Summer Touring For The Gossip

You are never going to believe what I just heard through the grapevine (and honey, honey I's just about to lose my mind): dirty blues/punk rockers The Gossip have got a load of smoldering summer tour dates lined up. And — on the road from the end of June to the beginning of August — the three of 'em should be descending upon your hometown any day now.

The 24-date tour kicks off in Seattle at the Crocodile Café on June 22 and concludes in San Francisco at the Bottom of the Hill on August 5. Some of the other cities where the group will perform include Vancouver, Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, Montreal, Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., Cleveland and Nashville.

The Olympia, Wash.-by-way-of-Arkansas raw-as-hide and gritty-as-grits band had their second album, Movement, released by Kill Rock Stars in May. The Delta/Mississippi-inspired record is full of down-and-out, back-porch-stomping numbers you'll wanna put your greasy palms together to. Fed by the ancient blues' dark and creepy side, The Gossip's sweaty, shaking, sometimes caustic tunes will boom and resonate off venue walls like the ghosts of Robert Johnson's era. Led by Beth Ditto's throaty, impassioned and soulful-as-a-gospel-singer wails, the band begs the demons to leave, and they just might force you to your knees too.

The Gossip — Ditto, drummer Kathy Mendonca and guitarist Nathan Howdeshell (who also plays in Die Monitr Batss) — formed in Searcy, Ark., in 1999 as a more punk-rock-oriented group, relocating to Olympia shortly thereafter. It didn't take long for the band to become an active member of Olympia's burgeoning, liberal indie-rock scene. Kill Rock Stars released their debut 7-inch, That's Not What I Heard, in 2000; they followed it up with 2002's full-length recording Arkansas Heat, also put out by KRS.

For tour date listings, please check the band's label site. — Jenny Tatone [Friday, June 13, 2003]