Ground Control Touring is excited to welcome Grandchildren to the family! Stay tuned as their debut album, Everlasting, will be released by Green Owl this fall.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band will play alongside legendary rebellion rockers Rage Against the Machine for a benefit concert to raise money to fight Arizona immigration law on July 23 in Los Angeles. It will be Rage's first time back in their hometown in over 10 years. This news comes one week after the Desaparecidos reunion announcement for a similar immigration benefit show in Nebraska on July 31. More information can be found here , and tickets can be bought here .

With the help of some old friends, Conor Oberst will lead a benefit concert for the ACLU Nebraska in Omaha on July 31 to fight against a recent immigration law in Fremont, NE. He will front both his Bright Eyes project and a reunited Desaparecidos (their first show since 2002), alongside Cursive and Lullaby for the Working Class.

More info here & here.

Belle and Sebastian, Sonic Youth, Guided By Voices, Cat Power, Superchunk, Fucked Up, and Kurt Vile are scheduled to play Matador’s 21st birthday party at the Palms Casino & Resort in Las Vegas, NV October 1st through 3rd. Vegas Baby! Vegas! Tickets are Sold Out.

Ponytail and Dom are both playing this year's Siren Festival at Coney Island. On July 17th, the Village Voice sponsored event is celebrating its 10 year anniversary as one of the premiere free summer music events in New York City. Twelve other bands will join Dom and Ponytail at the historic amusement park. Click here for more information.

Summer marks a new season of free outdoor evening shows at The Beach at Governors Island. All summer long, many Ground Control Touring acts will play, including She & Him, Wild Nothing, Lucero, Justin Townes Earle, and Dawn Landes. Schedule and full line ups

Austin City Limits 2010 will be held from October 8-10 at Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. Monsters of Folk, Sonic Youth, Lucero, and Dawes will all play the festival. 3 day passes are already sold out, but individual day passes are still available. This is the first time playing the festival for all four bands.

Here We Go Magic, Kurt Vile, Real Estate, and Titus Andronicus are scheduled to play this year's Pitchfork Music Festival. The fest will take place in Chicago's Union Park from July 16-18. This will be the second time Titus Andronicus has played the festival in its five year history, and the first time for Here We Go Magic, Kurt Vile, and Real Estate. Though three day passes sold out in a record five days, individual passes for all three days are still available.

This past Friday, Ground Control Touring artists Camera Obscura, Deer Tick, Lucero, and She & Him got Coachella 2010 off to a great start. With gorgeous weather and a beautiful desert backdrop, each played to the sold-out Coachella crowds in their own unique ways. You can see photos of Deer Tick, Lucero, and She & Him in Pitchfork's Friday photo essay here . She & Him garnered rave reviews for their breezy set in the California sun- the perfect setting for their happy-go-lucky melodies. Lucero rocked the desert, too, and Deer Tick impressed fans both with their alt-rock jams and quirky get-ups. The LA Times notes Camera Obscura dedicated a song to their UK brethren stuck by Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption.

Record Store Day 2010 is this Saturday, April 17th, and several Ground Control artists are helping to celebrate!

Cloud Nothings, Kurt Vile, and Dum Dum Girls are each playing special live sets at a record stores in their hometowns, and even more of our bands will celebrate by releasing limited edition vinyl records, as listed below:

The new Dum Dum Girls song, "Pay For Me," will be included on a 7" split with Male Bonding. Fucked Up will release a song from their recent Daytrotter Session, also as a limited edition 7". Happy Birthday will premiere two brand new songs, "Shampoo" and "Alien." Monsters of Folk are re-releasing their self-titled debut on special clear blue vinyl. Finally, Sonic Youth is one of the heaviest hitters, re-issuing three of their albums on limited edition vinyl.

Record Store day is an annual celebration of independent record stores and the rich culture that often goes hand in hand with these local institutions. So join in with artists and fans this Saturday and hit up your local record store! Find local record stores near you here.

LOUfest is a new music festival, taking place in St. Louis' beautiful Forest Park on August 28-29, and four Ground Control bands are playing: Titus Andronicus , Lucero, Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons and She & Him who will headline Sunday night.

Participating in greening efforts just as other festivals such as Bonnaroo have done, LOUfest also keeps ticket prices low by not charging any service fee. Check out their stellar line up, and read more about it on Consequence of Sound.

