If you’re in a band and you part ways with your bassist, what do you do? Well, some bands might replace their bassist or hire a studio musician, but not American Heritage. They enlisted an all-star cast of bassists to put in guest spots on their latest album, Sedentary. Bill Kelliher (of Mastodon) laid down some bass and even a guitar solo on the album, Rafa Martinez (of Black Cobra) lent his bass talents on the album, as well as Eric Bocek (of Joan of Arc, Ghosts And Vodka), who would become the band’s full-time bassits after the recording of Sedentary, among others.

If you’ve heard much music from Mastodon, Black Cobra or any of the other bands that lent a member to the recording of Sedentary, then it’s rather easy to hear the distinct influence from the different bassists. It’s especially easy to tell on the Bill Kelliher track since the guitarists in American Heritage use guitar tones similar those used by their friends in Mastodon for Remission and Leviathan. Bill’s signature bass style shines through on “Fetal Attraction.” The slight variance in style from song to song is one of the best parts about Sedentary, as each song is noticeably fresh and different, but still very much cohesive.

Before Sedentary was the band’s 2006 album Millenarian, which took a very similar style approach. It was dirty, fast, raucous, gritty, sludgy and all those other clichéd adjectives for American Heritage’s brand of music. In a March 1 interview with The Bone Reader Scott talked about the inspiration for Sedentary: “musically it came from evaluating what we were doing in general. Trying to figure out what had worked and what had failed in the past and trying to address those issues. I’m still pretty happy with most of Millenarian, but I also saw its weaknesses and tried to write towards a record that would fix some of what I thought was missing.”

And that’s exactly what they did. They took the formula from the critically-acclaimed Millenarian and made a better record. Even the artwork is incredible this time around—it was so good that it won first place for March 1 on ReignInArt.com, a site devoted to showcasing great album art in hard rock and metal.

Sedentary was released March 1 on Translation Loss Records, and you can pick up a copy from Translation Loss’ online store (along with a bunch of other great merch) or you can get it on iTunes.

We’re not surprised that The Hundred Days have been climbing the Best Of charts on OurStage—the quartet’s haunting and moody melodies make them hard to ignore. But while they seem poised for success, the group’s lovely lyrics have us a little mystified, especially on tracks like “On My Head.” So we asked The Hundred Days’ Jonathan Smith to take a break from getting ready for SXSW and tell us the story behind the cryptic words of the band’s Interpol-esqe track.

According to Smith, “On My Head” is a tale of struggle and triumph. “I think in this song there was a mixture of imagery which sought to juxtapose strife and hardship during the verse (biting metal in the snow, standing on your head) with success and escape (“try and catch me now!”) at the end of the song,” he says. It’s addressed to the listener; Smith knows that they’ll relate to the feelings of frustration and loneliness the song’s imagery invokes. But it’s not so bleak as all that, because he also knows “that they have also felt the relief and exhilaration of overcoming that challenge.” He says that he’s daring people to catch him, as they run beyond the limits they had previously set for themselves.

If you’re wondering about the line “it’s titanic,” which closes out the chorus, Smith says it refers to the size and scope of the listener’s challenge. “It’s larger than the listener,” he says. “All of the things which have forced him/her out of themselves, to become themselves, these are forces which they cannot control. Forces frighteningly huge and unrelenting. This could be going to school for the first time, or being on stage for the first time, or falling in love for the first time. Or overcoming an addiction.”

Check out “On My Head” below and see if you can relate to The Hundred Days’ plight!

Have an interesting story behind your lyrics? Let us know at pr@ourstage.com!

When the surviving members of the New York Dolls first reunited back in 2004 at Morrissey’s behest—for a performance at the Meltdown Festival that the former Smiths singer and lifelong Dolls obsessive was curating in London—it was difficult to believe that the seminal band, which had been inactive for nearly thirty years, was storming the stage once again. At the time, suggesting that the Dolls would actually remain together, write new material and become a fresh creative force capable of recording three new albums would have seemed like a flight of sheer fantasy. But seven years later, here we are, greeting the arrival of the post-meltdown Dolls’ third release, Dancing Backwards In High Heels (out yesterday on 429 Records). To mark the occasion, we chatted with David Johansen about how it feels to be fronting the Dolls four decades after they first came together.

