JIM KIRKPATRICK Dead Man Walking Released – 21st April 2023
Songwriter, vocalist and guitar slinger Jim Kirkpatrick announces the release date of his latest, eagerly awaited, 10-track solo album Dead Man Walking, which impressively showcases Jim’s multiple rock and blues talents and expands his variety and range into pastures and prairies new.
Dubbed “England’s equivalent to Joe Bonamassa” by Blues Matters, Jim has built up over a quarter-century’s experience in Blues and Rock and earned a tonne of respect from his fans, peers and critics alike. Not only is he a gifted songwriter (who’s written numerous nationally UK playlisted songs) but he’s also a deft-fingered, multi-skilled, guitarist who’s famed for possessing both Bonamassa-type energy and slide guitar and fingerstyle— worthy of the great Duane Allman — as well.
Review by Wanda Hill Photos by Ant Ritz Photography/Rock Shots
My favorite time of year is here again, where no bigger decision needs to be made other than – what band should I go see now? A fantasy life for five days where Bluesfest serves up an irresistible menu of musical treats. With a plethora of choices laid out before me, I just need to wander around and discover music, new and old to love. Lured in by hot organ sounds I found Southern Avenue at the Juke Joint, just in time for a wicked drum solo by Tikyra Jackson. This band has a big Memphis funk sound with vocalist Tierinii Jackson wielding a powerful voice that can do anything. A perfect initiation into what promises to be another soul shaking festival.
featuring Eric Gales – Nikki Hill – Kaleo – Paolo Nutini – St. Paul and The Broken Bones – Lucinda Williams – Dog Trumpet – LP – The Angels – Frank Sultana – Greensky Bluegrass
Eric Gales at Bluesfest Byron Bay – 6th April 2023
SUNK LOTO ANNOUNCE BETWEEN BIRTH AND DEATH 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR
PLAYING BETWEEN BIRTH AND DEATH IN FULL THIS OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER
After a monumental rebirth in 2022, this year Australian metal icons Sunk Loto are celebrating the album that changed the game, with the quartet today announcing the 20th anniversary tour of their 2003 opus Between Birth and Death.
One of UK’s most successful modern rock bands YOU ME AT SIX are thrilled to announce they will be returning to Australia this July as part of their Truth Decay Tour with special guests Los Angeles-based trio, SET IT OFF.
The national tour will see YOU ME AT SIX play their first Australian headline tour in 5 years in support of their highly successful 8th studio album, Truth Decay.
4 x GRAMMY Award-winner, Emmy Award-winner, songwriter, rapper, flautist and singer Lizzo, will bring The Special Tour 2023 to Australia this July for a series of headline shows. Special guest on all shows is Tkay Maidza.
The tour commences at Perth’s RAC Arena on July 14, followed by Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne on July 17, concluding at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on July 23.
American Express Pre-sale runs from 11am on Friday March 24 until Tuesday March 28 at 11am. The Live Nation Pre-sale commences Tuesday March 28 at 12pm, concluding Wednesday March 29 at 10am.
General public tickets go on sale on Wednesday March 29, from 11am. All times are local.
Every once in a while, an artist changes not only music, but culture as well. Lizzo has done both, shifting the sound, soul, and spirit of popular music and culture with a series of definitive history-making smashes. Along the way, she has collected numerous awards, topped the Billboard Hot 100 at #1 twice, picked up over a dozen gold and platinum certifications, sold out tours, and appeared in blockbuster films.
Lizzo’s hugely adored second full-length offering Special is her biggest, boldest, and brightest revolution thus far: bursting with chunky disco-funk beats designed to make you move. Special‘s spirited, charismatic anthems are her most adventurous yet. The album saw Lizzo receive 4 nominations at the 65th Annual GRAMMY Awards recently, with monumental lead single About Damn Time taking out the coveted title of Record Of The Year.
Hailed by Rolling Stone as “the most unabashedly joyous, sonically diverse, and emotionally profound album put out by a major label since Beyonce’s Lemonade,” Lizzo’s SPECIAL debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and #1 on the Pop Albums chart.
Lizzo first took over with her 2019 debut album, CUZ I LOVE YOU. It bowed at #4 on the Billboard Top 200, reached platinum status, graced countless critical year-end lists, and spawned “Tempo” [feat. Missy Elliott] (platinum), “Juice” (2x-platinum), “Good As Hell” (4x-platinum), and “Truth Hurts” (9x-platinum).
