Elton, Costello, Mellencamp Join Burnett for Concerts

Elton John, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp, and Gregg Allman will all take the stage when producer T Bone Burnett's Speaking Clock Revue comes to Boston (the Wang Center, October 16th) and New York (Beacon Theatre, October 20th). The concerts will raise money for the Participant Foundation, which supports music and arts education in public schools. My Morning Jacket's Jim James will join the lineup in New York, and Neko Case will perform in Boston. Tickets for both shows go on sale September 27th.

Burnett says Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue — a 1975-76 tour in which Burnett, Joan Baez and Roger McGuinn joined Dylan — inspired the Speaking Clock Revue. "The first tour I went on, my first job in show business, was on The Rolling Thunder Revue, and I've come back to that type of collaborative and extraordinarily rewarding experience from time to time," Burnett said in a statement. The two shows will also include Leon Russell, Jeff Bridges, Ralph Stanley, Punch Brothers, Karen Elson and the Secret Sisters.

Burnett’s interest in the cause of art education was stoked by the upcoming documentary Waiting For Superman, in which the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) studies the innovative methods some U.S. public school teachers are using to keep students in school. "This film deals most powerfully with the troubling state of public education in the United States, and offers solutions and the opportunity to be part of those solutions," Burnett said.

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Song Stories

“The Pretender”

Foo Fighters | 2007

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."

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