According to Johansen, Dancing Backwards came together in a short, somewhat frenzied rush of creativity. “We rehearsed for like three days,” he says, “And then we went into the studio for three weeks. It’s not really something that you get a chance to sit back and take a look at. By the time you go home at night it’s like you don’t even want to listen to that stuff, you want to listen to Maria Callas or something, to clear your head.”

Whether it was the between-session doses of opera or just the artistic frisson in the air, Johansen and original Dolls guitarist Syl Sylvain came up with a biting batch of tunes for the album. “Streetcake,” for instance, incorporates everything from Beach Boys-like background vocals to blues idioms, and deftly drops lyrical references to The Orlons, Tommy James and even the Dolls themselves, all into one big pop-culture blender. “I think it’s a great song,” says Johansen. “Those different influences, they just get layered on one at a time. Syl had an instrumental version of that song that he had made at his house…I just thought it was such a—I guess I want to use the word ‘confection’—that I guess we wanted to have a lot of pop references in it.”

The Dolls have always been emblematic of their hometown’s gritty underbelly, and on “I’m So Fabulous,” they take a pointed poke at the poser “arrivists” who make life wearisome for real New Yorkers. “You could aim it at a lot of different people I guess,” figures the feisty Johansen, “I know these kids who have this kind of faux Web site called the Upper West Side Style blog, and they take pictures of people on the street, like, wearing Birkenstocks and stuff. I don’t know—there’s a lot of that stuff going on. It’s kind of about how people come to New York and they start making rules, like ‘Where we’re from they don’t allow smoking in the park,’ or something, ‘So we want to have that here.’ And it’s like ‘Whoa! We’re here already.’”

The album contains a couple more overt links to the band’s past, too. Back in the ‘70s, the Dolls were recording ‘60s R&B covers like Archie Bell & The Drells’ “Showdown,” and Dancing Backwards includes the Dolls’ take on The Blue Belles’ ’62 single “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman.” “It really rocks,” Johansen reckons, “We had it on a mix tape that we would play before the band plays at shows, and we just kind of always dug it, so we decided to play it. Then we put strings on it, and girls [singing backup], and horns, we threw everything at it. I’ve known it as long as I can remember; I play it on my radio show on Sirius.” The guys even cover themselves, by delivering a new version of “Funky But Chic,” which opened Johansen’s 1978 solo debut album. “A lot of people have been telling us we should cut that song for various reasons,” the singer explains, “Depending on what school they’re from, like agents have been saying ‘Oh, if you cut that song we can use it in movies.’ It’s a song that Syl and I had written for the Dolls originally, and then I recorded it, but one day we just thought ‘Okay, let’s play it and see what it sounds like, in the studio, and it rocked pretty good, so it stayed in the mix.”

As for Johansen’s working relationship with his longtime sidekick Sylvain— the only other original Doll left since bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane passed away shortly after the Meltdown show— things remain rosy. “Syl is like a conduit to this music of the spheres,” Johansen enthuses, “And it just kind of comes out of him. I really get where he’s coming from. We have a lot of the same passions for rock & roll music, and maybe as time goes by we kind of influence each other, like ‘Give this genre another chance and put it into your palette.’ We do it really subconsciously. The psyche has so many things that it digs that are floating around in there, and when you’re a musician you kind of filter them all through something and it comes out as your own thing. It’s not just music, you’re bringing politics and philosophy and all kinds of stuff into it. So it’s really from the soup of the psyche that you create a song. If you can do it without thinking consciously so much, to me it’s successful, and Syl and I seem to have the capacity to do that when we’re writing together.”

It’s Sylvain and Johansen’s shared enthusiasm for performing that fuels the band’s forward motion as well. “We dig playing together, me and Syl,” says Johansen, “We like going out and doing shows. When we began we were only gonna do one show, it wasn’t like we had a plan to be reunited per se. After we did that show we got asked to do some other shows, and we thought ‘Okay, let’s do it, because it sounds good and we’re having fun.’ And then after about a year of that, we decided ‘You know, this is like a band, we should make a record.’ If I’m digging it, I’m not really questioning it so much.” Life on the road these days is a far cry from the old grind though. Johansen says, “In the David Johansen Group, the band I had after the Dolls, I used to be in a van about 287 nights a year, traveling to the next town, and it got kind of tough on my ass. But the way we tour now, we do buses and stuff like that, it’s much more livable. At that time, oh God, I felt like I had been run over by a truck half the time.”

