Ever since Newcombe founded BJM, numerous band members have joined him on his sonic escapades, but he has remained the sole constant, the creative mastermind at the center of one of music’s most fascinating bands. Helping Newcombe usher BJM into this thrilling new phase when recording Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees in the studio were Ricky Maymi (guitars), Ryan Carlson Van Kriedt (keyboards), Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar), Hallberg Daði Hallbergsson (bass), Uri Rennert (drums) and Sara Neidorf (drums). 

To help bring these new songs to life in the fullest on tour, Newcombe will be accompanied by:

Ricky Maymi (guitar)

Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar)

Ryan Carlson Van Kriedt (keyboards)

Uri Rennert (drums)

Collin Hegna (bass)

Joel Gion (tambourine)

The band will be embarking on their 38-date North American tour that will take them to Boston, Montreal, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, LA, Austin, Nashville and everywhere in between, starting at Philadelphia’s Union Transfer for the first show on March 27 and wrapping up at DC’s Black Cat on May 11.

"For me, live is where it lives or dies,” Newcombe insists. “So, for me to get the chance at my age to go off on another world tour for two years and play bigger places, grand theaters, and be at the top of my game, it's an honor as well as a challenge. We are very excited.”

 

Back in the middle of the 1990s, as the British music press descended in the US to anoint the next US guitar band as flavor of the month and major labels were on the hunt for the compliant hopefuls to be their latest quick fix, Anton Newcombe had an idea: say no. As leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Newcombe had already established himself as a visionary songwriter, a man to whom making music wasn’t a lifestyle choice or a hipster haircut but the very fabric of existence itself, and he had observed in silent horror as his peers meekly acquiesced to everything – yes to contracts, yes to management, yes to suggestions, yes to this, yes to that, yes, yes, yes. But he was different. Anton Newcombe was going to say no to everything. “I just knew I would be more successful in a certain way by saying no, just being contrary because I figured that if people liked me they were gonna like me anyway,” he says. “Or dislike me. It doesn’t matter.”

 

When BJM released their tellingly titled debut album Methodrone in 1995, rap metal was about to push grunge off the main stages at Lollapalooza, the Britpop party was still carrying on across the Pond, and the whole world was still off their heads on cheap rave drugs. At the time some lumped BJM in with the waning shoegaze movement - but there was something much more sonically sinister and substantive about tracks like “Evergreen” and “Wasted”.

Their visceral, often confrontational psychedelic drone rock culminated in the quite cleverly named Their Satanic Majesties Request the following year, with songs like “No Come Down” and “Anemone” exhibiting the range of frontman Anton Newcombe’s considerable songwriting talent. A year later they had signed to “major” independent label TVT, and 1998’s Strung Out in Heaven shot them straight to the forefront of the indie hierarchy. 

 

And now, over 30 years since he first founded The BJM, Newcombe is still finding ways to forge ahead sonically with songs from the forthcoming album and giving fans the kind of exhilarating sound that made them love the band in the first place, and that will make their 2022 tour a truly unforgettable live music experience.

 

Download Tour Flyer HERE