“Truth Hurts” raced to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and dominated the chart for seven weeks, making history as “the longest running #1 by a solo female rap artist ever.” Speaking to its impact, Rolling Stone even touted it among its coveted “500 Greatest Songs Of All Time.”
At the GRAMMY® Awards, “Truth Hurts” took home “Best Pop Solo Performance,”CUZ I LOVE (Deluxe) scored “Best Urban Contemporary Album,” and “Jerome” walked away with “Best Traditional R&B Performance.”
TIME Magazine and Entertainment Weekly crowned Lizzo “Entertainer of the Year” in 2019, and she adorned the covers of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Elle, British Vogue, and more as well as gracing Barack Obama’s Playlist. CBS Sunday Morning chronicled her career in a special. Turning heads, she notably lit up the American Music Awards, MTV VMA, BET Awards, and SNL with unforgettable performances. She maintained this momentum on 2021’s gold-certified “Rumors” [feat. Cardi B].
Expanding her imprint and influence across media, Lizzo lent her voice to the animated UglyDolls and accompanied Jennifer Lopez on the big screen in Hustlers. She joined forces with Amazon Prime to launch #1 Prime Reality TV show Watch Out For the Big Grrrls. Championing diversity, the show follows her search for new backup dancers, inviting 10 plus-sized talents to compete for a place on her world tour. She has also linked up with Fabletics for her own activewear line, Yitty, inclusive of plus-sized body types.
LIZZO
THE SPECIAL TOUR 2023
With special guest Tkay Maidza
RAC ARENA, PERTH FRIDAY JULY 14
ROD LAVER ARENA, MELBOURNE MONDAY JULY 17
QUDOS BANK ARENA, SYDNEY SUNDAY JULY 23
For complete tour, ticket and VIP Experience information, go to www.livenation.com.au
BAILEY ZIMMERMAN opened up the show with a three-song acoustic set that was markedly different from his powerful performance at CMC Rocks, with two of his band accompanying on guitars he trotted out a couple of his better known songs, which due to traffic I missed, and then gave us an impressive performance of Rock And A Hard Place which came across really well in this stripped-back format. He is a bit of a rough diamond in performance, but his association with the likes of HARDY and Morgan Wallen will not hurt his profile at all, and the more experience he gets of performing, the better he will get!
Melbourne’s THORNHILL aren’t merely dressing for sonic success; they’re dressed to kill, and they’ll be travelling in style this May and June for their Dressed To Kill Tour, set to visit 13 regional towns across Australia. Armed with their ARIA Award-nominated 2022 album Heroine, THORNHILL will also be joined by special guests YOUNG LIONS, INERTIA and TAPESTRY for this exciting run of shows.
Brad Cox has grown a reputation throughout Australia as a country rock artist collecting thousands of fans. Since hitting the country scene five years ago, Cox has shown his writing, and performing skills are some of the best in country music. This tour and opening concert, in particular, allowed fans to hear traditionally louder songs in an intimate environment. For a confessed “softie” that “cries when he gets a mosquito bite”, Thursday night’s warm-up show of the ‘Yarns and Yodels’ tour in Victoria must have been emotional overload.
Well the energy levels may be flagging from the heat and the sheer immensity of the event, but Sunday promised to be something special at CMC Rocks, with current biggest music star Morgan Wallen as the headliner, and crowd (and writer’s) favourite HARDY as the main support for the night. Kiwi singer Abby Christo was up first and provided a gentle upbeat intro to the day. Hailey Whitters did her second show of the festival, this time on the main stage, and she gives off major Miranda Lambert vibes, and had lots of fun with her great fiddle player and the rest of the band.
Corey Kent was back for a second set, and he was on really good form – with his band of mates, and belying his youth with songs and style that Don Henley or James Taylor would be proud of! He is a real talent and one to watch for the future. First of the bigger names of the day was the larger than life Warren Zeiders who strutted onto the main stage like he owned it, and then proceeded to give the crowd a set of rocked-up versions of his mainly acoustic recorded material – Up To No Good and Dark Night brought the party, before he did a JD “Shoey” to be different! Getting his initial exposure during COVID through TikTok and Social Media generally, and new release Pretty Little Poison was superb. He knows how to play the crowd, and the singlet got torn off to make the ladies swoon! His cracking set closed with Burn It Down and Ride The Lightning.
