Starting April 9th, CAbP is making our way out west for our first big travel of the year. We were given a great opportunity to work along with ISAW (International Society of Africans in Wine) as one of the main bands on their "Drink Well, Do Good" tour. Several of the shows on our tour are affiliated with ISAW whose goal is to bring more of the revenues from the $3.3 billion South African wine industry into the communities that surround, work for, and sustain these businesses. The shows will serve as fundraisers for this cause. All the shows will be united in one far reaching cause which is to help YOU get your groove on. (kidding, but seriously)


We'll be starting in Colorado and working our way through California and the Northwest.

Complete list of dates:

• Fri., April 9th:Quixote's (formerly Owsley's) / Denver, CO
• Sat., April 10th: Quixote's (formerly Owsley's) / Denver, CO
• Sun., April 11th: the Salt Water Cowboy / Avon, CO
• Mon., April 12th: Belly Up / Aspen, CO
• Wed., April 14th: Tree House Lounge / Reno, NV
• Thurs., April 15th: Jambalaya / Arcata, CA
• Fri., April 16th: CODA (ISAW show) / San Francisco, CA
• Sat., April 17th: Sengthong's Blue Sky Room / Dunsmuir, CA
• Mon., April 19th: Applegate Lodge / Applegate, CA
• Tues., April 20th: Eastside Club / Olympia, WA
• Fri., April 23rd: John's Alley / Moscow, ID
• Sat., April 24th: The Good Foot (ISAW show) / Portland, OR
• Sun., April 25th: Chop Suey (ISAW show) / Seattle, WA

Hope to see some familiar faces on the road this year!

CAbP

We're headed back to the Bottleneck in Lawrence, KS this Friday, Oct. 9th for what will likely be another fantastic time in one of the coolest college towns in the Midwest. The Delta Saints are opening for us this time. On Saturday, Oct. 10th we return to Gramophone in Saint Louis with Mama Rogers as the supporting act. It seems as though Gramophone is a one of the new hot-spots to be. Looking forward to it. 

 In other news, the band is repeating a similar route to our Summer Tour '09 starting Halloween weekend in Colorado, progressing through the Northwest again and down through California. We'll be playing many of the same venues in the same cities as this last summer with a few changes to the game plan. Highlights include Halloween in Crested Butte, CO, a 3 night run in San Francisco at Mojito, a stop at the University in Tempe, AZ, and a gig in Las Vegas on Friday, the 13th (bad night to gamble I'm guessing).

We've completed our major Summer touring for 2009 and would like to thank everyone who came out to support us.  Our travel this Summer took us nearly from coast to coast with memorable stops all over the US.  In the latter half, we returned to the casinos of Reno, followed by another great club night in Salt Lake, a 2nd rendezvous with Bill Kreutzmann in Denver at Cervante's, and one of our better nights in Lincoln, Nebraska.  We had a great time at the Mulberry Mountain Harvest Fest, revving things up on the 1st night and making numerous friends quickly.  And we always enjoy the warmth of the Southeast.  We're planning a Northeast tour at the end of September / early October including a stop in NYC at the Blue Note for a late night set Oct. 3rd.  

Check our list of dates below.  We'll be hitting Milwaukee, Marquette, Chicago, and other Midwest cities and towns throughout September.  See you around!

We've finished the first big leg of summer touring in 2009.  It has definitely been one of the (if not THE) best west coast tour we've had--our fourth total.  The band had solid performances throughout with our strongest line-up to date. There are probably too many interesting, memorable, and/or hilarious things to talk about, but a few outstanding highlights. We witnessed, and were surprised by, the overall rowdiness of the Boise bar scene early in the tour.  We also found an amazing spot to camp on the way there near the Anderson Dam in Mountain Home, ID.  It was our first time to the Northwest and we're convinced that we need to hit up that region of the US more often. The Oregon Country Fair may have been the biggest highlight of our trip.  After a warmly received performance on the main stage, we were later invited to sit in on the 2 1/2 hour night time jam with Bill Kreutzmann (drummer, Grateful Dead), Scott Murawski (Max Creek), and Papa Mali.  The entire band sat in for a long, surprise jam session for a crowd of thousands.  And the vibe there was beyond intense--40 years (since the summer of '69) in the making.

All of our shows were memorable for one reason or another, but the major Cali shows were some of our best yet.  We were treated to an unexpected wild party on a Sunday in Eureka at the Red Fox.  Yoshi's in SF was incredible, and the scene at Zanzibar in LA blew us away.  Looking forward to getting back out west as soon as we can.