This year, three Ground Control bands will play at Lollapalooza! Last week, the Internet was led in a roundabout game to guess the festival's line-up. One letter was released every day in the blank spaces that made up each band's name. When the guessing game was over today, Dawes, Deer Tick, and Wavves were revealed! You can catch these three amazing bands, with over a hundred others, on August 6th, 7th, and 8th in Chicago's Grant Park. Check out the full line-up here, read the NY Times blog article here, and BrooklynVegan's report here.

Ground Control Touring friend, Chris Knox, suffered a stroke in June of 2009. His pals have stepped in to help with the hefty cost of medical bills. On May 6th, there will be a benefit show at Le Poisson Rouge in New York, NY. Tickets will go on sale Tuesday, March 30 at Noon,here . If you can't make it out for the show, there is a fabulous compilation of Chris Knox covers called, "Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox" on sale now via Merge Records Online Store. You can purchase that here, and all money will go towards Chris Knox' bills.

After a long, fun week at SXSW, Ground Control Touring’s bands have been generating serious buzz from their performances.

Here’s just a sampling of what people have been saying:

She & Him headlined the Ground Control Touring showcase and remained upbeat despite the wind and cold!

Dawes was certainly one of the breakout bands of the week. LA Weekly named their hometown heroes as one of the Top 3 bands of SXSW , and Paste Magazine listed them in their favorite parts of the week feature . BrooklynVegan was on hand at the band’s showcase at Club deVille and posted great photos of their set.

The Washington Post also named their favorite performances of the week and included Cloud Nothings, Vivian Girls, and Titus Andronicus. Speaking of Vivian Girls, they also ranked among the Huffington Post's Top 5 Favorite Shows of the week.

Coming off of their Best New Music rating on Pitchfork, Titus Andronicus received a lot of hype going into SXSW, and lived up to every single bit of the buzz. You can follow the band for a day with this cool photo essay from Austin 360. Pitchfork also called Titus the "best live show" they saw all week.

Pitchfork had a lot of love for Cloud Nothings, as well. Amy Phillips calls them “lovable scamps” and “like Blink-182 if they grew up on the Slumberland back catalogue.”

The LA Times chose to focus on the Dum Dum Girls for their wrap-up of the festival. Todd Martens calls them the “ultimate” femmes fatale, and calls them the “next big thing” after SXSW.

Fucked Up played BrooklynVegan’s Emo’s day party, and the band is the highlight of their photo coverage. You can also catch photos from Titus’ set at this day party.

Last but not least, Real Estate pulled double duty, playing multiple shows as both Real Estate and Alex Bleeker & the Freaks. Each set, from the first day to the last at Fader Fort, received excellent reviews. Here’s a write-up from the first day on I Guess I’m Floating.

Come by Urban Outfitters on Friday 3/19 and check out our day party, or Auditorium Shores on Saturday 3/20 for our official showcase, featuring She & Him and others. Click here for set times and details.

It's that time of the year again when the music industry heads down to Austin for the annual SXSW festival. Click HERE for a full list of GCT artists shows at the fest. Check back often for updates!

Come join Ground Control Touring at our 2010 SXSW Showcase event on Saturday, March 20th at Auditorium Shores in beautiful Austin, TX. The show is free, all ages, open to the public, and features She & Him, Justin Townes Earle, Lucero, Deer Tick, Dawes, and Kimya Dawson. See you there!

Sonic Youth, Fucked Up, and Vivian Girls are among the additions to ATP NY, taking place at the lovely Kutchers Country Club in Monticello, NY on September 3-5, 2010 . For more information, visit the ATP website at http://www.atpfestival.com/.

The GCT Brooklyn office has embraced social networking technology and joined Twitter. Follow us at @GCTBrooklyn for tour updates, late breaking news, and hilarious office commentary!

In anticipation of the release of She & Him Volume Two by Merge on March 23, a download of one of the tracks, "In the Sun" is available on Pitchfork. This new track features guest vocals by Tilly and the Wall. She & Him will be touring this spring in support of the record!

Jenny Lewis & friends - Azure Ray, Johnathan Rice, Morgan Nagler, Becky Stark, and Jason Boesel - will play Song Circle for Haiti benefit Tuesday January 26 at Largo at the Coronet. Tickets are $40 and will go on sale 6:00PM west coast time Thursday January 21. Box office hours: Monday/Tuesday/Friday at venue 2:00-6:00PM or call 310-855-0350.

Ground Control New York is looking for an intern for 2 days per week (Tuesdays & Thursdays) / 5 hours per day, starting in January. Duration of the internship will be approximately 5 months.

