The Pixies are scheduled to play a 7 p.m. show Nov. 2 at the Main Street Armory, 900 East Main St. Tickets, which cost $42.50 to $50, are available online at www.ticketfly.com, and from Aaron’s Alley, 662 Monroe Ave., (585) 244-5044; and The House of Guitars, 645 Titus Ave., (585) 544-3500.

For the upcoming tour leg, the band – Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering – is hitting 19 secondary U.S. markets, beginning with Montclair, N.J., on Oct. 27.

The tour continues a now 2-year-old celebration of the band’s 20th anniversary celebration of the 1989 album “Doolittle.” “Two years and counting in this celebration of Doolittle’s 20th anniversary,” Lovering, the drummer, said in a news release. “But people keep asking us to bring ‘Doolittle’ to their city, and we’re really happy to do it.”

On the tour, the band is performing all of the songs from the 1989 “Doolittle” album and its related B-sides. “Weird at My School,” “Dancing the Manta Ray,” and “Bailey’s Walk” among them. “Doolittle“ was the band’s third album and the first to chart on Billboard’s album charts, and includes classics such as “Debaser,” “Wave of Mutilation,” “Here Comes Your Man,” “Hey,” and “Gouge Away.”

“The thing about ‘Doolittle,’” said Santiago, the band’s guitarist, “is that it’s still as fresh today as it was when we recorded it. I loved it then and I love it now.”

On the “Doolittle” tour, Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering perform all of their songs from the classic 1989 album and its related B-sides, such as Weird at My School, Dancing the Manta Ray and Bailey’s Walk.

“An imaginative cinematic production has been created for the ‘Doolittle’ tour,” states the tour press release. “Designed by long-time Pixies lighting designer Myles Mangino and designer Paul Normandale, the set features four huge, undulating, eyeball-like spheres flown just below the lighting rig and are part of the concert’s light show. Filmmakers Judy Jacobs, Tom Winkler, Brent Felix and Melinda Tupling were brought on board to create 11 films especially for the production. The films are projected onto a massive backdrop video screen to accompany 12 of the 21 songs that comprise the show.

“The Pixies perfected the ‘Doolittle’ extravaganza over the past 20 months, having first launched it in the UK and Europe in the fall of 2009, playing to sold-out crowds in Ireland, Scotland, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and to 20,000 fans over four nights in London. The band then brought it to America in November, 2009 where it played multiple-night sell-outs from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, then again in the fall of 2010 where it criss-crossed the country, also to capacity crowds. The tour received five-star reviews in the [London] Times, the Guardian and the Independent, and the U.S. press loved the show as well.”

A limited number of tickets for the tour will be available starting Friday (Jan. 21) through a special pre-sale at www.pixiesmusic.com. All pre-sale purchases will include a “download taster” of live tracks from the Doolittle show.

Slicing Up Eyeballs reports that the latest leg of dates launch April 9th in Halifax and will see the band play 13 cities across Canada between then and May 3rd. Along the way, Pixies will also deliver three U.S. performances, with stops scheduled for Detroit, Milwaukee, and St. Paul in late April. Find all confirmed dates below.

Tickets will be available starting Friday, January 28th via your usual ticket outlets. A fan pre-sale will also occur on the band’s website.

Also, while we’re on the topic of the Pixies, be sure to check out a recent chat with front-man Frank Black.

Pixies 2011 Tour Dates:

• 04/09 – Halifax, NS @ Metro Centre
• 04/10 – Moncton, NB @ Casino Moncton
• 04/12 – Quebec City, QC @ Salle Albert-Rousseau
• 04/13 – Montreal, QC @ Metropolis
• 04/16 – Ottawa, ON @ Civic Centre
• 04/17 – Kitchener, ON @ The Center in the Square
• 04/18 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hal
• 04/20 – Hamilton, ON @ Wentworth Room
• 04/22 – Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre
• 04/23 – Milwaukee, WI @ Eagles Ballroom
• 04/24 – St. Paul, MN @ Roy Wilkins Auditorium
• 04/27 – Winnipeg, MB @ Centennial Concert Hall
• 04/29 – Saskatoon, SK @ TCU Place
• 04/30 – Calgary, AB @ Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
• 05/01 – Edmonton, AB @ Shaw Conference Center
• 05/03 – Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum Theatre

Pixies - Maquinaria Festival 2010

“We were so moved by this story,” said Black Francis, “by how many lives had been affected by this, and how the Chilean people banded together to support what can only be described as a miracle. We wanted to do something to show how affected we were by this…. We found out five minutes before we went on stage that all of the miners had safely reached the surface. This was definitely one of the most meaningful show we’ve ever played.”