In the long period between iterations of the Dolls, of course, Johansen has incorporated traditional folk and blues influences into his work, especially with his acoustic-based band The Harry Smiths, named for the creator of the legendary Anthology Of American Folk Music. It turns out those influences remain a part of his musical makeup. “As a kid I used to sing those songs, like the Harry Smith kind of songs,” recalls Johansen, “And I also used to sing Wilson Pickett songs and stuff like that, so even when I was like 15 years old I would have that folk/blues thing going on and also have, like, a dance band. So they’re all really strong influences on me. That folk/blues music, to me that’s biblical, that’s like the Book of Life, and then the other stuff is really rhythmic in a way that I really dig, so I just try to find a way to put it all together. I filter a lot of ideas through those old songs I was listening to when I was growing up, because they nourish me in a metaphysical way.”

So, with the Dolls a going concern once again, does Johansen ever allow himself to wonder whether late founding members like Kane or guitarist Johnny Thunders—who died a drug-related death in 1991—would be with the band today if they were still around? “ Arthur, of course, would,” reckons the singer. “If John had gotten to a point in his life where he could travel extensively, I’m sure he would too. When you’ve got your ankle chained to the drugstore it’s hard to go anywhere and do stuff, and the thing about being in a rock & roll band is really about moving, and going to a lot of places all the time. I suppose we could have created some kind of long-running Broadway show,” he says wryly, “And maybe it would have worked out. But it’s so hard to speculate on that; you can have an idea with a rosy ending, or you can look at history and face facts.” At this, Johansen allows himself a low, world-weary laugh that suggests he’s faced his share of facts himself, and is thankful for whatever degree of rosiness currently colors his own existence.

Blues Traveler frontman John Popper has just released his first proper solo album in a dozen years, John Popper & The Duskray Troubadours, and there’s a whole subculture of people who already know far more about that particular topic than they could learn here. This article isn’t for them. It’s for those who blithely turn up their nose at all things Blues Traveler-related because they deem them tainted by the “jam band” tag. First of all, there’s about as much jamming happening on these tracks as there is on any random Ramones album, but before we even get that far along, let’s get a couple of other things straight.

For one, those with doubts about the relative cred of the scene that grew up in late-’80s New York City, centered on the likes of Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, God Street Wine, Milo Z and Jono Manson, should get their historical perspective corrected. In between the punk and new wave of a decade earlier and the garagey post-post-punk that emerged at the turn of the millennium, Popper and his pals represented New York’s only real homegrown rock movement to make it to the mainstream. And it happened organically, groundswell-style. Your intrepid Riffer, Ranter and Rumor-monger, in fact, was a young aspirant banging around the city’s clubs at the time, and he can recall, for instance, the crowd of whirling, twirling young neo-hippie girls who would fill MacDougal Street’s usually sedate Speakeasy whenever the Spin Doctors took the stage. He also distinctly remembers the way the tiny back room of a Chinese restaurant-by-day/rock-club-by-night in the then-dicey Port Authority area suddenly, almost magically became rush-hour-subway packed when four big, biker-looking dudes fronted by a chromatic-harp-blower unceremoniously took the stage.

These were the days before those bands had even begun releasing albums of course, much less climbing to the top of the pop charts, as they would do in the ’90s. Between then and now, a new generation of riff-happy types like the North Mississippi All-Stars have taken prominence, and the guys who kicked around the Northeast, playing anywhere and everywhere and building their audience the old-fashioned way, have gone in different directions. The frontmen for both the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler, Chris Barron and John Popper, respectively, have emerged as solo singer-songwriters. Popper’s very first venture outside the Blues Traveler fold came in 1999 with the album Zygote, and while he’s dabbled with various side projects in the interim, John Popper & The Duskray Troubadours marks his first real solo statement since then.