Interns will have a wide variety of responsibilities and will gain first hand knowledge of all aspects of the touring industry.

Applicants should be good with Macs, have experience in an office environment, and should be reliable, organized, and have a passion for accuracy!

If you’re interested, and will be living in the New York area, please send your resume and cover letter to nicole@groundcontroltouring.com. In addition, please include your availability. No calls please – we’ll get back to you.

Ground Control Touring is excited to announce that we will be hosting our own showcase at CMJ this year. The event will be held at The Bell House in Brooklyn, NY on Wednesday, October 21st. The evening's schedule will run as follows. Hope to see you there!

Doors 7:30pm
Dawn Landes 8:15pm
Surf City 9:15pm
The Love Language 10:15pm
Let's Wrestle 11:15pm
Pete and the Pirates 12:15am

Ground Control New York is looking for an intern for 3 days per week / 5 hours per day, starting in mid-May.

Interns will have a wide variety of responsibilities and will gain first hand knowledge of all aspects of the touring industry.

Applicants should be good with Macs, have experience in an office environment, and should be reliable, organized, and have a passion for accuracy!

If you’re interested, and will be living in the New York area this summer, please send your resume and cover letter to nicole@groundcontroltouring.com. In addition, please include your availability. No calls please – we’ll get back to you.

Ground Control Touring is throwing our first ever official showcase at South by Southwest 2009. Come on down to Habana Bar Backyard on Friday, March 20th to check out Deer Tick, Tim Easton, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The Felice Brothers, Dawes, and The Love Language.

Ground Control artists are invading New York City for this year's CMJ Music Marathon. Click HERE for a complete list of GCT artists' shows around town.

We are thrilled to have John Chavez on board as the newest agent in Ground Control's Brooklyn office. For the last three years John has run his own agency, The Free Agency, and he brings with him several fantastic artists: Barr, Castanets, Deer Tick, Ecstatic Sunshine, Effi Briest, Evangelista, Excepter, EX MODELS, Knyfe Hyts, Ponytail, PWRFL Power, These Are Powers, and Titus Andronicus. For inquiries about any of those bands, send an email to john@groundcontroltouring.com. When John is not booking bands, he enjoys playing the guitar and watching Lost. His favorite food is enchiladas.

Ground Control Touring joins up with Press Here Publicity and Harp Magazine to throw a party at SXSW. It takes place Saturday from Noon to 8PM on the grounds of The French Legation museum, a short walk from the main drag of 6th street or the music venues on Red River – between 8th and 9th streets - just one block east of the I-35. Address is 802 San Marcos Street, Austin, TX.

Artists performoming are:

Thurston Moore and the New Wave Bandits (Northampton, MA)

Okkervil River (Austin, TX)

Kimya Dawson (Olympia, WA)

She and Him (Los Angeles, CA / Portland, OR)

J. Mascis (Amherst, MA)

Sons and Daughters (Glasgow, Scotland)

Lightspeed Champion (London, England)

Laura Marling (London, England)

Noah and the Whale (London, England)

Emmy the Great (London, England)

RSVP by emailing your name and affiliation to: events@pressherepresents.com

Kids, Ground Control Touring in North Carolina has moved offices. Our new address is 400-A West Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510.

Ground Control Touring artists totally racked up nominations this year for the 2007 PLUG Independent Music Awards! The event will take place February 10, 2007 at Irving Plaza in New York City. Nominees are listed below. Voting has opened to the public on their website, www.plugawards.com.

And the GCT Nominees Are...

2007 PLUG Independent Music Awards Nominees


MUSIC – General Category

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
Cat Power – The Greatest
Grizzly Bear – Yellow House

FEMALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Jenny Lewis
Chan Marshall

MALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR

M. Ward
Robert Pollard

INDIE ROCK ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
Grizzly Bear – Yellow House

AMERICANA ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat
M. Ward – Post War


MUSIC – Obsessive Category

ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Cat Power
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
M. Ward

LIVE ACT OF THE YEAR

Man Man

SONG OF THE YEAR

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - “ Rise Up With Fists”

MUSIC VIDEO OF THE YEAR

Cat Power - “Lived in Bars”
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness - “The Owl”

ALBUM ART/PACKAGING OF THE YEAR

Cat Power – The Greatest

We wish luck to all our bands, but we already knew you rocked!

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins' fall tour is announced and pre-sale tickets are available.

Click here to buy tickets for Jenny Lewis

We are also pleased to announce Cursive's fall tour.

