The honeymoon may be over, but for The Handsome Family it’s just beginning with a a west coast tour beginning July 14th in Seattle, to support the release of their new album and recent sold-out dates on the east coast in April.
Touring extensively throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, their live performances sometimes consist of up to a six-piece band and other times just band members Brett Sparks (music) and Rennie Sparks (lyrics). Taking place under bowed branches and deep within winding corn mazes, The Handsome Family releases their latest album, Honey Moon, through Carrot Top Records on April 14, 2009. Celebrating the duo’s twentieth year of marriage and eighth studio release, the record plays out as a series of love songs that sharply contrast the dark themes of their previous seven releases.
Full of an awed sense of emotion in the face of nature’s mysteries, Brett Sparks (music) and Rennie Sparks (lyrics) branch from their usual canon of the dark and mysterious on Honey Moon, to establish a theme rooted in the tradition of 19th century romanticism. For the first time there is no body count. Not one person dies. There is only one song about a lost love. It is an album of transcendence, of touching the divine, if only for a moment, through our love of someone else, even if he is a katydid.
The Handsome Family Tour Schedule
7/14 – Seattle at Tractor Tavern
7/15 – Vancouver at the Biltmore
7/16 – 7/19 – Dawson City Music Festival
7/21 – Portland at Doug Fir
7/23 – San Francisco at Bottom of the Hill
7/24 – Santa Cruz at the Crepe Place
7/25 – Los Angeles at Spaceland
7/26 – Los Angeles at McCabe’s
7/29 – Tucson at the Congress