 Later in the summer we'll be heading to the Southeast with a stop at the Mulberry Mountain Music Festival in Arkansas, then heading out to hit some other cities in the surrounding states. 

What's up, ya'll? 

Ahh... the economy. It's on everyone's mind. But there's no better way to put aside recession blues than to head to an afrobeat show. Whether our country is beginning to bounce back from the economic downturn or not, the CAbP tour machine hits the road again this weekend with a quick run east. We stop at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis on Friday, 4/10 and at Brothers Lounge in Cleveland on Saturday, 4/11. 

The first weekend in April we're going to Ohio for a short Spring run-off.  We're back at Peaches in Yellow Springs on Friday, April 3rd--a nostalgic spot for some of us and a 'band-girlfriend-producing' town for Angelo Sax.  Then on Saturday we're starting the festival season of '09 with "Hookah In the Hills" in Guysville, OH (some of us hope it's more like 'Chicksville", as you could imagine).  It might be the right time to wipe the winter dust off of your tent and sleeping bag, load white gas into your Coleman stove, and have a trippy campy time near Athens, Ohio.  

It's out now!

Our most recent EP Off the Grid released last month for digital download at iTunes, eMusic, and everywhere else you can download digital music. You can of course also by a hard copy directly from our website where we released the disc a few months ago. We even added some new gear to our web store so be sure to check that out. Who cares about losing jobs when you can wear a CAbP t-shirt?

Oh, and while you now have some extra time on your hands, don't hesitate to read every page of the 407-Page Stimulus Act. Find out how to get back on your feet with the help of Uncle Sam. Let's make sure these funds are put to good use. Hey, it's your money to begin with!

The new disc features three original tunes as well as a couple remixes of "Media Man" from our late 2007 album (A) Move to Silent Unrest. Included are:
1. (A Warm) Global Warning
2. Ich Fumbus Grossen
3. Nobody Likes a Prima Donna
4. Media Man (radio edit)
5. Media Man (Backseat Bingo Remix)

We're headed down to Florida for a week + long tour of the state.  Warmer weather is sure to await us in those parts.  We've got a solid line-up in the works so if you live in Florida be sure to check us out.  Chances are we're playing within an hour of where you live at some point.  Dates include:

• Fri. Jan. 16:  State Theater - St. Petersburg, FL
• Sat. Jan. 17:  Skipper's Smokehouse - Tampa, FL
• Sun. Jan. 18:  Common Grounds - Gainesville, FL
• Tues. Jan. 20: The Social - Orlando, FL
• Wed. Jan 21:  Ocean Deck - Daytona Beach, FL
• Thurs. Jan. 22:  Hurricane Grill - Marathon, FL
• Fri. Jan. 23:  Hollywood Beach - Hollywood, FL
• Sat. Jan. 24:  Live Wire Music Hall - Savannah, GA
  

Check out the entire December '08 Morse Theater show online:

Set 1:

1. March of the Uninsured
2. Superstar pt. 7
3. Open and Close
4. Fix and Release
5. BSCG2
6. A Summons
7. Nobody LIkes a Prima Dona
8. Zambie
9. Tibet On It

Set 2

1. Egbe Mio
   
2. 116 - Higher the temp, longer the wait
3. Jekajo
4. A Warm Global Warning
5. 3 Snare
6. Colonial Waiting Room
7. Talking Bush
8. Cloister
9. New Bell

CAbP is performing at Reggie's Music Joint this year for a long overdue New Years Eve show in Chicago.  Start making plans to go now.  You can buy tickets and get information at their website, or go directly to ticketweb for tickets to the show. Doors are at 8pm. It has all the makings of being a truly raucous NYE with the band, so please come out and party with us. Special guests and fanfare will be spreading celebratory madness!!  

Reggie's is located at:

REGGIES MUSIC JOINT
2105 South State Street
Chicago, Illinois 60616

(312) 949-0120

Our Southeast tour was a grand ole time.  It ends our 2008 tour year for us with a sweep through (mostly) Tennessee, Georgia, and a memorable stop at the Bear Creek Festival in the Florida panhandle.  Truly a great spot for a festival and the music was superb with performances by Soulive, Ivan Neville, Robert Walters, and the New Mastersounds, to name some highlights.  Lots of instrumental driven funk stuff, and to my personal enjoyment, a whole ton of Hammond B3 organ tunes.  The rest of 2008 involves a show at the newly opened Morse Theater in Rogers Park in Chicago, a one-off to play at Off Broadway in St. Louis, and a New Years Eve show at Reggie's on Chicago's near south side.  A Florida and Southeast tour happens again in January, this time taking us down to the southern reaches of the state.  We can hardly wait.  