Pre-sale tickets go on sale Wednesday August 16 at 1pm local time.

Click here to buy tickets for Cursive

Robert Pollard, lead singer of the bygone Guided by Voices, will release a 26 song solo album titled "From A Compound Eye" on Merge Records January 24th. He'll also be playing a few shows on the weekends this spring around the States.

In the spirit of the Holidays and to help fight poverty and hunger,Merge Records has organized a series of auctions to benefit two very worthy charity organizations: Oxfam and The North Carolina Food Bank.

Oxfam fights poverty, responds to global emergencies, and addresses world issues such as trade, conflict and HIV/AIDS. They also organize worldwide campaigns to control arms, make trade fair, make poverty history, and to develop international goals to halve poverty by 2015.

The North Carolina Food Bank was established in 1980 to provide food to people at risk of hunger in North Carolina. Almost half of the over 400,000 people served by the Food Bank's network are children, and another 11 percent are elderly. Nearly half the families served are the "working poor" - people who work hard and still have to choose between eating and other basic necessities.

From Wednesday, November 23rd until January 1st, we will be auctioning off, via eBAY, silk-screened tour posters from designers and shows all over the country signed by many of your favorite Merge bands/artists. The fourth batch of auctions are live online now:

CROOKED FINGERS

GUIDED BY VOICES

SUPERCHUNK

We hope you will join us in helping those less fortunate this Holiday season, and enjoy some autographed, one-of-a-kind artwork from our Merge family!

Bands participating in the auction include:

Spoon
Destroyer
Tenement Halls
Arcade Fire
Crooked Fingers
Lou Barlow
Guided by Voices
Superchunk
Portastatic
M. Ward
American Music Club
The Clientele
The Rosebuds
Lambchop

For more info, and to stay up to date on all auctions, please check out our eBay Seller's Page today!

Bright Eyes, The Clientele, CocoRosie, Dungen, M Ward, Scout Niblett & Spoon have all been nominated for PLUG awards. PLUG is a collection of music lovers - writers, DJs, webmasters, bloggers, artists, filmmakers, managers, indie retailers, and most importantly fans - who gather together each year to celebrate the artists who live and flourish in the margins.

Bright Eyes & Spoon are the big favorites of ours to win, with Bright Eyes getting nominations for Artist of the Year, Male Artist of the Year and Live Act of the Year. Spoon is riding nominations for Artist of the Year, Song of the Year and Indie Album of the Year. The Clientele are also nominated for Song of the Year and CocoRosie & Scout Nilbett are both up for Female Artist of the Year. M Ward is nominated for Americana Album of the Year for the amazing Transistor Radio and newcomers to the roster this year, Dungen, are nominated for New Artist of the Year.

Good luck and congratulations to all the artists up for awards!

The North Carolina office of Ground Control will be changing office suites. Please direct all future correspondence to:

Ground Control Touring

104 Jones Ferry Rd., Suite A

Carrboro, NC 27510

Everything else will remain the same!

Sons and Daughters will be the special guests on MTV2's Subterranean this Sunday night, 10/9 at midnight! They will also be showing their video for "Dance Me In", so be sure to check it out.

In light of the tragedy that has befallen the city and residents of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, the Red Cross has set up a system where you can make a donation to the relief fund via credit card, mail, phone or even by donating stock. If you'd like to help or volunteer, click here to go to the Red Cross Donation Page.

We're looking for interns for the Fall semester in our Brooklyn office. We will be looking for 2 people to start sometime in the last week of August. The internship allows you to be in close proximity to the agent through every step of booking, promoting and playing a tour. The position is ideal for someone interested in live music but really applies universally to understanding what motivates labels, writers, publicists, other agencies, artists and managers.

A candidate for this position should have a love and knowledge of bands in the indie music scene and the new york club circuit. Communication and (mac) computer skills are most important for this position. We are a small office so our interns take on actual responsibility in our process; organization and ability to understand and work independently are as important as motivation. Intern duties include answering the phones, contacting promoters, contracting shows, obtaining ticket counts and, maybe most importantly, making sure the office stereo is always playing. This is an unpaid internship but we do offer college credit and good times.Perks include admission to lots of live concerts. To apply email resume and cover letter to interns@groundcontroltouring.com (please do not call to follow up on your resume. We will contact you if we are interested). We do credit too.

