elephant that kicks off on May 2nd. Supporting the tour is J. Roddy Walston & The Business.

Foals have made several visits to the U.S. over the past year, including a headlining tour last spring, as well as appearances at Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Outside Lands since the release of their third album Holy Fire. The Flood & Moulder-produced album has received effusive critical praise: “Foals have established themselves as one of the most exciting bands in the UK” said Q, which gave the album four stars. NME gave Holy Fire a rare 9/10 review, declaring “2013 is in safe hands,” and VICE agreed, saying “they’re back and their f**king good.” Foals and Holy Fire were nominated for the 2013 Mercury Prize and won the Q Award for Best Live Act. Holy Fire was voted “Album of the Year” by fans in NME’s 2013 poll with their track 'My Number' nabbing “Track of the Year.”

On Cage The Elephant’s third album, MELOPHOBIA, the rock band was faced with the challenge of finding cohesiveness in the ideas of five different people. After touring for nearly five years straight on their prior releases, 2008’s Cage The Elephant and 2011’s Thank You, Happy Birthday, the musicians took some time off the road, to write as individuals before getting back together in August of 2012 to begin work on MELOPHOBIA as a collective.

The album’s flagship single “Come A Little Closer” is a boisterous, blues-laden rocker and was one of the first songs the band completed for the album. The song marries the raw energy and playfulness the band is known for with their present interest in creating intimately expressive music, both in its pensively poetic lyrics and surging melody. That sensibility carries over to “It’s Just Forever,” the final track the band laid down, which features guest vocals from The Kills’ Alison Mosshart. Mosshart’s yelping croon builds the intensity of the stomping number, an apt juxtaposition to the mid-tempo soulfulness of album standout “Hypocrite” and acoustic closer “Cigarette Daydreams.” Overall the album captures familiar sounds in a new way, balancing a nostalgic sonic aesthetic with a fresh, innovative sensibility and embodying a truly classic voice. MELOPHOBIA resonates with a sense of joyful abandon, which comes from facing those initial challenges head on.

The band has toured extensively, selling out several headlining runs and performing alongside Black Keys, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Muse, Stone Temple Pilots and Silversun Pickups. For Cage The Elephant, who originally hail from Bowling Green, KY, the aim is to always improve and evolve, ensuring that each subsequent release and tour represent a step forward.

For J. Roddy Walston & The Business―who formed in 2002 in Walston’s hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee―embracing weirdness means a mumble-out-loud celebration of that great and terrible burden of being human. Forcing the oft-clashing worlds of art and rock-and-roll to make nice, the band (including guitarist/vocalist Billy Gordon, bassist/vocalist Logan Davis, and drummer Steve Colmus) deals in a scrappy yet sublime sound that honors both their Southern roots and punk spirit. On Essential Tremors, J. Roddy Walston & The Business builds off that formula with a mix of heavy hooks and elegant melodies revealing their affinity for artists as disparate as Led Zeppelin, pre-disco-era Bee Gees, The Replacements, Randy Newman, and the Southern soul outfits that once populated the Stax Records label. Co-produced by Matt Wignall (Delta Spirit, Cold War Kids) and Grammy-winning producer/engineer Mark Neill (The Black Keys) at Neill’s own Soil of the South Studios (a Valdosta, Georgia-based facility where J. Roddy Walston & The Business were the first to ever record), the follow-up to 2010’s much-acclaimed self-titled sophomore album also finds the band crafting lyrics that ultimately serve as a secret language to the initiated listener.

Promoter