Thalia Zedek is set to embark on a new summer tour in support of her latest release Liars and Prayers (Thrill Jockey) which came out on April 22nd.
SUMMER TOUR 2008
May 23 Cambridge, MA Middle East Upstairs w/Joe Lally and The Glorytellers
Jun 13 Brooklyn, NY Union Pool w/Major Stars
Jun 14 Philadelphia, PA The Khyber w/Major Stars
Jun 15 Washington, DC The Velvet Lounge w/Major Stars
Jun 16 Baltimore, MD Talking Head w/Major Stars
Jun 18 New York, NY Mercury Lounge w/Retribution Gospel Choir
Jun 19 Cambridge, MA Middle East Upstairs w/Retribution Gospel Choir
Jun 20 Montreal, PQ Casa Del Popolo w/Retribution Gospel Choir
Jun 21 Toronto, ON The Rivoli w/Retribution Gospel Choir
Jun 22 Chicago, IL The Abbey Pub
Live performance of “1926” by Thalia on her 2005 tour here: www.thrilljockey.com/vault/index.html?media_id=6
What follows is a bit about Liars and Prayers in Thalia’s own words:
One really cool thing about the new record “Liars and Prayers” is that it marks the return in my life of two musicians that I’ve been really close to through the years, both musically and personally. It happened at the perfect time, when I was struggling a bit with wanting to move in new directions after releasing “Trust Not…” on Thrill Jockey in 2004, me and Dave (viola) and Daniel (drums) toured extensively in Europe, Australia and the US as a three piece, as we had been doing since 2001. But when that was all done I found myself feeling a bit constricted in terms of the instrumentation of the band, just kind of like we had taken the viola, drums, guitar thing as far as we could over the course of three records. I found that the new songs that I was writing were a lot heavier and for the first time since Come, I felt like maybe I wanted to play with a bass player for this new material. Shortly thereafter we played a show with Winston’s band Sheperdess, and I told him that I’d been writing stuff that I thought would sound good with a bass. He came to a rehearsal the following weekend. At the end he just propped his bass in the corner of the room and said “So, practice next Sunday?” I was like, uh sure, and just like that we had a bass player.
Coincidentally Dinosaur Jr. contacted me later that week and asked if we wanted to open up five East Coast shows for them. It seemed like a perfect time to try playing as a four piece so we quickly got some of the new material together and taught Winston some of the older songs and went on the road! A couple of weeks after we got back from the tour I got a call from Mel Lederman. He had played piano on all 3 of my previous solo records but rarely did live shows with us as he was very busy with his band Victory at Sea. He told me that Victory at Sea was (sadly) breaking up and that he really wanted to start doing shows and playing with me again. I didn’t know how it would work suddenly going from a three-piece to a four-piece and now to a five-piece, but I knew that Mel was such a great piano player that there was no way I was going to let this opportunity get away so I said sure. It was great because Mel already knew most of my material from the previous records and sounded great on all of the new stuff. So now I had my wish, a whole new range of a musical “palette” to work with and new material really started flowing quickly.
I was eager to start recording with the new band and Andrew Schneider was a name that had always come up whenever it came time to do a new record. I had done recording sessions with him before, but it was always as a guest on other people’s records, never for my own stuff. The result is Liars and Prayers which I’m very happy with and proud of.
Most of the songs on the record are pretty political in nature and the title refers to that. Liars and prayers (meaning those who lie and those who pray) mainly refers to the current US administration, who are big liars and big prayers, and more globally all the scary shit that’s going on in the world in the name of religion most of which is based on lies. “Next Exit” and “Begin to Exhume” particularly address these issues. Paranoia promoted by lies to create a climate of fear, which the administration can use to justify torture, violations of habeus corpus, wiretapping and gulag prisons and internment camps and other horrific crimes against humanity. Other songs are more personal (“Body Memory”, “Stars”), about how it feels to live in these times, and also about dear friends who passed away due to battles with drug addiction, depression, and lack of access to health care when they really needed it. And others are musings on past regrets and hopes for the future. (“circa the end”, “Green and Blue”, “Come Undone”).