It's been a great year of touring, seeing old friends, and meeting new people on the road.  Looking forward to some great show opportunities in 2009.  One last thing:  Don't start the winter holidays too soon.  Revel in the the continuing FALL season with things like corn-a-copias, clay pots full of hay and corn husks, gords and squashes, Indian corn--items like that.  Please REFRAIN from putting up winter decorations until AFTER Thanksgiving.  Thanks, and see you in 2009 (unless you live in Chicago or St. Louis).  PEACE!!

CAbP is celebrating the historic victory of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States by touring the Southeastern United States in a red state filled victory lap for our home town hero.  We know there are plenty of Obama supporters in this region, and good people on both sides of the fence, but we're bringing the music of the original "Black President" down on a wave of victory for the first black President of the USA.  

 We have stops in the following cities along the way:

• Blue State:  Columbus, OH
• Red State:  Nashville, TN
  
• Red State:  Knoxville, TN
• Red State:  Athens, GA
• Red State:  Chattanooga, TN
• Red State:  Savannah, GA
• Red State:  Columbus, GA
• Blue State:  Live Oak, FL

We're off to Bowling Green this weekend for a Friday show, gracing the stage at Howard's yet again.  It'll be our 3rd time playing there.  The 1st time was off the hook.  The 2nd time, we played after a series of metal bands and it wasn't working so well, but we're almost sure that this time will be really, really good.  After that, we're off to another performance at 'Hookah In the HIlls', an outdoor mini-fest put on by our friends in Ekoostik Hookah.  We're playing Saturday.  It's in Guysville, which is near Athens, Ohio.  Tickets are around $40 for the weekend. 

Also, I swear that our new EP, "Off the Grid" is on its way.  We had an issue with the master recording we sent them--the one used for duplication.  We have new posters, stickers, merchandise, and other Afrobeat Project Projects all in the works and available soon.

Here's the latest web video of CAbP performing Fela Kuti's 'Palmwine Sound'.  Captured in Boise, Idaho during summer tour '08.  

We retrieved our bus this last weekend from the post WestCoast tour storage in Colorado after performing at the Carbondale Mountain Fair--a truly awesome time for the band.  It's getting harder to leave these western states, but we still like coming back to Chicago after these jaunts.  No worries for the homies. 

 We're performing Tuesday night (July 29th) at a fundraiser for One World Africa along with Zeleke and Funkadesi at the Wild Hare in Wrigleyville.  Starting around 11pm ourselves, but don't miss these other guys either.  We have a few guests joining us including local hip hop artist Antar.  Don't miss it folks! 

Our big summer tour has brought us safely back to Chicago with a lot of crazy tales to tell.  We put about 5500 miles behind us with stops all over the western US along the way.  There was a string of festival dates to kick things off with a few club stops scattered here and there.  Our Salt Lake City arts festival gig was completely off the hook, to name one, but our shows in MIchigan, Idaho, Montana, and southern Utah (Cedar City) were also super memorable on the way out west.  The weather was basically perfect the entire time save for the haze and smoke created by the extensive forest fires in California.  We spent four days at the High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, CA with two performances--a late night set and an afternoon slot on the main stage.  

 At High Sierra we had a few impromptu jams with some of the members of Gamelan X and Sambada at the bus camp as well as a slew of percussion jams sitting on the back of our gear trailer.  Other stops in California included a great show at Yoshi's in San Fran where we loaded up on Sushi and a little waste veggie oil fuel for the bus, and stops at Temple Bar in LA where Jason Thor (trombonist virtuoso) joined us, and a show at Winstons in Oean Beach, San Diego.  The band also stopped in for a show at a great venue in Crystal Bay, Nevada on Lake Tahoe at the Crystal Bay Casino.  We rendezvous'ed with our good friends from Chicago-based 56 Hope Road in Denver at Cervantes Ballroom before playing a great 'finale' show at one of our favorite clubs to play anywhere--the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO. 

 A lot of hard work went into keeping us rolling along, much of which revolved around the many 'Veggie Quests' we emparked upon, i.e. trolling alleys for sources of veggie oil fuel for our bus.  We scored over 500 gallons worth of essentially free, low emission, low socio-political-environmental impact 'recycled' fuel.  And we're looking for someone to design our band veggie oil fueling team suits, so drop us a line if you have any ideas.  I'm thinking rubber shirts / pants (or jumpsuits) with our logo on them and some clear plastic tubes wound around them  maybe with oil permanently trapped inside (but I've been on the road for while and can't trust my own thoughts). 