Watch Francis introduce the set (in Spanish) below:

Having completed a second leg of their Doolittle tour, the band has returned to playing songs from all five of their records for their first Latin America tour. The complete set-list for last night’s show is below.

1. Cecilia Ann
2. Rock Music
3. Bone Machine
4. Crackity Jones
5. River Euphrates
6. Debaser
7. Wave of Mutilation
8. Monkey Gone to Heaven
9. I Bleed
10. Caribou
11. Cactus
12. Broken Face
13. Something Against You
14. Isla de Encanta
15. Tame
16. Sad Punk
17. Hey
18. #13 Baby
19. Gouge Away
20. Is She Weird?
21. Dead
22. U Mass
23. Break My Body
24. Velouria
25. Dig For Fire
26. Allison
27. Ed Is Dead
28. Mr. Grieves
29. Winter Long
30. Here Comes Your Man
31. Head On
32. Holiday Song
33. Vamos

Encore:
34. Where Is My Mind?
35. Gigantic

Pixies Deliver Doolittle to Rimac Arena - 09/30/10

Then the concert lighting kicks in and the band launches into what everyone is assembled to hear, 1989 essential Doolittle. “Debaser” begins and both band and audience come alive. Fans sing along with Black Francis’s cryptic lyrics — “But I am un chien Andalusia.” He sounds nasal compared to the full-throated crowd.

The band’s loud-soft-loud dynamic is gloriously loud, seductively soft. A wall of Marshall amps (for Francis and lead guitarist Joey Santiago) and an Ampeg tower (for Deal) supply the powerful sound. From atop his riser, drummer David Lovering’s snare pops like rifle fire. The band is tight, professional.

The jaunty “Monkey Gone to Heaven” incites the audience to count off on hoisted fingers the tunes’ refrain, “If man is five…then the devil is six…and if the devil is six…then god is seven!” Nearby, a young brunette jumps, screams, and contorts as if she’s done the math.

Deal introduces “There Goes My Gun”: “This is the second side of the album, toward the end, where people kind of buried songs.” But nothing from Doolittle goes unappreciated. The audience gives a rousing response to the country-tinged ballad “Silver.” And though the propulsive, bass heavy “Gouge Away” should have sealed the deal, the crowd cheers the Pixies back for a double encore, which include “Wave of Mutilation,” “Where Is My Mind?” and “Gigantic.”

• Concert: The Pixies
• Date: September 26
• Venue: Rimac Arena
• Seats: General, floor, center

“Now it’s time to talk about the money.” – Charles Thompson

by Dan Solomon September 22, 2010

Pixies at Austin Music Hall

With that out of the way: How is a Pixies show when it’s time to talk about the money? Well, the novelty of simply hearing the band perform has passed—since the reunion, it has played nearly 300 shows, including two in Austin. It’s no longer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a band previously thought to be forever dead. So what does it have to offer?

Doolittle, mostly. As with the rest of the dates on the Pixies’ current tour, the band ran through its 1989 breakthrough LP front-to-back—B-sides included—at the Austin Music Hall Tuesday night. And that’s almost enough. The songs on Doolittle were great 21 years ago, and still sound fresh today. “Wave Of Mutilation,” “Gouge Away,” and “Here Comes Your Man” are all bona fide classics, and those never go out of style. So it’s too bad that the band playing them seemed so bored.

The “play a classic album live” trend makes a lot of sense: Concert tickets are expensive, artists have deep catalogs, and there’s always the chance that whoever you’ve ponied up the cash to see is going to choose to regale you with a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” played with his teeth instead of giving you what you’d hoped to hear. On paper, the idea’s great, and there are few albums that make worthier choices for this type of performance than Doolittle. The downside, though, is equally significant. When a band is playing the same set list every single night of a tour, and it was all determined by decisions that its members made two decades ago, there’s little room for spontaneity or improvisation—especially when they’re not even pretending to be motivated by a desire to make art anymore. What you’re left with when that happens, then, is something like the world’s best Pixies cover band.

Pixies – “Dead!” (Live)

That’s not such an awful thing; it’s a disappointment, if what appealed to you about Doolittle in the first place was the passion. But when Thompson was last playing music that he was passionate about, he struggled to fill small clubs. Instead, he’s able to play songs that he wrote when he was 24, exactly as they should sound. The closest the Doolittle show ever comes to deviating from the formula is when Thompson sings the words to “Hey” slower than they appear on the projection screen behind him. (Thus throwing off the game of audience karaoke.) No one in the band seems to mind playing the songs, and even a dispassionate rendition of “Debaser” rocks. The show was obviously carefully choreographed and stage-managed, with the projections offering moody complements to the music (and, okay, the occasional shill for a $25 copy of that evening’s performance to take home with you) and the fake fog occasionally so thick that the band all but disappeared. Nonetheless, the lack of enthusiasm coming from the stage was palpable.

Pixies – “Break My Body” (Live)

As the band came back out for its second encore, a surprising energy shift occurred. At this point, the Music Hall’s house lights were up, and the band started its cover of Neil Young’s “Winterlong.” Thompson and Deal appeared to have fun playing a song they weren’t contractually obligated to perform, and the formal stagecraft was punctured by the lighting, making the giant warehouse of a venue feel almost club-like. By the time the band members went into Surfer Rosa’s “Break My Body,” being in a great rock band like the Pixies looked like a fun way to earn a paycheck again, and that’s really the best of both possible worlds—for the band members and the people who came to see them.

The Pixies are Costanza. In one episode of Seinfeld, a woman who had recently made George Costanza’s acquaintance remarks to Jerry Seinfeld that there must be more to Jason Alexander’s balding, bespectacled nebbish than meets the eye.

“Oh no,” exhales Jerry. “There’s less.”

David Lovering at Verizon Wireless - 09/20/10

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The Pixies may have done more with less than any band in history, certainly any band that has been elevated to their lofty status. Pick a song, any song, and it’s familiar: Kim Deal’s bounding, up-the-middle bass lines; David Lovering’s skeletal drumming; Joey Santiago’s strangulated Dick Dale/Sergio Leone guitar; and Frank Black voicing his obsessions with science fiction, sea creatures, nursery rhymes and surrealism at varying degrees of agitation and volume.

The proportions may vary from song to song, and do, but the ingredients are the same. Lovering isn’t the only magician in the band.

Monday night at a nearly sold-out Verizon Wireless Theater, the Pixies showed why, and how, their body of work remains one of the most recognizable and unique in recent rock history. The evening’s mise en scene was the quartet’s nautical/zoological 1989 album Doolittle, from the four table-setting B-sides through inevitable singalongs “Here Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone To Heaven,” “La La Love You” and (a little surprisingly) “Hey.”

Deal greeted the crowd with a simple “the B-sides,” before the ocean-choppy and brusque “Do the Manta Ray.” “Weird At My School” was a mad Sun Records/spaghetti western rockabilly shuffle, and the drowsy “Bailey’s Walk” never left the sketchbook, essentially over before it began.

“Manta Ray,” though, put all the pieces together: Deal’s hefty bass melody and ghostly other-room vocals; Lovering’s punk pacing; and Santiago wringing the life out of his fretboard. It was like watching a stop-motion animation film of a skeleton growing all its tissue back, a perfect table setter for Doolittle proper.

Black Francis at Verizon Wireless - 09/20/10

“Wave of Mutilation” is one of those songs that just sinks into the soft tissue, that people recognize somehow whether they’ve ever knowingly heard the Pixies or not. So is “Here Comes Your Man”; a happier song that somehow managed to escape the Smiths has never been written. That one guitar part, sunny but indelibly sad, marks Santiago and Johnny Marr as kindred spirits for all time.