To be frank, fans who found themselves enthralled by Blues Traveler’s extended instrumental excursions and hard-riffing, blues-rocking tunes may not have a very firm footing upon entering the world of The Duskray Troubadours. Ultimately, it’s an Americana-tinged outing full of folk touches, precisely placed guitar twang and understated, thoughtfully-crafted tunes that are more about capturing a moment than letting the band get its rocks off. Bringing things full circle, Popper enlisted his old New York pal Jono Manson to handle guitar and production duties. Manson started out in the early ’80s as a co-founder of the seminal roots-rocking band Joey Miserable & The Worms, who never broke through to the big time but had a profound effect on the New York music scene for years to come. These days, Manson is a globe-trotting artist who takes his singing, songwriting and production talents all over the world, but when he got the call to helm his old pal Popper’s most intimate outing ever, how could he refuse?

“On this album, melody is what drove everything,” says Popper, confirming that his motivations for the Duskray Troubadours project are not necessarily the same as the passions that drove him with his longtime band. If you think you’ve got Popper pegged, you’d better double-check yourself by looking in on his latest sonic statement, lest you miss out on something you weren’t expecting.

Buy John Popper & The Duskray Troubadours on Amazon now.

All great artists require some form of inspiration, a spark that drives their work. Inspiration can be found everywhere and, of course, a lot of guys find their inspiration in girls. Let’s take a look at a few of rock’s most notable muses, the women who inspired the songs we love.

Friday, February 25th marked the unfortunate passing of Suze Rotolo. Even if you aren’t sure who she was, you should probably be thanking her for some of the best music of the 20th century. If you care at all about folk music or Dylan’s early recordings then you’ve almost certainly seen her. Rotolo is the young woman locking arms with Bob Dylan on the iconic cover of The Freewheelin Bob Dylan. Rotolo was not some cover model or even a little fling for the young Dylan, mind you. Dylan describes his initial attraction and infatuation with Rotolo in colorful terms, with Suze leaving “his head spinning” and her reminding the young Dylan of a, “Rodin sculpture come to life… a libertine heroine.”

During their courtship, Rotolo is credited with introducing Dylan to the Civil Rights movement and is cited as the inspiration for classics such as “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”. Rotolo and Dylan stayed together for four years before they eventually split, their relationship both passionate and tempestuous. Rotolo rarely talked about her relationship with Dylan after their split. Instead, she focused her energies on Civil Rights, social activism and her own works as an artist for the remainder of her life.

Pattie Boyd is another notable rock muse but she gets extra points for both quality and quantity—Boyd was married to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton for nearly a decade each. Not at the same time, of course. Boyd and Harrison met on the set of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night when Boyd was cast as a schoolgirl fan in March of 1964. By January of 1966 the pair were married. Not unlike Rotolo, Boyd was an influence on the trajectory her beau’s career. It was her interest in Eastern religions that helped motivate the band to meet with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. However,  Boyd and Harrison’s courtship was quite rocky; Boyd, a model, reportedly attracted the attentions of John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood before her marriage with Harrison crumbled and they divorced in 1974.

Before their marriage ended, George Harrison befriended Eric Clapton and despite the close association they had with one another, Clapton fell in love with and made many advances towards Boyd during this time. Clapton even famously shacked up with Boyd’s younger sister for a time, allegedly using her as a substitute for Pattie. Eventually Clapton and Boyd would wed in 1979 but their relationship was even more rocky due to Clapton’s infidelity and drug addictions. The couple eventually split in 1989 but it’s worth noting that Boyd stayed close with both of her rock star former husbands after their marriages ended. To top it all off, Boyd can also state that she’s the inspiration for songs by both Harrison and Clapton, most notably “Layla” which is regarded as one of the great rock love songs of all time.

Bebe Buell is probably the most prolific of rock and roll muses based on the number of confirmed liaisons she had with prominent rockers, not to mention the speculative hook ups. Buell was in a long-term, open relationship with prog rocker Todd Rundgren through the late ’70s and early ’80s. From her book Rebel Heart: An American Rock ‘n’ Roll Journey, “Todd and I respected each other enough to keep our affairs discreet, and when one was over, we fell back into each other’s arms.”

Around this time period, Bebe can be linked to Elvis Costello (who may or may not have used their relationship for inspiration on Get Happy!! and Blood & Chocolate), Stephen Tyler (Buell is Liv Tyler’s mom) and John Taylor of Duran Duran fame  (we guess because he was in Duran Duran). It’s also alleged that Buell has shacked up with Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and numerous other rock stars. Buell has even made the claim that Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” is about her, despite the inconvenient truth that the two didn’t know each other when the song was written. However, Buell shouldn’t fret as her place in rock muse history had already been well established. In addition to all of her rock star encounters, she’s the inspiration for the character Penny Lane in Almost Famous. Not too shabby.