We're looking for an intern for our Carrboro, North Carolina office to start at the end of August. This position is ideal for a college student interested in all aspects of the music business and will offer opportunities to work closely with agents, managers, labels and other representatives of the industry.

Responsibilities will include answering the phones, contacting promoters, data entry, obtaining ticket counts, updating web pages, and anything else we can think of along the way. This is an unpaid internship but we do offer college credit.

To apply email resume and cover letter to dana@groundcontroltouring.com (please do not call to follow up on your resume. We will contact you if we are interested).

GCT is pleased to welcome Brooklyn's own Grizzly Bear to our NC roster! They are currently busy recording a new album but will be out touring a little bit in the fall and winter for select dates.

We are excited to announce the newest member of the GCT international family, Dungen. From Sweden, Dungen have signed to Kemado Records in the US and will release their amazing "Ta det lugnt" (for those not up on their Swedish, it means Take It Easy) later this year. Look out for upcoming US dates!!!

As previously reported, Olivia Tremor Control, the psychedelic savants of the Elephant 6 collective are dusting off breakup rumors and reforming to play the All Tomorrow's Parties festival later this month in East Sussex. Pitchfork has learned, however, that the group will be playing two other shows, one in their 90s hometown of Athens, Geo., at the 40 Watt on April 15-- as a sort of dress rehearsal-- and another in London before ATP.

Jon Polk from Team Clermont publicity said the band's reformation was brought about by a request to play at the ATP festival, but that the Athens date was added as a warm up of sorts and, "to please the local faithful who had been clamoring for an OTC show for years." According to Polk, the group has been practicing three to four times a week. Fellow Elephant 6ers Elf Power will offer support in Athens.

Olivia Tremor Control formed in Louisiana in the late 80s as the trio of Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum, but wound up in Athens in 1990. After Mangum left to focus on Neutral Milk Hotel, John Fernandes joined to fill the void and the group recorded The Giant Day EP. The band then added drummer and electronics whiz Eric Harris, who helped guide it toward Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle, the band's jaw-dropping 1996 debut LP.

However, following the 1999 album Black Foliage: Animation Music, the band went on an extended hiatus, as a few members left to pursue side projects. By 2001, the Olivia Tremor Control had pretty much splintered, with Doss forming the Sunshine Fix, Hart forming the Circulatory System, and keyboardist Pete Erchick forming Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't.

In January, Fernandes spoke to Pitchfork about future plans, but insisted the brief reunion is a one-time affair. As for the possibility of new recordings from the group, Fernandes responded: "Not at the present time, but we are going to reissue more out-of-print Olivia Tremor Control material later this year on Cloud Recordings. We recently got the rights back to Singles and Beyond from Emperor Norton, so we will reissue that along with the Olivia Tremor Control/Black Swan Network collaboration."

So at least we've got that to look forward to.

-- Matt Amis (Pitckfork)

Check out the dates!

Legendary Australian pop band the Go Betweens will be touring the US with a full band for the first time in 15 years! Check out the tours page for dates!

We are happy to welcome another amazing member to our family: CocoRosie. CocoRosie has been extremely busy lately, touring Europe with Devendra Banhart and supporting Bright Eyes for a 2 1/2 week U.S. tour, but that's not stopping them from recording the follow up to 2004's La Maison de Mon Reve, due out September 2005. If you're impatient, you can catch CocoRosie playing a few select dates with Antony and the Johnsons this March. Check the tour page for the latest updates and look out for the new record this fall.

We are very, very pleased to announce the newest addition to our NYC roster, London & Brighton's The Go! Team. Fresh off wowing crowds this side of the pond in TX and NYC (who knew those industry bigwigs could shake their asses like that??), they are ready to bring their, as Pitchfork says, "ridiculously unique" music to the American masses. With fans anxiously awaiting a US record release, the future promises to be bright for the half boy. half girl outfit. GO! TEAM!

Due to some postal service (not the band) rigamarole, GCT NY has a new address but has not moved. Please direct all future correspondance to:

Ground Control Touring
190 N 10th St, Suite 301
Brooklyn, NY 11211

All else stays the same.

We're very excited to welcome two more fine acts from Omaha to our roster. Maria Taylor is a member of bands Azure Ray and Now It's Overhead. This spring she will be releasing a solo album, 11:11, and will be touring with Ben Lee and Har Mar Superstar in April. Neva Dinova are just wrapping up a tour of the US which saw them play several shows with Bright Eyes (with whom they released a split EP with on crank! last year). Last month they released their second LP, The Hate Yourself Change, on Sidecho Records.