Black Country Communion have completed their second album titled simply Black Country Communion 2. The album will be released in the US on June 14 on Joe Bonamassa’s J&R Adventures label. In June the band will undertake a brief US tour starting June 9 in San Diego, CA, and finishing June 19 in Washington, DC.

Looks like it. There is no official word yet from the band’s management, but there are 4 North American dates that have surfaced so far with tickets already on sale:

• June 3 – Rama, Ontario (just north of Toronto)
• June 4 – Quebec City
• June 18 – Chicago
• June 23 24 – Los Angeles

The band is billed to be playing with an orchestra. They are also booked wo play with various orchestras in July in Europe. So far there’s been no word from the band’s camp as to what exactly this will involve.

In other touring news, we have a bunch of new dates for Black Country Communion, Whitesnake, Blackmore’s Night, Nick Simper and Jon Lord. It’s gonna be a very busy year for the Purple family indeed. Particularly on this side of the pond.

Full details in our calendar.

Now, here’s a cover you don’t hear every day:
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A previously unreleased set of picture of Deep Purple performing at the Bundeseisstadion Liebenau in Graz, Austria, on April 3, 1975, is being posted online at dpac.at. There already are two installments, with more to follow on a weekly basis.
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Roger Glover’s solo album, of which we first heard back in 2007 when it was provisionally titled Close Up, will now be released in June. The new title is If Life Was Easy. Considering the delay, it’s rather apt. The album will feature Randall Bramblett on lead vocals, with Gillian Glover guesting.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

David Coverdale recently talked to ultimate-guitar.com Lots of history and topics were covered. One of them being Coverdale’s idea of ease up on the screaming and go acoustic as his moves into his 60’s.

I’m 60 years old in September so I want to work this for at least another three years. God knows how long physically I’ll be able to manage “Still Of the Night” without compromise and that’s what I’m not interested in. However, it doesn’t stop me doing intimate venues and telling my stories and singing acoustic versions of certain songs ‘cause I’ve done a little bit of that. And just adored the energy and the intimate experience of being close with people; close enough just to talk. You saw Beck at Ronnie Scott’s and that type of thing [referring to the Performing This Week…Live at Ronnie Scott’s DVD]. That kind of venue where I could actually interact and not the big Tarzan rock star but an evening with David Coverdale. So that’s gonna be an interesting transition if indeed that’s how the future unfolds.

Will a Whitesnake audience accept David Coverdale as an acoustic artist? Is there a line stylistically you can’t cross as this famous hard rock singer?

Well, I don’t know; it’s nothing to do with them. I have to please myself first. One of the feelings that I have with the relationship with the hardcore of Whitesnake fans, we have a website that gets 100,000 to 200,000 hits a day all over the world. I’ve never betrayed them. I’ve let them down now and again, which is human; that happens. But I’ve pissed and made up. There are things that I wanna do and thankfully I have a core audience that goes there and sticks with me. I mean the response we had from a 90-second sound bite, in two days we had over 600,000 hits and the website was filled with, “Oh, my god, I can’t wait for the album. This is amazing.” So it feels fantastic, it really does. The song “Forevermore” incidentally is about a love that crosses all barriers and indeed lifetimes; it’s an eternal love. It’s a message not only to my beloved wife to the fans who I love and who are helping me keep the flame of Whitesnake still burning bright all of these years later.

About his friendship with old Whitesnake members:

But the good news is Bernie and I are speaking and we’re friends again after several years in the wilderness.

Could this mean Marsden is one of the names for the “special guests” show at Sweden Rock Festival this summer?

About the noodling in vintage Deep Purple:

I’d finish some songs in concert with Purple and forgot what the fuck it was we started with.

About writing lyrics for someone else:

With Blackmore, wanting to be his disciple of course in those early days, I wrote the only two sci-fi song lyrics that I’ve ever done in order to please him: “Burn” and “Stormbringer.” You know the version that I actually preferred of “Burn” was called “The Road” and it was much more a bluesy lyric.

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Recording engineer Dave Rideau recently sat down with producer Kevin “The Caveman” Shirley at his studio, The Cave, in Malibu, California. The interview was done for mixing console manufacturer Solid State Logic and Shirley talks about his work, among them his work on Black Country Communion’s debut album.

I booked the studio down the road, and we just booked two days, and I had everyone come into the studio … Shangri-La, just down the road here. And they came in for two days, and … Joe and Glenn had written nuggets of ideas, so we cut it all in bits and pieces … And then, they all went away, and in the evenings I cut it all up together when I was working on an Iron Maiden album in the Bahamas and I had time to spare. I put the headphones on and my laptop and I edited it all up, and that’s how this [debut] record came about …

It’s interesting… to see like 10,000 reviews that [say] you can hear that these guys are all playing live. Well, they are playing live. It’s just, they weren’t playing quite as you hear.

Thanks to Lemon Squeezings: Led Zeppelin News.

U.S. nationally syndicated radio show Rockline will broadcast two episodes dedicated to Whitesnake in March. The first — scheduled for Wednesday, March 9 — is part of the Notes On Music series where artists are asked to discuss their greatest hits. The second, which will air on Wednesday, March 30, is the premiere of their new album Forevermore.

Rockline airs at 8:30 PM (PT) / 11:30 PM (ET). Fans are encouraged to speak with the guests by calling 1-800-344-ROCK (7625). The show is picked up by lots of radio stations across the US, many of which also broadcast on the Internet.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Steve Morse and Glenn Hughes both have contributed to an upcoming Tommy Bolin tribute album. The album, yet unnamed, is being put together by producer Greg Hampton of the Tommy Bolin Whips and Roses fame. Fabrizio Grossi (Whips & Roses I & II, Glenn Hughes) is also on board as Associate Producer/Mix Engineer. Other musicians who already recorded their parts are:

• Steve Lukather (Toto, solo)
• Warren Haynes (Gov’t Mule, Allman Brothers)
• Brad Whitford (Aerosmith)
• Nels Cline (Wilco, solo)
• Oz Noy (Roger Glover, Nile Rodgers, solo)
• John Scofield (Billy Cobham, Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, solo)
• Prairie Prince (The Tubes, drums on Savannah Woman and Wild Dogs)
• Peter Frampton (Humble Pie, solo)
• Myles Kennedy (Alter Bridge)
• Joe Bonamassa (Black Country Communion, solo)

Also in negotiation or committed to the project are Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, Tom Morello and Derek Trucks.

Thanks to Tommy Bolin Archives and Blabbermouth for the info.