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No longer a sad sack, Butch Walker is ready to party Date published: 7/20/2006
By EMILY GILMORE After showing listeners his vulnerable side on his last album, 2004's "Letters," Butch Walker has snapped out of his funk, and he's ready to party. The name of his new backing band, The Let's Go Out Tonites, says it all. "We're dressing up and going out," the erstwhile Marvelous 3 frontman said in a phone interview last week from Atlanta. "That's what the whole premise of the band's sound and style is." The group just embarked on a tour--during which audiences will have a shot at singing karaoke--for its new album, "The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and The Let's Go Out Tonites." They'll stop at the 9:30 Club in Washington on Monday. "The band is big, the sound is big, so we're really excited for everybody to get a chance to check it out," Walker said. The show "is going to be quite the experience." That may be an understatement. Like a Dionysus for the present day, Walker is rivaled only by the likes of Bono and Bruce Springsteen in his ability to hold whole audiences in his sway from the moment he steps onstage. Walker, 36, has toured with rock band American Hi-Fi backing him, and he has written and produced music for Avril Lavigne, Pink, Bowling for Soup and others, but he hasn't had a band of his own since M3 disbanded in 2001. The lineup of TLGOT has been stable for the last year and a half, and the members, some of whom Walker met online, have all contributed to the overall sound, Walker said. He assembled the band in the spirit of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and Elvis Costello and The Attractions, and now he doesn't have to defend himself to people who don't get what he's about and think he needs a band to be a rock musician. Walker knows what it's like to go to a show and want to hear the band's old stuff, so he and TLGOT do play a couple of M3 songs that he feels they execute well, Walker said. But they're all so excited about the new album that, naturally, they want to focus on it.
Date published: 7/20/2006
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