Abbey Road, Stankonia Open Up Studios for New Artists

The world's most famous studios will be opening their doors to new and emerging artists later this year. Twelve studios — including London's Abbey Road and Atlanta's Stankonia — will host a total of 84 recording sessions in September.

Take an Interactive Virtual Tour of Abbey Road Studios

Converse Rubber Tracks, which will open the Boston affiliate to its Brooklyn studio, is sponsoring the program. The 12 participating studios are spread across four continents and include Seattle's Avast Recording Co. (Death Cab for Cutie, Band of Horses), Reykjavik's Greenhouse Studios (Bjork, Damon Albarn), Jamaica's Tuff Gong Studios (Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff), Berlin's Hansa Tonstudio (David Bowie, Iggy Pop) and Sydney's Studios 301 (Bruce Springsteen, 5 Seconds of Summer).

The company released a promotional video narrated by Iggy Pop to explain the new program.

"Since we opened our first permanent Converse Rubber Tracks studio in Brooklyn four years ago, we've had aspirations to elevate this program even further, hoping to extend this opportunity to artists across the globe," Converse Global Music Marketing Director Jed Lewis said in a statement. "With this new program, we will unlock the doors to some of the greatest recording studios in music history and we're ecstatic to offer this extraordinary experience to emerging artists worldwide."

Online registration requires a ranking of the artists' top three studio preferences as well as a brief biography. Registration will be open through June 24th, and applicants will be notified in early July.

In April, Converse hosted the Rubber Tracks Live festival in Boston. For five nights, the festival put on a different genre-themed show. Headliners included Slayer, the Replacements, Passion Pit and Chance the Rapper.

Related

• Slayer, Replacements, Passion Pit Headlining Converse Fest
• Stankonia
• EMI Plans to Revitalize, Not Sell, Abbey Road Studios

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Disclosure Get Soaring, Soulful on New Single 'Holding On'

British duo Disclosure continue their streak of spaced-out, soulful dance pop odes with "Holding On," the first single from their follow-up to 2013's Settle, which premiered on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show, Stereogum reports.

Disclosure: The New Funk Soul Brothers

Though initially written as a ballad, Disclosure's Guy and Howard Lawrence said they remixed "Holding On" into its final, bounding form. Anchored by swift two-step garage percussion, the track seethes with percolating synth stabs that continually simmer at the bottom of the mix and boil brilliantly to the top. Though familiar territory for the Lawrence brothers, the track was co-written and sung by Gregory Porter, a renowned jazz singer who sidles easily into the role of dancefloor siren.

"Holding On" will see release on July 17th via PMR/Island; it's available to pre-order now on iTunes. The song comes on the heels of "Bang That," a soaring house smash that the Lawrence brothers noted had become a staple in their DJ sets and which they offered up as a treat to fans as they continued recording their next album.

While no specific details regarding the LP have been announced, Disclosure promised they would debut new material with the help of special guests at their Wild Life Festival, which takes place June 6th and 7th in Brighton.

Though "Bang That" marked Disclosure's first new music since Settle, the duo have remained busy with various remixes and other collaborations including "The Mechanism" — a 2014 track with Friend Within — and two songs on Mary J. Blige's The London Sessions.

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• 50 Best Albums of 2013: Disclosure, 'Settle'

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Flashback: The Clash Storm Tokyo in 1982

In hindsight, The Clash probably shouldn't have agreed to tour Asia and Australia in early 1982. Beyond the fact that it came midway through the tense Combat Rock sessions, promoters put together an insane schedule of 25 shows in a little over a month. And after five straight years on the road, the band was simply burnt out and showing major signs of strain. Drummer Topper Headon was in particularly awful shape as his heroin addiction was growing completely out of control.

Readers' Poll: The Best Clash Songs

"In the jazz days the saxophonist would be addicted to heroin, like Charlie Parker," said Joe Strummer. "The nature of the instrument means it's much better to be floating over the music, doing your thing, but it doesn't suit drumming, which is like nailing a nail into the floor. It's a precise thing. The beats have to be there and when Topper got addicted, he couldn't play anymore. It doesn't work with drums."

Somehow or another, the group managed to get through the tour. In the video above, they are in Tokyo in late January playing "Jimmy Jazz," "Tommy Gun," "Police on My Back," "White Riot" and Wanda Jackson's "Fujiyama Mama" with Japanese singer Pearl Harbor on lead vocals. "It was pretty crazy when we arrived in Japan," said Mick Jones. "We were chased around like we were in the Beatles or something, with lots of screaming and people throwing presents."