There are certain countries that are considered to be a cut above the rest in terms of the metal they produce. At the top of the metal food chain are countries like Canada, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, the UK and the US—but who reigns supreme in the metal world? There is a strong case to be made for each of these countries, but in the last two decades it’s hard to argue against Sweden as metal’s capital.

Alternative metal band, Katatonia

Though Sweden might not have the most metal bands out of all these countries (that title probably belongs to the US), they have birthed a few bands in the last few decades that have gone on to pioneer, revolutionize, or create a new sub-genre of metal. Bands such as In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and At The Gates are the forefathers melodic death metal (and what would be come to known as the “Gothenburg sound”). Meshuggah are often considered one of the most unique metal bands of today, inspiring countless bands to come after them are—they’re also often cited as the main influence for the recent trend of “djent” bands). Opeth is largely considered the pinnacle for progressive death metal bands, with each of their nine full-length albums earning extremely positive critical response. Candlemass is one of the original epic doom metal bands that would carve the modern and current definition of doom metal.

The legendary Dark Tranquillity

Even if you take out the list of heavily influential metal bands that shaped the current lay of the metal land, you’re still left with a list of massively talented bands: Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy, Katatonia, Bathory, Hypocrisy, Bloodbath, Soilwork, Scar Symmetry, Cult of Luna, and the list goes on. One of the biggest deciding factors, in addition to the quality of these bands, is their longevity. Even pioneering bands like Dark Tranquillity, Opeth and Meshuggah are still putting out landmark releases. That’s what it’s all about: sustained, high quality, albums year after year.

Of course, there can be strong arguments made for any of the aforementioned countries—the UK produced Motörhead, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest and creating the entire genre of metal. The US can be credited for producing the “big four” of thrash, among countless other great bands. Still, even considering all of the arguments for other countries to reign supreme, it’s hard to argue against Sweden.

Fame is seldom more of a double-edged sword than when you’re trying to sneak your way around it. Such is the dilemma faced by Beady Eye, the band that was created when the chronically fractious relationship between Oasis’s battling siblings Liam and Noel Gallagher finally imploded for good in 2009. Beady Eye is basically Oasis minus frontman Liam, and try as they might, it seems highly unlikely that they’ll be viewed otherwise. On some level, that’s fair. Noel was, after all, the main songwriter in Oasis, and beyond coming up with a different name—which was probably a legal necessity—he hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to distance himself from that legacy, continuing on with the same musicians and remaining in the same general Britpop bag. He’s even abandoned the guitar so he can stand out front, bent over at the waist, with his hands behind his back a la Liam.

On the other hand— the one that’s held out in a futile attempt to stop the British press’s ludicrous comparisons between Beady Eye’s debut, Different Gear, Still Speeding, and early Oasis—this is not Oasis, anymore than, say, New Order was Joy Division after Ian Curtis departed this mortal vale. The one thing both Gallagher brothers might conceivably agree on is the fact that Oasis can’t exist without both of them. And while few new indie bands—Different Gear is out on the band’s own label in the UK and the small Dangerbird imprint stateside—without Beady Eye’s pedigree would get as much attention, even fewer would face as many lofty expectations and harsh comparisons.

Whichever side of the question you come down on, in the end there’s really only one salient question to be asked: What does the album sound like? Well, it should surprise no one on either side to learn that it’s no Definitely Maybe or (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, but it’s also considerably more fun than Oasis’s swan song, Dig Out Your Soul, and on its own merits it’s not half bad. Without the Oasis name hanging over his head—in theory, at least—it’s possible for Noel to leave some of the baggage behind. He no longer sounds like he’s trying to maintain the title of England’s Greatest Band; when he sings “I just wanna rock & roll” on “Beatles & Stones” (ironically one of the album’s least Beatlesque tracks), it’s easy to believe him. While there are plenty of undeniable Oasis touches here and there, Different Gear feels lighter, capable of achieving higher velocity with less fuel intake; in other words, the rockers have some roll to them for a change, and it seems like Noel and company are actually having fun.