In between came the spookhouse pop of “I Bleed,” the overhead eyeballs now blood-red, moving and Santiago’s guitar actually hemorraghing a little bit. After “Man” came its freaky flip-side “Dead,” manic, jittery and off-key until Santiago the snake charmer almost meshed it all together at the chorus. And what the hell does “Uriah hit the crapper” mean?

Every so often, Deal would update the crowd, who hardly needed it, on how far into the album the Pixies were. Side two dawned with “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” which stung and soothed, man still five, the devil still six, God still seven. “Mr. Grieves” lurched and leered, weird and lovely; the blistering surf-punk of “Crackity Jones” was matched by the parade of plastic babies onscreen behind the band, moving so fast they looked like popcorn.

In Spanish, Deal introduced Lovering for “La La Love You,” and Santiago introduced some ’60s Henry Mancini/Inspector Clouseau intrigue to complement the crowd’s wolf whistles. “No. 13 Baby” was one of those nursery rhymes Black mentioned earlier, twisted and tasty with broken-glass guitar.

Here Deal made an important, and possibly unintentional, point. “This is toward the end of the second side, so it’s where the deep cuts are usually buried,” she said. Meaning a) these people still think in terms of two-sided records; and b) the Pixies have no real deep cuts – the singles are just as askew and bristling as the album tracks, which are just as feathery and catchy as the singles.

“Silver” was the exception that proved the rule. The strangest, and slowest, song on the album came as an ominous and plodding death march, extra fuzz on the guitar and acoustic flourishes hinting the gallows lay just around the corner. Black’s vocals, meanwhile, suggested it was the previous corner.

And, if we are to take Deal at her word, how did “Gouge Away” wind up as the last song on Doolittle? It’s no deep cut, that’s for sure. Thanks to her slippery bass and Black’s suggestive vocals, it’s as single-worthy as “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” all the more remarkable because for all Santaigo’s screeching and squalling guitar, it hangs together like an early Beatles track.

But that’s the Pixies. Four ordinary-looking folks now in their 40s who turned rock upside down by doing everything their instincts told them not to. George Costanza would be proud.

“We do know other songs not on this record,” Deal said after a swaying alternate take on “Wave of Mutilation” and an extended, churning “Into the White” filled the entire hall with smoke and a vibe creepier than a V.C. Andrews novel.

Kim Deal at Verizon Wireless - 09/20/10

Like two halves of the same song (which we admit we originally thought was a disjointed take on “Vamos”), “Isla de Encanta” floored the accelerator like a lost Reverend Horton Heat demo; then “Nimrod’s Son” alternated heavy swing with a light touch and a little Black Sabbath stomp. Whatever it was, it was a son of a motherfucker all right.

Then – finally – things got really strange. In the middle of “Where Is My Mind?”, house lights on and the crowd happily echoing Deal’s spectral “ooh-ooh-oohs,” a real-life fight club appeared to break out down front as a stage-crasher appeared out of nowhere and was quickly wrestled off by security.

“Perfect timing,” the bassist said. And they left.

Joey Santiago at Verizon Wireless - 09/20/10

Some people started to clap. Our friend standing next to us said, “If they come back and pick [the song] up from the break, it was a setup.” (We were at the back of the room near the soundboard – watch this video here and it doesn’t look quite so staged.)

A minute or two of clapping and whistling later, that’s exactly what they did.

But it was hard to feel cheated, not after “Gigantic” restored some equilibrium to the room and sent everyone off into the night not on a wave of mutilation, but big, big love.

Personal Bias: Aftermath has never been quite as enthralled by the Pixies as some folks, but we’ve also had to buy more than one copy of Doolittle due to wear and tear.

The Crowd: Plenty of people who probably saw the Pixies in the Vatican/Axiom/Unicorn days, and plenty of people who couldn’t have been born back then. And almost everyone we’ve ever met since moving to Houston.

Overheard In the Crowd: Lips smacking as the couple next to us noisily and hungrily made out as the Pixies walked out for the encore.

Random Notebook Dump: The floor of Verizon smelled like the dorm rooms no doubt did when many on hand Monday put the needle to Doolittle for the first time.