Next up was another first-timer in ERNEST, who allegedly met HARDY on an FGL writers bus when he was a rapper known as Sno! These two and Morgan Wallen are one of the hottest and tightest crews in Nashville right now, and they seem to travel as a package! ERNEST comes onstage in Def Leppard T-Shirt and trucker cap, and then proceeds to deliver a smooth, west-coast mellow country rock set, including This Fire, Wild Wild West and Done In A Bar. He also did the “Shoey” and took off his T-Shirt – noting that he was perhaps not quite as ripped as Warren Z – but the crowd loved it anyway, so topless he stayed. Feet Wanna Run and the song written for Jellyroll in Son Of A Sinner, before the massive hit duet with Morgan Wallen, Flower Shops, which due to a guitar malfunction, saw ERNEST pick up an acoustic and deliver the song solo, to rapturous applause.
Most impressive act of the weekend for me was Ashley McBryde, so it was fantastic to get a second set from her, and she changed it up with a beautiful solo version of Girl Going Nowhere to open the set, before the band kicked in. Ashley is a woman totally confident in her own skin, and comes across as strong and mischievous at the same time. One Night Standards was fantastic, and Brenda Put Your Bra On got all the girls kicking off. She does a version of Boys of Summer that I reckon is no longer needed in her set of such great originals, and I love the southern rock Skynyrd sound of Livin’ Next Door to Leroy which motors along, until ash leaves the stage to let “her boys” show their stuff, with a medley of Superstition and solos, before merging into Midnight Rider to close a second superb set.
“Hardy Hardy Hardy” started to echo around Willowbank as the younger and rockier elements of the crowd jostled for space in front of the second stage, and the Stone Temple Pilots Creep boomed out of the PA, welcoming HARDY to the stage. The band erupted into the massive crossover rock hit of Sold Out, and then we were on a rollercoaster ride for the next hour, with the raucous Kill Shit Till I Die up next, one of several redneck references of the night.
HARDY gave us Jack, Boots and Truck Bed, did the obligatory “Shoey” himself, before running through hit after hit with his heavier than normal band!
One Beer was the first monster hit, and then we got Red, 30.06 and Give Heaven Some Hell, before HARDY told us how he was told by the Nashville masters to give them a “radio song”. So in his inimitable style, he gave them the monstrous Radio Song! Blake Shelton had a huge hit with God’s Country, but HARDY wrote it, and he gave us his version, before closing the set with the latest album title track, The Mockingbird and The Crow. That was perhaps the most intense set ever seen at CMC Rocks!
We media were banished from the pit for Morgan Wallen, so we struggled through the crowd to get to the sound desk area to shoot the headliner – the stage set was enormous and complex, with ramps and podiums and so many lights! After some extended intro tapes, the band, made their way to their positions, and suddenly the man himself was onstage too in the spotlight! Currently with 5 or 6 songs in the Billboard Top 10, and all 36 of his album tracks in the Top 100, this makes Morgan Wallen the hottest of properties, and the set opened with Up Down (which featured Florida Georgia Line) and I Wrote The Book, and we were in for 90 minutes of pure pop country. Song after song of radio-friendly music rolled on, including Ain’t That Some and Dying Man, and a medley of Dangerous, 7 Summers, Silverado For Sale and Still Goin Down, in order to fit more songs into the set! Highlight was the appearance of HARDY to duet on He Went To Jared, from one of HARDY’s Hixtape series, and then still more through to the climax of the set and the closing fireworks.
A triumph for Chugg and Frontier to have secured Morgan Wallen as headliner, and to have the foresight to get him at the pinnacle of his current fame, and a testament to their ability to pick some of the great stars of Country music before they really make it.
A faultless festival from my perspective…..with minor gripes about how high the stages were so that taking photos was a real challenge, but we got enough!
BABYMETAL ANNOUNCE FIRST AUSTRALIAN HEADLINE TOUR AS PART OF WORLD TOUR 2023
Japanese metal sensation BABYMETAL are thrilled to announce they will be returning to Australia for their very first headline tour in June as part of their World Tour 2023.
Hailey Whitters is country through and through, as a writer for greats like Alan Jackson and Little Big Town, and released her own third album in 2022, and we got some old and news songs including her most recent Everything She Ain’t, and her perky voice and upbeat attitude was the perfect opener to Day 2 on the main stages.
