Crow argues for return to empathy

Dylan, Nelson set for Outlaw Music Festival tour

NASHVILLE, Tenn, April 12, (AP): Last year, Sheryl Crow started a petition on Change.org to shorten the US presidential election cycle. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter said she was exhausted by the mudslinging and divisive language that had dominated the discussion about the candidates.

“I felt like it was becoming so hateful that I had to watch to make sure my kids didn’t pick up the remote and turn the TV on,” she said during a recent interview at her home in Nashville.

Crow said what upset her was how technology and social media had changed the conversation.

“Now we have this forum for haters to come out and say the worst thing you could possibly say to someone without having the experience of the reaction,” she said. “We’ve learned to be a society without empathy and without compassion.”

The ways people connect, or fail to connect, became a central theme on her upcoming album, “Be Myself,” to be released on April 21, which brings Crow back to her early roots as a rocker after brief stints exploring country music and soul music on her last two records.

“The whole album is very informed by the atmosphere, which is very chaotic, very vitriolic, a lot of fear that was really in the ether while we were making this record,” she said.

Crow listened to her early records, including her debut, “Tuesday Night Music Club,” and “The Globe Sessions,” and teamed up with Jeffrey Trott, her longtime songwriting partner and a multi-instrumentalist. She brought in Tchad Blake, a Grammywinning engineer who worked with her in the late ’90s.

“We wanted to make a really catchy record, but one that had some edge, some grit, in the same way that some of those early recordings had,” Trott said.

Crow, who has often peppered her lyrics with political references, said the album helped her after Donald Trump won the presidential election.

“I started losing faith and not only

altercation with a celebrity photographer last month at Los Angeles International Airport.

The meeting is unlikely to result in charges for the singer over the March 3 incident, which resulted in Tomlinson’s for our country, but for the people that voted for him,” Crow said.

Compromise

As she sings on her first single, “Halfway There,” Crow asks for cooperation and compromise as a solution to the discord.

“You may not be an environmentalist and I might be, but at the end of the day, don’t we all want the same thing for our kids?” she said. “We want a healthy future that is secure. And we have to figure out a way to communicate with reason and a modicum of decorum at least.”

As a mother of two children, ages 6 and 9, she favors an unplugged life as reflected in “Roller Skate,” a nostalgic, toe-tapping song about ditching the phone for a good time.

“At the end of the day, you’re missing out on life experiences if you’re constantly checking in with anybody that’s not in the room,” Crow said.

NEW YORK:

Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan are set to perform on a tour based on the country icon’s curated Outlaw Music Festival.

Blackbird Presents and Nelson announced Tuesday that the Outlaw Music Festival Tour will play six cities, including New Orleans and Dallas, from July 1 to July 16.

Willie Nelson & Family will play each night, while Dylan and His Band will perform July 8 in Detroit and July 9 in Milwaukee.

Other performers include Sheryl Crow, the Avett Brothers, Jason Isbell, Margo Price and My Morning Jacket.

Tickets go on sale April 21. The tour will also visit Rogers, Arkansas, and Syracuse, New York.

Nelson launched the Outlaw Music Festival last year.

NEW YORK:

Also:

Herbie Hancock has twice before visited Havana to perform

arrest. City attorney’s spokesman Frank Mateljan wrote in an email that the meeting is set for later this month to advise Tomlinson and the photographer how to avoid future problems. intimate solo-duet concerts with his Cuban counterpart Chucho Valdes, but at the end of April the two renowned jazz pianists will be collaborating on a grander scale.

Hancock and Valdes will be serving as artistic directors for the 6th International Jazz Day. On Monday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced that Havana will be the global host city for the event, culminating with an allstar concert on April 30 at the recently renovated 19th-century Gran Teatro de La Habana. The concert will be broadcast live on Cuban television and live streamed by UNESCO.

Last year, Washington was the host city with president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hosting the global concert at the White House.

“Many times we think of Cuba as having great baseball players, which they do, but they have amazing jazz players and we’ve experienced the greatness of Cuban jazz musicians for many, many decades,” Hancock, a UNESCO goodwill ambassador, said in a telephone interview. “I’m hoping that the true creative spirit and artistry of the Cuban musicians will be recognized globally.”

Hancock will be bringing about two dozen international jazz artists to Cuba. The roster includes Americans such as singers Cassandra Wilson and Kurt Elling, violinist Regina Carter, bassist Marcus Miller and bassistsinger Esperanza Spalding as well as saxophonist Igor Butman (Russia), trumpeters Till Bronner (Germany) and Takuya Kuroda (Japan), drummer Antonio Sanchez (Mexico) and oud player Dhafer Youssef (Tunisia).

Unlike previous International Jazz Days outside the US when the host country was represented by only a few musicians, at least 29 Cubans will be performing at the concert, including veterans such as pianists Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Bobby Carcasses and younger musicians like trumpeter Julio Padron and pianist Alfredo Rodriguez.

The scuffle occurred after Tomlinson arrived on a flight with his girlfriend and asked a photographer to stop filming. (AP)

LOS ANGELES:

A copyright infringement lawsuit over Ed Sheeran’s hit “Photograph” has been settled.

A federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed the case on Monday based on a request by attorneys for Sheeran and the composers of a song called “Amazing.”

The composers, Martin Harrington and Tom Leonard, claimed “Photograph” was nearly identical in pitch, tempo and structure to their song.

The terms of the settlement were not included in court filings. Harrington and Leonard’s attorney Richard S. Busch said he could only confirm the case was settled. (AP)

NEW YORK:

Don’t panic, music fans — Panic! at the Disco’s singer Brendon Urie is about to make his Broadway stage debut in “Kinky Boots.”

The singer-songwriter will play a factory honcho in the musical starting next month, lured by the show’s producers who were curious to see if he was interested in exploring some sort of musical theater role. Urie joked that he offered to build sets, but will settle on singing.

“It’s a familiar thing, I guess, but it’s such a different world. I’m so excited to jump in,” Urie tells The Associated Press. “This is a step in an exciting direction for me because I’ve always dreamed of being a part of Broadway in some way.” (AP)