SET LIST

Do the Manta Ray
Weird At My School
Bailey’s Walk
Manta Ray
Debaser
Tame
Wave of Mutilation
I Bleed
Here Comes Your Man
Dead
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Mr. Grieves
Crackity Jones
La La Love You
No. 13 Baby
There Goes My Gun
Hey
Silver
Gouge Away

ENCORE

Wave of Mutilation (alternate)
Into the White

ENCORE 2

Planet of Sound
Isla de Encanta
Nimrod’s Son
Where Is My Mind?
Gigantic

Reunion tours are always risky. Nobody wants to shell out exorbitant amounts of money to see a band that looks and sounds way past its prime. Luckily, with the Pixies two-night stand at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, the tickets were well worth the reasonable price tag. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of their album Doolittle, the band lined up a series of dates in North and South America. Initially, only one night was scheduled for Nashville, but demand for tickets at the 2300-capacity Ryman was so great that a second show was added mere hours after the first night sold out.

Pixies at Fabulous Fox Theatre

The crowd remained standing, shouting, and dancing for the entirety of the show, a rare occurrence compared to the typically-reserved Ryman crowd. Capping off their set with two encores, the Pixies pulled out all the stops, enveloping the crowd in a blinding fog from the smoke machine as they played through several non-Doolittle hits. Deal caused shrieks of excitement as she launched into her opening howl for “Where Is My Mind?” As the fog cleared and the band closed with “Gigantic,” looks of awe and admiration could be seen from the audience as many cheered on the continued success of their favorite band.

At this point, the most startling thing about the Pixies’ reunion isn’t so much that it happened. The iconic alternative band and its fans have now had seven years to come to grips with that much.

What’s most surprising about the band’s reunion, these days at least, is that it’s still happening. After 11 years apart, the Pixies have now been together just about as long as they were during their initial run from their formation in 1986 until their unceremonious breakup in 1993.

“It’s just blowing us away,” drummer David Lovering says, incredulous. “We would never have even thought. In fact, we do kid around about it, like, ‘What are we even doing? We’re definitely wearing out our welcome.’”

The weird part? Lovering’s only half-kidding.

Pixies - Joey Santiago

Pardon his uncertainty: Currently on the road wrapping up a two-year celebration of the 20th anniversary for the band’s 1989 opus, Doolittle, Lovering says he and his band mates—mercurial frontman Frank Black, oozes-cool bassist Kim Deal and underappreciated guitarist Joey Santiago—are still coming to grips with their place in the alternative music canon. They still find themselves surprised at the passion and size of their following—which, without a doubt, is bigger these days than it ever had been.

That’s the weird thing about the current Pixies; back when they were still an active band, releasing albums at an annual clip as they did between 1987 and 1991, they could never have drawn audiences like those they attract today. The closest the Pixies would ever come to that was in 1992 when they were hand-picked to support U2 on the Zoo TV tour—but those crowds weren’t necessarily there for the Pixies so much as they were for Bono and The Edge. Even so, it was that brief moment in the spotlight that exacerbated the growing tensions between Black and Deal.

And so the most promising and influential band of its generation split up—announced by Black via a fax, oddly enough. All four members went their separate ways. Black embarked on a successful solo career. Deal formed The Breeders, who, in the mid-’90s, saw the kind of commercial success that the Pixies could never attain in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Santiago became a studio musician and composer, scoring, among other pieces, the soundtrack for Judd Apatow’s short-lived Fox series, Undeclared. And Lovering? He gave up drums—completely—and became a magician.

But the band’s legend grew, getting name-checked as an influence by newer acts like Radiohead and Nirvana, the latter of which famously described “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as an attempt at writing a Pixies song.

Lovering makes no mistake about it: It’s because of these mentions, he says, that people gave the Pixies a second glance.

Pixies - Joey Santiago and Black Francis

He pauses and laughs.

“But it’s great,” he adds. “It’s a nice collection. When we decided to get back together, I don’t think we had a clue as to what it would be or how it would turn out to be. So this was all definitely an awakening to see all of this. It’s tough to peg—like if it was something with age or that we were due or that type of thing. Certainly, I think, back in the day, even for Doolittle, for example, I think it was a great album, but it really didn’t do the greatest. It didn’t do anything.”