Not long after they arrived, Strummer and Headon got into a terrible fight. "I was standing in a lift with Joe," the drummer recalled. "He's saying, 'How can I sing all these anti-drug songs with you stoned out of your head behind me?'" It was a question that Headon couldn't adequately answer, and not long after the band came home from the tour he was sacked and replaced by original Clash drummer Terry Chimes.

Ironically, it was Headon's composition "Rock the Casbah," one of the only Clash songs he ever wrote (with Strummer handling the lyrics), that gave the group the biggest hit of its career. By the time the single hit the airwaves he was already out of the band. Years later, Strummer said that Headon's departure doomed the band. "That was the beginning of the end, really," he claimed. "Whatever a group is, it's the chemical mixture of those four people that makes a group work. You can't take one away and replace him with whoever you like, or 10 men: it's never going to work."

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Carrie Underwood to Perform at CMA Music Festival

The lineup for next month's CMA Music Festival in Nashville just got an extra helping of superstar. Carrie Underwood announced today that she'll be performing during the nightly concerts at LP Field. The "Something in the Water" singer will take the stage on Saturday evening, June 13th.

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The appearance doubles as an anniversary for Underwood, as it comes 10 years after her first CMA Fest performance. In 2005, she rode her American Idol victory to a slot at country music's four-day festival. Since then, she's been responsible for some of the event's most memorable moments, including a ferocious cover of Guns n' Roses' "Paradise City" to close out the 2013 fest. Last year, she surprised fans with a cameo during Miranda Lambert's LP Field set, recreating her and Lambert's Number One duet "Somethin' Bad."

Underwood revealed her CMA Music Festival appearance via a post on her Instagram. "Hey #CMAfest! Look like I will be seeing you real soon!" she wrote beneath a photo of herself wearing "I Heart CMA Fest" sunglasses.

In February, Underwood gave birth to her first child, a boy named Isaiah Michael, with husband Mike Fisher. Three days before her CMA Fest return, she'll give her first televised post-baby performance at the June 10th CMT Music Awards, singing current Top 10 hit "Little Toy Guns." She also leads all CMT Award nominees with five nominations.

CMA Music Festival runs June 11th through 14th in Music City. Other performers at the nightly concerts include Eric Church, Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, Alan Jackson, Lady Antebellum, Rascal Flatts, the Band Perry and Zac Brown Band.

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Luke Bryan on the First Song He Ever Wrote

Now that Luke Bryan has his own exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, fans can learn more about what helped shape his status as the face of today's country.

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Some of his first instruments and even the first song he ever wrote are included in Luke Bryan: Dirt Road Diary, but the tiny placards placed next to each item only reveal a fraction of what makes them special. To hear the story behind them, you've got to ask Bryan himself.

In an interview just before he toured the exhibit for the first time, Bryan filled reporters in on some of his most precious possessions.

"My very first guitar, I don't even know what brand it is," Bryan said. (It's a Silvertone). "But I was about 14 and had been on a summer trip to Jennings, Louisiana. . . During that trip there was a kid playing guitar at a church and I saw all the girls swooning over him, and I told myself when I got back to Leesburg I was gonna find a guitar."

Upon returning to his Georgia hometown, he phoned a neighbor who he knew owned more than a few instruments. "I called to ask if he had an extra guitar. He goes, 'Yeah, I have one,' and it was that guitar," Bryan said. "He brought it over that night."

Earlier in his childhood, Bryan also took piano lessons but says they didn't stick at the time. Even so, he always tinkered with it, and now is confident enough to play in front of a packed arena.

"It was a family friend's piano, and I don't know if we ever formally asked if we could have it up here [at the museum], but it's here," he said. "In our house we had limited space, and the piano just lived in my room. When I got into the guitar, that got me interested in piano, too."

Bryan said he honed his chops by learning to play the songs of one of country's preeminent piano men: Ronnie Milsap, with whom he performed during the ACM Superstar Duets concert last month. Still, the "Kick the Dust Up" singer jokes that his talent is marginal at best. "People who have seen me play know that I'm quite limited on piano skills," he laughed.

But it was the first song Bryan ever wrote that truly started him down his musical path, and he performed it in front of his whole church congregation.

"My first song was 'The Day He Turned Me Around,' and it was a Christian song," he remembered fondly, pointing out the lyrics. "The ink faded, but you can still see what I wrote. It was just a simple Christian song, but I physically wrote it and performed it in front of my congregation when I was 15, maybe 16."

