Rhiannon Giddens To Bring Tomorrow Is My Turn

Singer Rhiannon Giddens Announces Solo Tour Dates for Spring

T Bone Burnett-Produced Solo Debut Record Tomorrow Is My Turn out February 10 on Nonesuch

“The album is a showcase for Ms. Giddens’s glorious voice, which merges an opera singer’s detail and a deep connection to Southern roots. She can summon the power of a field holler, Celtic quavers, girlish innocence, bluesy sensuality, gospel exaltation or the pain of slavery. She can sing velvety, long-breathed phrases or rasp and yip like a singer from the backwoods long ago. For all her technical control, her voice is a perpetually soulful marvel.” – Jon Pareles, New York Times

Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens has announced her first solo tour for the spring. The shows begin March 28 at the Big Ears Festival and continue through June, hitting major markets and festivals along the way, including New York City (April 9 @ Town Hall), Chicago (April 23 @ The Vic), and the Bonnaroo Music Festival in June. Tickets go on sale Friday, February 13.

Giddens will be touring in support of her upcoming T Bone Burnett-produced debut album Tomorrow Is My Turn, due out February 10 on Nonesuch. Listen to four tracks here: “Black Is The Color,” “Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind,” “Shake Sugaree,” and “She’s Got You.” CD and vinyl pre-orders in the Nonesuch Store come with instant downloads of those songs and also include an exclusive print autographed by Giddens.

Also on February 10, Giddens will make her solo television debut when she performs “Waterboy” from Tomorrow Is My Turn on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman.

Giddens was recently featured in the series-ending finale to Parenthood, where she sang a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” alongside Sam Beam from Iron & Wine.

T Bone Burnett previously worked with Giddens when she performed last fall at a concert that he curated at New York City’s Town Hall that was later broadcast on Showtime: Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of “Inside Llewyn Davis.” At the time, Giddens was best known as a founding member of Carolina Chocolate Drops. In the Huffington Post’s “5MemorableMoments From the ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ Concert,” the top spot went to “Dear Lord: Rhiannon Giddens. The chances are a good many people haven’t heard of Rhiannon Giddens, but that’s probably going to change … Giddens performed two songs … and earned the night’s one in-show standing ovation.”

Backstage, Burnett was immediately moved to ask if he could produce a record with her. “It was clear the first time I heard her at rehearsal that Rhiannon is next in a long line of singers that include Marian Anderson, Odetta, Mahalia Jackson, Rosetta Tharpe,” Burnett says. “We need that person in our culture.”

Tomorrow Is My Turn was recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville, with a multi-generational group of players whom Burnett assembled. Among them are fiddle player Gabe Witcher and double bassist Paul Kowert of label-mates Punch Brothers; percussionist Jack Ashford of Motown’s renowned Funk Brothers; drummer Jay Bellerose; guitarist Colin Linden; legendary backup singer Tata Vega; veteran Nashville session bassist Dennis Crouch; and Giddens’ Drops touring band-mates, multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins and beat-boxer Adam Matta.

Tomorrow Is My Turn follows Giddens’ work with Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James, and Marcus Mumford on Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, an album also produced by Burnett that was released in November 2014. Her contribution was hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as the “showstopper…evoking antebellum blues with a magnificent voice that interrogates the myths stirred up at Big Pink.” The New York Times agreed, saying “On lead vocals she’s the album’s revelation, singing melodies that hark back to Celtic modes with a decisive presence and a haunting grace.”

Tomorrow Is My Turn Track Listing

1. Last Kind Words (Geeshie Wiley)

2. Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind (Dolly Parton)

3. Waterboy (Jacques Wolfe)

4. She’s Got You (Hank Cochran)

5. Up Above My Head (Sister Rosetta Tharpe)

6. Tomorrow Is My Turn (Charles Aznavour/Marcel Stellman/Yves Stéphane)

7. Black Is the Color (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)

8. Round About the Mountain (Traditional, arr. Roland Hayes)

9. Shake Sugaree (Elizabeth Cotten)

10. O Love Is Teasin’ (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)

11. Angel City (Rhiannon Giddens)

Rhiannon Giddens On Tour

March 28 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival

March 29 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival

March 31 – Lexington, KY @ Lexington Opera House ^

April 1 – Charlotte, NC @ McGlohon Theatre ^

April 2 – Durham, NC @ Carolina Theater ^

April 3 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre ^

April 4 – Nashville, TN @ Grand Ole Opry ~

April 7 – Rocky Mount, VA @ Harvester Performance Center ^

April 8 – Charlottesville, VA @ Jefferson Theater ^

April 9 – New York, NY @ Town Hall ^

April 10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts ^

April 12 – Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theatre ^

April 14 – Norfolk, CT @ Infinity Hall ^

April 16 – Northampton, MA @ Calvin Theatre ~

April 17 – Port Washington, NY @ Landmark on Main Street ^

April 18 – Somerville, MA @ Somerville Theatre ^

April 19 – Brownfield, ME @ Stone Mountain Arts Center

April 21 – Albany, NY @ The Egg ^

April 23 – Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theatre ^

April 24 – Grand Rapids, MI @ St. Cecilia Music Center ^

April 26 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom ^

April 27 – Madison, WI @ Capitol Theatre ^

April 28 – Minneapolis, MN @ Pantages Theatre ^

April 29 – Lawrence, KS @ Liberty Hall ^

May 1 – Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theater ^

May 3 – Anchorage, AK @ Discovery Theatre

May 4- Palmer, AK @ Glen Massay Theatre

May 8- Santa Barbara, CA @ Campbell Hall, UCSB

May 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theater ^

May 12 – Arcata, CA @ Van Duzer Theater, Humboldt State Univ.

May 14 – San Francisco, CA @ SFJAZZ

May 15 – San Francisco, CA @ SFJAZZ

May 16 – San Francisco, CA @ SFJAZZ

May 17 – San Francisco, CA @ SFJAZZ

May 19 – Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater ^

May 20 – Seattle, WA @ Meany Theater, University of Washington ^

May 23 – Augusta, GA @ Papa Joe’s Banjo-B-Que Music Festival

June 2 – Raleigh, NC @ Meymandi Concert Hall – NCS Benefit *

June 11-14 – Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival

June 18-21 – Telluride, CO @ Telluride Bluegrass Festival

^Bhi Bhiman supporting

~ appearing with Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn

*appearing solo with Branford Marsalis & Friends