Well, maybe at the time. In 1995, six years after its release and two years after the Pixies’ breakup, Doolittle finally reached the 500,000 sales mark. These days, it’s slowly approaching platinum status—an honor long overdue to one of the most influential records of the grunge movement. Lovering credits producer Gil Norton, whom he calls “the fifth Pixie” and whom the band remained with for its next (and last) two releases, for helping the band find that groove.

“When we were doing the album, it was just like, ‘Wow, I think this is going to be a really special one for us,’” Lovering recalls, before confirming that, yes, after playing some B-sides, the band does indeed perform Doolittle from front to back in its touring celebration of the disc. “Ninety percent of a producer’s job is to be a good guy and to be social and get along with everybody. Everything else, that’s easy. And Gil pulled it off really well.”

For a band so contingent on the personal interactions and relationships of its members, that was vital.

“We’re all such different people,” Lovering explains. “Each one of us is the complete opposite of everyone else, and I think that’s what makes it work.”

In the studio, at least. But, nowadays, Lovering says, it’s working on the road, too—better than ever.

“We’re all pretty much the same people,” he says. “You do learn, though, at least in my case, the things that you do wrong—that you can’t behave certain ways and stuff like that. So I think everyone’s just on that same par of being older and wiser.”

And the band members’ relationships with one another, he says, are good—so good, even, that, if only in passing, Lovering acknowledges that the Pixies have indeed been toying with the idea of returning to the studio for a new album, their first since 1991.

“We’ve been talking about it for at least the last two years,” he says. “As far as it coming to fruition and us doing something, nothing’s happened yet as far as action being taken—mostly because we’ve just been so busy this year just touring on and off around the world. And we have nothing—nothing planned, I know—for next year as far as anything. So there is talk.”

It’s an enticing reveal from a band that fans have been clamoring to hear new material from—and a surprising one, too, given all his talk of the band being worried about wearing out its welcome.

Don’t those two ideas contradict one another?

Lovering laughs when asked.

“I’m a magician,” he says. “I can’t reveal any secrets.”

Reunited Pixies bring Doolittle tour to Asheville

The Pixies play Asheville on Sunday on the extended 20th-anniversary tour honoring their 1989 album “Doolittle,” which charted on Billboard and helped broaden their college radio fan base. Lovering talked to take5 from his home in Los Angeles.

Question: Were you surprised by the intense fan reaction to the reunion shows?

Answer: We weren’t expecting it at all. At the first Coachella date, it was soaring. I was in awe, with this sea of people bobbing along to the music. It’s just been killer. Now at our shows, 80 percent of the audience wasn’t born when the album came out, but sing along on every single track — it blows us away.

Q: Why showcase “Doolittle”?

A: We’ve been thinking about it for years, and it was approaching the 20th anniversary. It’s our most popular album. We play some B-sides, then do the album “Debaser” to “Silver,” in sequence, and finish with B-sides and older tunes.

It’s probably our biggest production. Everyone will enjoy the video screens — we’ve had artists do their interpretation of each song. And sonically, we will deliver.

Q: You’ve performed as a magician — how did you get in to that?

A: I did it as a kid and then stopped. Then when I had the time, I saw a trick with my friend (and fellow musician) Grant Lee Phillips that blew me away. It was a simple close-up trick — the performer took a cigarette and put it through a quarter.

That was the instigation of my pursuit. I worked my (rear) off with books and videos. I think I can say I’m a magician now.

Q: How is everyone in the band getting along these days?

A: Very good — it’s much better. We’re older and wiser now. This opportunity is going so well, and we’re really enjoying it. We all have our little skeletons, but it’s all good.

Q: Has the band played Asheville before?

A: I’m pretty sure we haven’t. I have a friend who works at Moog, and he loves Asheville. Joe (Santiago) and I have a band, The Everybody, and we were asked to play Moogfest, but we’re so busy then we couldn’t pull it off.

Q: What’s the future hold for the Pixies?

A: This year it’s all tours, but in 2011 nothing’s planned. We have been talking about new material, but it’s always been talk, talk, talk. We’ll see if something happens. As a magician, I can’t reveal my secrets.

Michael Flynn writes about entertainment for take5. E-mail him at mickfly@bell south.net.