Queens Of The Stone Age will commemorate the upcoming reissue of its self-titled debut album with a limited series of intimate shows at which the band will play the record in its entirety, plus B-sides and other rarities and hits from the early Queens catalogue up to the present.
The tour, which kicks off March 16 in Austin TX and concludes April 12 in Los Angeles. celebrates the expanded, remastered re-release of the 1998 classic on Queens’ Joshua Homme’s own Rekords Rekords label. The album will be the first released via a worldwide alliance between Rekords Rekords and Domino Records to market, promote and distribute selected titles from their catalogue.
Tickets for the tour will begin going on sale February 18. Customers purchasing tickets will have an opportunity to pre-order the CD or LP, and if they choose to do so will receive an instant digital download of the album, directly from Rekords Rekords/Domino–nearly a month before its commercial release.
The record will be released commercially in March at a date yet to be determined.
The genesis of Queens Of The Stone Age-the band and this first album-goes back to the 1995 dissolution of the criminally overlooked Kyuss, specifically founding guitarist Homme’s migration from the California Desert to the Pacific Northwest to work on a new project concurrent with spending time on the road as second guitarist in Screaming Trees. Homme discarded the sludgy low-end expanses of his former band for much tighter song structure (for the most part) and honest-to-goodness capital ‘H’ hooks and what was originally christened Gamma Ray was quickly changed to Queens Of The Stone Age shortly after its 1996 birth.
Homme returned to his old stomping grounds and reunited with latter day Kyuss drummer Alfredo Hernandez to record as a fake trio (bass player “Carlo Von Sexron” is a nom-de-boom for Homme) and QOTSA came into full bloom, releasing the original version of this first album in 1998. If this re-issue doesn’t document “hour zero,” it’s only a few minutes past. “Regular John” introduces Homme as a smooth and assured vocalist with great melodic instinct. Tracks like “Avon” and “Walkin On Sidewalks” lock into heavy riffs that are in entrancing in their repetition and subtle shifts. And it’s hard to believe that insistently catchy “How To Handle A Rope” didn’t make a greater impact on mainstream radio upon its initial release.
The Rekords Rekords/Domino re-issue has been fully remastered from the original tapes and has been expanded by three tracks: “The Bronze” and “These Aren’t the Droids Your Looking For” from the long out of print 1998 QOTSA/Beaver split EP and “Spiders and Vinegaroons” from the posthumous Kyuss/QOTSA split EP. Listen to album opener, Regular John, here: http://soundcloud.com/qotsa/regular-john
Queens Of The Stone Age will be available on CD (REK001CD), double vinyl LP (REK001LP) and via digital download (REK001D).
The complete itinerary for the Queens Of The Stone Age commemorative tour is as follows:
03/16/11 – Austin, TX – La Zona Rosa
03/18/11 – New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks
03/19/11 – Birmingham, AL – Workplay Soundstage
03/20/11 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
03/21/11 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage
03/23/11 – Asheville, NC – Orange Peel
03/24/11 – Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory
03/25/11 – New York, NY – Terminal 5
03/26/11 – Boston, MA – House of Blues
03/27/11 – Montreal, Canada – Metropolis
03/29/11 – Toronto, Canada – Sound Academy
03/30/11 – Cleveland, OH – House of Blues
03/31/11 – Indianapolis, IN – The Vogue
04/01/11 – Chicago, IL – The Riv
04/02/11 – Omaha, NE – Sokol Auditorium
04/04/11 – Des Moines, IA – Val Air Ballroom
04/05/11 – St. Louis, MO – The Pageant
04/06/11 – Kansas City, MO – Beaumont Club
04/08/11 – Denver, CO – Ogden
04/11/11 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater
04/12/11 – Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern