TOWER OF POWER
For 55 years, Tower of Power has delivered the best in funk and soul music. East Bay Grease defined their sound and landed them with Warner Brothers. Bump City, their 1972 debut for the label, was a hit on both the Billboard 200 and the R&B Albums chart and netted them the hits “You’re Still A Young Man” and “Down to The Nightclub.” The 70s were a boom period with radio classics like “So Very Hard to Go” and “What Is Hip?,” and the band continued to tour and record over the years. Castillo says their love of the stage is the same today as it was back in 1968.
50 years later, in 2018, they returned to Oakland to celebrate their landmark 50th anniversary. Tower’s window-rattling grooves and raucous party spirit has been a balm for the soul throughout their half-century existence, but the release of 50 Years of Funk & Soul: Live at the Fox Theater couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
The future of Tower of Power is set out to be vigorous and dynamic, and will prove to be just that for fans around the world starved for the band’s groove just the way Tower of Power likes it!
WAR
WAR, one of music’s defining and most enduring soul/funk groups, was founded in Long Beach, California, in 1962. In 1970, producer Jerry Goldstein united the seven-piece band with former Animals lead singer Eric Burdon; the alliance produced the No. 1 worldwide hit “Spill the Wine.” Stepping out on their own in 1971, they launched a fruitful career with a dynamic sound that fused R&B, rock, Latin music, jazz, and blues. In 1973, their smash album The World is a Ghetto vaulted to No. 1 on Billboard’s pop and R&B charts behind the crossover success of two top-10 singles, the album’s socially conscious title song and its rollicking follow-up “The Cisco Kid.” Over a long and glittering career, WAR has rung up more than 20 multi-platinum, platinum and gold albums and singles. This year, fronted by co-founding member Lonnie Jordan, the group will celebrate 50 years of 1973’s #1 Billboard top-selling album, The World is a Ghetto, with a 50-date summer tour, remixes, new releases and more.
Grammy-winning singer and songwriter is a soul-rooted contemporary R&B singer songwriter and musician. Displaying an interest in music from an early age, Bailey Rae studied classical violin until she acquired an electric guitar in her early teens. She released her self-titled debut solo album February 2006, topping the U.K. album chart, reaching #4 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, and featuring #2 single “Put Your Records On”. Bailey Rae was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2006 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2006. She released her debut album, Corinne Bailey Rae, in February 2006, and became the fourth female British act in history to have her first album debut at number one. The album has sold over four million copies. In June, 2023, Bailey Rae announced Black Rainbows, her first album in seven years. The album was released in September, 2023.
If it’s true that practice makes perfect, then Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock – beloved by their millions of fans across the planet as Air Supply – have had nearly half a century to hone their skills, harness their passion and unleash the beautifully intimate yet rockin’ romantic energy of those instantly identifiable 80s hits that made them global superstars.
As they close in on 50 years (exact date, May 12, 1975) since they met in the chorus of the Australian touring company of Jesus Christ Superstar, the duo is ever-present on the road in North America and overseas to the tune of 130 dates a year.
Air Supply’s overall sales and airplay stats are equally astounding, equaling their heroes The Beatles’ run of five consecutive Top Five Singles (“Lost in Love,” “All Out of Love,” “Every Woman in the World,” “The One That You Love,” “Here I Am”); selling a collective total of 20 million copies of their first three albums (Lost in Love, The One That You Love, Now & Forever) and the 1983 Greatest Hits collection.