Back then, Bryan couldn't fathom what was to come.

"You don't realize at the time what you're laying the groundwork for, but it's neat to see that piece of paper [now]," he said. "I remember putting it up there on the pulpit and being real nervous."

Bryan, who announced his new album Kill the Lights will be released on August 7th, is currently on his Kick the Dust Up Tour, which hits amphitheaters and stadiums this summer. He'll play Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver on June 6th.

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• Hear Luke Bryan's New Song 'Kick the Dust Up'
• Luke Bryan Tours Life-Spanning Hall of Fame Exhibit
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B.B. King Was Poisoned, Claims Bluesman's Children

A homicide probe into the death of B.B. King will be launched after two of the blues legend's daughters accused his two closest aides, business manager LaVerne Toney and personal assistant Myron Johnson, of poisoning King prior to his May 14th death. In court documents released to The Associated Press, King's daughters Karen Williams and Patty King said, "I believe my father was poisoned and that he was administered foreign substances. I believe my father was murdered."

The Legacy of Lucille: The Story Behind B.B. King's Guitar

According to Patty King's affidavit, she said she witnessed Toney administer two drops of an unknown substance on B.B. King's tongue at night in the months before his death; Toney never told Patty King what the substance was. B.B. King gave Toney power of attorney years ago, the AP writes, as well as named her executor of his estate, which could be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Toney did not reply to a request for comment by Rolling Stone.

Nevada officials announced Monday that they would open a homicide investigation, adding that they now had jurisdiction over King's body and conducted an autopsy Sunday, Reuters reports. Results are expected to take six to eight weeks; the fact that King was embalmed and displayed for public viewing shouldn't affect those results, Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg said.

Brent Bryson, an attorney for B.B. King's estate – which now has Toney as executor – did not reply to a request for comment, but denied Karen Williams and Patty King's accusations to the AP, calling them "ridiculous" and "extremely disrespectful." "I hope they have a factual basis that they can demonstrate for their defamatory and libelous allegations," Bryson said. While Toney and Johnson didn't formally comment to the AP, Toney did say, "They've been making allegations all along. What's new?"

Bryson added that three doctors determined that King was being properly cared for in his final weeks while in hospice care, and that King received 24-hour care and monitoring "up until the time that he peacefully passed away in his sleep." In April, King was hospitalized with dehydration related to diabetes.

King had 11 surviving children at the time of his death; the family has hired attorney Larissa Drohobyczer to represent them. Three of those children went to court in Las Vegas earlier this month in a failed attempt to remove Toney's power of attorney over King. One of King's daughters, Shirley King, also told KLAS-TV after her father's death that Toney had cut off the family's access to the blues great.

"Just getting through this day is killing me," Shirley King said. "Why would she not let me see my daddy before he leaves this earth?" Another daughter, Rita King, said when their father was in hospice care, "We love him, and the reason he hasn't seen us is because we're being kept away."

Following a Beale Street procession and memorial scheduled for Wednesday in Memphis, King's funeral will be held May 29th and 30th in King's hometown of Indianola, Mississippi.

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New App Allows Fans to Record With Taylor Hawkins, Phil Manzanera

Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera and jam band Umphrey's McGee have all contributed music to an app called WholeWorldBand, which allows users to create their own music by building around song stems uploaded by the artists. In Hawkins' case, the drummer provided a video session that enables fans to write their own songs with the Foo Fighter on drums. "I was kinda imagining some sort of song in there, but I want you guys to be creative and think of your own thing," Hawkins tells WholeWorldBand users.

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Manzanera, who previously contributed a session to WholeWorldBand, is back for his second foray on the app. This time, the guitarist brings his cover of Kanye West and Jay Z's Watch the Throne single "No Church in the Wild," a song that featured a sample of Manzanera's "K Scope." "The whole process is about musical recycling," Manzanera said of the app. "And I really hope that you join in that recycling process."

Umphrey's McGee have offered up the multi-track stems for their new single "Bad Friday," plus a version of the song where 16 bars are left open for guitar-playing fans to fill in with their own solo. The Police's Stewart Copeland, the Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood, Eurythmics' Dave Stewart and many more have similarly dropped sessions onto WholeWorldBand, with the resulting fan-made tracks being posted on social media.

WholeWorldBand is available on iPhone, iPad, and Windows and MacOS computers. In December 2014, the app allowed users to sing Bono's Band Aid 30 lyrics in an effort to raise money to fight Ebola in West Africa.

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