The pop hooks that have always been a mainstay of Gallagher’s trickbag get more breathing room as well. Steve Lilywhite’s work here serves as a reminder that the super-producer was at the helm of The La’s legendary debut album, widely regarded as one of the greatest power-pop records of the ‘90s, not to mention later releases by similarly sparkling popsters such as Crowded House and Guster. “For Anyone” is a perfect, breezy, two-minute pop gem that would have been right at home on The La’s lone album, while “Kill For a Dream” could have found it’s own room in a Crowded House. That said, Different Gear is no slamdunk; the Beatles reference points that pop up throughout the album seem almost obligatory at this point, while the glam-rock side of Noel’s influences bears less fruit than his poppier inspirations. And while a fair amount of Oasis-esque fat has been trimmed away, the tendency to repeat the chorus ad infinitum at the end of a song remains an annoying habit.

All in all, though, there’s more to be said for the album than many are likely to admit. In terms of Different Gear’s eventual reception, the US never really got the Gallaghers to begin with, so it’s unlikely that they’ll start now, and the three singles released in advance of the album in the UK didn’t exactly set the charts aflame. If England’s uncertain response thus far is an honest reaction to the music itself, that’s one thing; if it’s born of an insistence upon Beady Eye living up to past glories that even Oasis itself could no longer manage, then Noel—for perhaps the first time in his high-flying career— is being shortchanged.

This week’s post is bittersweet. Not only will I be writing about how my favorite member left one of my favorite bands, but this post will be the last installment of Punk On The Rocks. In a way, this is very fitting. My first real foray into blogging was a MySpace post about why I should have Scott Klopfenstein’s children (Yes, really). Scott was always my favorite member of Reel Big Fish. I can’t say for certain whether it was his sense of humor, his voice, his glasses and shaggy hair or his way with a horn, but for some reason he was the band member I felt connected with. Now that he has had an actual child (Not with me, sadly) and with Reel Big Fish is celebrating twenty years as a band, he has decided that it is time to leave behind the life of a touring musician. As a way to say thank you to him for his many years of service in the two-tone army, I have written the following tribute: The Top 5 Reasons I’ll Miss Scott Klopfenstein.

So long Scott, and thanks for all the Reel Big Fish

5. The Dashing Good Looks – Give me a man with glasses, boyish good looks and a trumpet and watch me melt like a stick of butter in a microwave.

4. The Sense Of Humor -  Scott and RBF frontman Aaron Barrett are the ska equivalent of Blink 182′s Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge. Their stage banter isn’t just filler, it is part of why you came to see the show in the first place. Scott even manages to steal the show with his hilarious commentary track on Reel Big Fish’s 2003 live DVD Reel Big Fish Live At The House Of Blues – The Show Must Go Off!

3. The Harmonies -  As someone who has played in a few bands, I know how hard it is to find a person whose voice meshes perfectly with yours when you sing in harmony. Scott’s voice is a perfect foil to Aaron’s, and for me at least, their tight vocal harmonies largely define what I consider to be the Reel Big Fish sound. Sure, they’ll find someone else to sing Scott’s parts— but it just won’t be the same.

2.  “Scott’s A Dork” -Classic Reel Big Fish track “Scott’s A Dork” just won’t be the same with out Scott singing along about how he’s a dork. Will they even PLAY “Scott’s A Dork” without Scott? Will I never get to hear ” Dork Dork Dork Dork Dork Dork Dork Dork Dork” again? Oh, the humanity!

1. The Lead Vocals – While Scott sang mostly backup vocals, the few instances where he would sing lead were always highlights for me. Knowing that I’ll never hear him belt “Drunk Again” live is the number one reason that I will miss Scott Klopfenstein.

What do you think about Scott Klopfenstein leaving Reel Big Fish? Let us know in the comments section!

I hope that you all enjoyed reading Punk On the Rocks as much as I enjoyed writing it. Keep your music fast and loud—Gabba Gabba Hey!

