Good morning Radicals! We’re two days away from the weekend. Perhaps some music news will get this day moving?
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is apparently launching a new side project called The Longshot. The singer-guitarist began teasing the new act by sharing a series of Instagram posts with his 1.8 million followers. The cryptic posts all share a punk vibe and promote the project’s name and its new private Instagram page, which states that The Longshot’s new album, Love Is for Losers, is “coming eventually sooner or later. Probably sooner.”
Armstrong has played with several side projects over the years, including Pinhead Gunpowder, Foxboro Hot Tubs and The Network. The latter two essentially consisted of all the members of Green Day plus additional musicians, although they never officially confirmed that they were The Network. Armstrong went under the name Reverend Strychnine Twitch in the Hot Tubs, who released their debut LP Stop, Drop And Roll a decade ago. Armstrong also recorded a collaborative album with Norah Jones in 2013 called Foreverly.
Green Day has been on a break since completing the tour cycle for its 2016 album Revolution Radio. The band has reportedly been working on the film version of its 2004 punk opera American Idiot, which is being produced by HBO.
Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch is the subject of a new documentary titled Loud Krazy Love that will receive its Southeast U.S. premiere as one of the Music Films/Music City Selections at the 49th annual Nashville Film Festival, set to take place between May 10th and 19th. All five members of the band are featured in the film, which was directed by Trey Hill and Scott Mayo.
The film’s official synopsis reads, “At the downbeat of the new millennium there was no bigger, darker, or more deeply influential hard rock band in the world than Korn. But for lead guitarist Brian ‘Head’ Welch, a dream come true was giving way to a raging nightmare of self-loathing and addiction.”
From the synopsis, it sounds like the documentary will focus on Welch’s exit from Korn, his struggle with addiction, his embrace of Christianity and eventual return to the band.
Welch left Korn in early 2005, at the same time announcing that he kicked his addictions to drugs and alcohol by becoming a born-again Christian. He rejoined the band in 2013.
The guitarist said in a 2017 interview that he was disappointed in the criticism he’s received from some members of the Christian community for returning to the group.
Welch said at the time, “This is all about love… Maybe it’ll take years for some people to let go of things, but we’ve gotta give ’em patience.”
Korn’s latest album was 2016’s The Serenity Of Suffering, with the band possibly slated to return to the studio later this year.
Stone Temple Pilots, Bush and The Cult shared the stage for the first time together on Tuesday night (April 3rd) at NeueHouse in Hollywood, California to celebrate the announcement of the upcoming Revolution 3 tour. The exclusive event, which was livestreamed on Facebook, featured intimate performances from all three bands.
The summer “tri-headlining” trek begins July 18th in Nashville and will hit an additional 19 cities over six weeks before concluding in Phoenix, Arizona on September 2nd. Each group will perform a full set in a different order each night. Tickets go on sale this Friday, April 6th.
STP will be out in support of their self-titled new album, which marks the recording debut of new vocalist Jeff Gutt. Bush’s most recent album, Black And White Rainbows, arrived in March of 2017. The Cult’s latest studio effort, Hidden City, came out in 2016.
Theory Of A Deadman has shared the official video for its cover of Chris Isaak‘s 1989 hit “Wicked Game.” Frontman Tyler Connolly told us that the last thing he wanted to do was turn the song into a hard rock track: “We got in the studio and I just said, let’s just make it the opposite of what everyone expects, ’cause I think we’ll ruin it, we’ll blow it if we try to make this like a rock single. I think it’d be so terrible. So we just made it spacious, where it like drops out, there’s not a lot going on and I really had to have a great vocal take. It was all about just me just having a great vocal take.”
“Wicked Game” is taken from the band’s latest album, Wake Up Call, which was released last October. The track follows up the LP’s initial single, “Rx (Medicate),” which peaked at Number One on the Rock chart. Wake Up Call follows up 2014’s Savages, which earned Theory its second consecutive Top 10 LP on the Billboard 200 and featured the chart-topping single “Angel.” Theory Of A Deadman will kick off a North American tour on May 2nd in Niagara Falls, Ontario, wrapping up on May 27th in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Finally, we’d like to wish a very Happy Birthday to Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready!