 We have a show at Duffy's on Tuesday July 15th that is free, and (get THIS) giving away free draft beer from 7 to 9pm before we hit at 10pm.  Duffy's is in Lincoln Park in Chicago at Sheridan and Diversey St.  In a few weeks, we're back to Colorado to get our bus and play in Carbondale, Colorado.

 Thanks again to our Western States fans for a great summer tour. 

It's a lot like last year's summer tour, but longer and more bad-ass!  Also, with any luck, we'll be burning a great deal of waste veggie oil this time.  Hopefully our engine won't explode driving up mountains with the distinct smell of freedom fries blowing out the exhaust pipe.  Highlights include:

• Teusday, June 24th: our first time in Missoula, MT at 'The Loft'
  
• Monday, June 30th at the new Yoshi's in San Fran
• A first stop in Santa Cruz at Moes, July 1st
• July 4th and 5th at High Sierra Music Festival
• A return to Temple Bar in LA on July 8th
• Fox Theater on July 12th

 Check out the "Performances" section in the links above to see our full summer tour schedule, which also includes stops in Boise and McCall, Idaho; two festival dates in Salt Lake City, a return to San Diego, CA and Denver, CO to name a few more.   ANY TIPS ON WHERE TO FIND CLEAN, VEGETARIAN WASTE VEGGIE OIL ARE OF GREAT SIGNIFICANCE TO OUR CAUSE AND THE GREATER ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT WORLDWIDE!
 

Special thanks to KCRW for our return to Temple Bar in Santa Monica, CA.... 

Hip hop meets afroeat this Friday night, January 11, at the House of Blues in Chicago when CAbP helps Kenyan/American band Extra Golden who has several members currently living in Kenya and unable to work due to the humanitarian crisis there. The Kenyan Red Cross is raising $15 million for for 500,000 Kenyans suffering from a recent post-election uprising in Kenya. CAbP is donating a portion of the House of Blues benefit to both Extra Golden and the Kenyan Red Cross.

At the performance, CAbP will feature emcees from the All Natural Crew along with break dancing from the Chicago Brickheadz, CAbP's African dancers, and live art from Chicago artist Chadwick (Mos Def, Cook Kids, Lady Soverign). Master talking drummer T.J. Okulnola from Nigeria also joins the band. Fareed Haque kicks off the night at 9 p.m.

VIDEO PREVIEW OF THE SHOW:

Chicago Brickheadz

Emmonia

Eboney & Tosha

This Friday, CAbP helps Milwaukee get over the New Year's blues with a special performance at the Mirammar Theatre. Master talking drummer T.J. Okulnola from Lagos, Nigeria joins us for the performance along with CAbP dancers Tosha and Koya. Live artist Chadwick will paint on the spot, and we'll be introducing some recently written material to Milwaukee. If you haven't had chills from music in a while, come play along with CAbP. Tickets are only $8.

We're injecting some urban elements into our Chicago House of Blues show on Friday, January 11.  We will feature some socially conscious emcees along with breakdancing from our friends the Chicago Brickheadz. Of course, CAbP dancers Tosha and Koya wil perform their take on traditional West African dancing, and our live artist Chadwick will paint some works on the spot.

The afrobeat machine moves for a quick trip -- well a slow trip throuh the snow -- to Kalamazoo on Thursday, Dayton on Friday, and Yellow Springs on Saturday. We want to take a second to thank all of our new Iowa City and Davenport friends for making it out to the shows last weekend -- what a blast. Most fun we've had in a long time. And you guys like Obama. What more could we ask for? I suppose we could all stay active after an election year -- that goes for us too. Keep conscious. See you this weekend.

Summerdance is coming up this week on Thursday, June 14th--opening night.  We're playing in Grant Park off Michigan avenue near Adams.  Our 2nd CD is done and we're gearing up for the release in a few months.  The artwork has been provided by Lemi, the artist who did tons of Fela album covers.  In other news, our tour bus is back in the Chicago metropolitan area awaiting some final adjustments before it can once again entertain us and our friends with the spectacle of its sheer size and numerous odd features.

There are also a variety of additional festival dates scheduled for this summer including Dogstock, Jazz in the Park in Milwaukee, Forecastle Festival,  Celebrate Clark Street in Chicago, Art Street in Green Bay, and the High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy California in July--2 days, Saturday and Sunday, July 7th and 8th.  We'll be making stops on the way out and back in the western states, so stay tuned.   End the war!!!  See you around.....