Those whose hearts palpitate in time to the songs of Robbie Robertson—both his Band-era milestones and solo hits such as “Broken Arrow” and “Somewhere Down The Crazy River”— have had to endure a long period of silence from the legendary singer/songwriter/guitarist. Robertson’s last album was Contact From the Underworld of Redboy, a 1998 release informed by the electronic sensibilities of producer Howie B. But just a couple of weeks ago, the thirteen-year silence was broken by “He Don’t Live Here No More,” the first single from Robertson’s fifth solo album, How To Become Clairvoyant, which is scheduled for an April 5 release. The single, like much of the album itself, bears a deep, swampy, blues-rock groove and a natural-sounding, lived-in feel that has more in common with Robertson’s early solo outings than his last couple of releases, which boasted a more modernized approach. The production style proves to be the perfect complement to the tunes, which share a retrospective, even nostalgic purview. “I can’t think of one song on the record that doesn’t have that quality,” affirms Robertson, during our conversation about Clairvoyant.

Robertson’s got some old friends helping out on the record too, including Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. “Eric and I first started talking about doing something like 10 years ago or more,” Robertson recalls, “and we got together, but we didn’t have anything specific in mind. We’re old friends, so we were hanging out and playing a little music and telling stories…but it was just kind of dipping our toe in the water. Him and I did a few things probably over a three-week period when he was in Los Angeles. Some time later…I came across the project that him and I had started, and I thought ‘Wow, there’s much more here than what I remembered.’ So I called him and I said ‘We’ve got some interesting stuff that we started,’ and he said ‘I always thought so.’” The next thing he knew, Robertson was on a plane to London at Clapton’s behest, to record a full-blown album. “He was just a great friend in all of it,” Robertson says of the British guitar hero, “just being so supportive. He said ‘I just want you to make a record. If I can be part of it and be supportive in it, I’m just glad to do it.’ So that was nice inspiration too.” Another old compatriot on hand for the sessions was Steve Winwood. “I met Steve when I was 20-years-old and I was playing with Bob Dylan, and we were touring England,” recalls Robertson. “That was in 1966 I think, so I’ve known him that long.”

But Robertson’s other musical endeavors elongated the production process of Clairvoyant. The London tracks turned out well, but “Right after we cut them, Martin Scorsese asked me if I would help him figure out the music for Shutter Island,” says Robertson. “So I went off and did that. It was a more lengthy process than I thought, because for that soundtrack I wanted to use modern classical music, and although I knew something about what that was, I wanted to do more research. So the work on that…it took a while. Then I came back to the record, and I finished it up by myself and with the other people that I brought in to work on it, like Trent Reznor and [ex-Rage Against The Machine guitarist] Tom Morello and Robert Randolph.” So how did industrial-music icon Trent “Nine Inch Nails” Reznor end up in the mix? “In this last little while, he’s been leaning in a cinematic direction,” explains Robertson, “and he did the music for Social Network. This song that Eric and I had written, “Madame X,” we had laid down a basic track, but what I was really looking for was…something that had a timeless quality to it, but I wanted to put a new, modern kind of spin on it as well. I thought those two worlds would fit together really nice, so I asked Trent if he would do a treatment on this.”

But despite the occasional presence of more contemporary-minded contributors like Reznor and Morello, How To Become Clairvoyant remains a rootsy, earthy piece of work, and the songs seem to touch on earlier phases of Robertson’s life. “This Is Where I Get Off,” for instance, deals with his split from his buddies in The Band, while “Straight Down The Line” celebrates pre-rock & roll-era artists’ insistence on standing their stylistic ground, regardless of changing trends. Robertson says the seed of the idea had to do with Mahalia Jackson. “I had suggested a few years ago that she be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence,” he says, “because she was a complete inspiration, and she’s one of the greatest female singers of all time. And the answer back from her family was ‘That’s okay, we’d rather not.’ Because she always said ‘I do not play no rock and roll.’ [a key line in Robertson’s song] And Frank Sinatra, when rock and roll first came out, he was like, ‘Well this shit’s only gonna be around for six months anyway.’ I just like that attitude, some people were just bold enough to say ‘Nah, I don’t buy it.’”

“When The Night Was Young” looks back wistfully on the idealism of the ‘60s counterculture that 67-year-old Robertson was part of. “The youth of the nation, and the youth of the world, ultimately felt like ‘We’re not just gonna stand here and watch wrong things happen, we’re gonna stand up and we’re gonna make a difference.’ That war [in Vietnam] was called to a halt, because everybody said ‘We don’t want this,’ and it really was the voice of a generation telling the governments and the world ‘You’re gonna have to stop this.’ And they did. When we played at Woodstock, people were getting up saying ‘There’s a half a million of us here, and we’re all here today for peace, and we want this war to go away.’ And at that point people were saying ‘You know what, we’re gonna have to listen to some of this shit, we just can’t ignore it anymore.’ It was a powerful feeling, and we don’t have that now, we don’t really feel that in the air.”

On How To Become Clairvoyant, the listeners who grew up with Robertson’s music will recognize pieces of their own past, but younger generations can still get a feeling for the sense of history that pervades the album. The tunes themselves, of course, come with no age requirements for their enjoyment, and Robertson’s followers can exhale at last, content in the knowledge that their pied piper is back at work. “I choose to make records when I feel inspired to do so,” he says, “otherwise I’d rather not,” and inspiration appears to have been a key ingredient in Robertson’s latest sonic statement.

LCD Soundsystem announced their last show of their final tour a few weeks ago, as though you hadn’t already heard. On April 2nd, the band will grace the stage at Madison Square Garden for their sold out farewell show, capping off a valediction of both shocking and well deserved amounts of hype. They will play their swan song, they will leave the stage and that will be the end of one of the great dance-punk bands of our generation. We’re still bummed that we couldn’t get tickets to that show, or to any of  the ever increasing number of gigs leading up to the MSG date (Side note: kudos to James Murphy for blasting the scalpers! Seriously, that guy is a class act).

But that’s beside the point. It got us thinking, LCD Soundsystem made a big deal out of this being their farewell tour but they hadn’t really earned their bonafides a live band du jour, as a touring entity, up until that point. Unlike LCD, there are some bands that have always made a big deal out of their live show, that seem to exist only to tour. Not that that’s a bad thing. Let’s take a look at some of the artists we hope never stop touring:

Bob Dylan

A rolling stone gathers no moss, and even though Dylan is old enough to have moss grow on him, there’s no stopping this man’s touring regimen. His tour schedule since June of 1988 has been dubbed the “Never Ending Tour“; this globe-trotting tour has Dylan performing around 100 days out of the year, and he’s kept up this pace in spite of the fact that he’s almost a septuagenarian. You’d think the man might want a break or a nap or something after so many years. Still, he’s already got April dates lined up in Australia. We should count ourselves lucky that we’ve heard so much from him, and we’ll probably be hearing more from Bob in years to come.

Reel Big Fish

These ska-punk workhorses have been at it longer than most of their ilk from the mid ’90s. You could’ve gone to see them at some festival in middle school, you caught them in the club when they headlined in high school and you went to their show again in college when you were feeling a wee bit nostalgic. They just wrapped up a tour with fellow goof-punk road warriors The Aquabats in January. So what do they have on their plate for the upcoming year? A European tour, you say? Suprise suprise.

Phish

This spot could have easily gone to Dave Matthews Band if they weren’t planning on taking 2011 off, kinda. And sure, some may cry foul as there was a long stretch when Phish didn’t tour, but we won’t count periods of band hiatuses/ breakups.

Phish’s reputation as a band is based off of their live show. Not only in how technically good it is or how “communal” (read: chemically altered) the atmosphere at one of their gigs is but also in how Phish fosters the live experience with their fans. For those who don’t follow the band, Phish’s fandom is reminiscent of the Grateful Dead’s and a lot of other prominent jam bands of yore. And a big aspect of that culture is bootlegging. I won’t go into the number of Phish phan phorums (I’m sorry) on the Internet; suffice it to say, they’re numerous. The online dedication to Phish is also unique in the number of ways fans can get their hands on live material from the band. You can find high quality audio recordings from nearly every live set the band has done on their Web site and the fan bootlegs and set lists for Phish shows spanning their entire career can be found all over the web.

Frank Turner

The man has been in the solo game for about 5 years now and has taken to touring with a workmanlike approach. There’s no need to count his time in hardcore band Million Dead in his total number of shows played because his solo schedule is so impressive that it speaks for itself. Since Turner started flying solo, he’s played over 1000 shows at a rate of a little over 200 shows a year. And he’s still had time to record three LPs, a handful of EPs and demos on top of all that. I wonder if he’ll go out on the road behind his next album?

What artist would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments.