Pixies announce Asheville date

On this tour, the Pixies — Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering — will perform all of the songs from Doolittle and its related B-sides, “Weird at My School,” “Dancing the Manta Ray,” and “Bailey’s Walk” among them. Doolittle, the band’s third album and the first to chart on Billboard’s album charts, includes classics such as “Debaser,” “Wave of Mutilation,” “Here Comes Your Man,” “Hey” and “Gouge Away.”

An imaginative cinematic production has been created for The Doolittle Tour. 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.

As an example, visuals accompanying the song “Debaser” are from a compilation titled “Forbidden Images.” The hauntingly beautiful black and white footage from the 1920s depicts the beginning of the women’s rights movement, showing women’s exuberant playfulness, femininity and sensuality. The footage, a little too progressive for its time period, was originally banned from theaters.

For “Here Comes Your Man,” a four-way split screen displays close up images of the band members dancing along to the song; “I Bleed” sees blood dripping down the screen in time to the music; “Hey” features hand-drawn animation of the song’s lyrics by Hollywood animator Tom Winkler; clouds, black holes and Mankind’s arrogance destroying the Earth are the focus for “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” while “La La Love You” is a humorous animated piece starring hearts with legs.

The Doolittle Tour launched on September 30, 2009 in Dublin, Ireland, and played sold-out shows everywhere — Scotland, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels,
Paris, and to 20,000 fans over four nights in London. It then came to America last November, playing multiple-night sell-outs from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, and then, in March, sold-out shows were performed in five Australian cities. The tour received five-star reviews in the [London] Times, the Guardian and the Independent, and, according to one U.S. alt/weekly, “The Pixies continue to WOW.”

The Boston-formed Pixies have been acclaimed as the most influential pioneering band of the late ‘80s alt/rock movement. Their five studio releases and six years together effectively blazed the path for groups like Nirvana, Radiohead and Pearl Jam to rise to superstardom. They disbanded in 1993 and launched their reunion tour in April 2004 when virtually every single date sold out within minutes and fans traveled hundreds of miles to attend a show. In post-Pixies years, Black Francis has enjoyed a successful
solo career as Frank Black, Kim Deal went on to form the Platinum-selling band the Breeders, Joey Santiago started the band The Martinis and has carved a career as a music composer for film and TV, and David Lovering performs as a magician and continues to drum.

The concert opens with the showing of the 1929 silent surrealist short film, Un Chien Andalou, which was produced in France by Spanish director Luis
Bunuel and artist Salvador Dali, and provided the impetus for Black Francis in writing “Debaser.”

Confirmed dates for the Pixies’ 2010 U.S. Doolittle Tour are as follows:

SEPTEMBER
7       Tower Theatre             Philadelphia, PA
9       Ovens Auditorium             Charlotte, NC
10       Ryman Auditorium             Nashville, TN
12       Thomas Wolfe Auditorium       Asheville, NC
13       Fox Theatre             Atlanta, GA
17       Uptown Theatre             Kansas City, MO
18       Brady Theatre             Tulsa, OK
19       Verizon Theatre             Dallas, TX
20       Verizon Wireless Theatre       Houston, TX
22       Austin Music Hall             Austin, TX
24       Mesa Amphitheatre             Mesa, AZ
25       The Joint                   Las Vegas, NV
26       RIMAC Arena             San Diego, CA