We are thrilled to have John Chavez on board as the newest agent in Ground Control's Brooklyn office. For the last three years John has run his own agency, The Free Agency, and he brings with him several fantastic artists: Barr, Castanets, Deer Tick, Ecstatic Sunshine, Effi Briest, Evangelista, Excepter, EX MODELS, Knyfe Hyts, Ponytail, PWRFL Power, These Are Powers, and Titus Andronicus. For inquiries about any of those bands, send an email to john@groundcontroltouring.com. When John is not booking bands, he enjoys playing the guitar and watching Lost. His favorite food is enchiladas.

Ground Control Touring joins up with Press Here Publicity and Harp Magazine to throw a party at SXSW. It takes place Saturday from Noon to 8PM on the grounds of The French Legation museum, a short walk from the main drag of 6th street or the music venues on Red River – between 8th and 9th streets - just one block east of the I-35. Address is 802 San Marcos Street, Austin, TX.

Artists performoming are:

Thurston Moore and the New Wave Bandits (Northampton, MA)

Okkervil River (Austin, TX)

Kimya Dawson (Olympia, WA)

She and Him (Los Angeles, CA / Portland, OR)

J. Mascis (Amherst, MA)

Sons and Daughters (Glasgow, Scotland)

Lightspeed Champion (London, England)

Laura Marling (London, England)

Noah and the Whale (London, England)

Emmy the Great (London, England)

RSVP by emailing your name and affiliation to: events@pressherepresents.com

Kids, Ground Control Touring in North Carolina has moved offices. Our new address is 400-A West Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510.

Ground Control Touring artists totally racked up nominations this year for the 2007 PLUG Independent Music Awards! The event will take place February 10, 2007 at Irving Plaza in New York City. Nominees are listed below. Voting has opened to the public on their website, www.plugawards.com.

And the GCT Nominees Are...

2007 PLUG Independent Music Awards Nominees


MUSIC – General Category

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
Cat Power – The Greatest
Grizzly Bear – Yellow House

FEMALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Jenny Lewis
Chan Marshall

MALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR

M. Ward
Robert Pollard

INDIE ROCK ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
Grizzly Bear – Yellow House

AMERICANA ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat
M. Ward – Post War


MUSIC – Obsessive Category

ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Cat Power
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
M. Ward

LIVE ACT OF THE YEAR

Man Man

SONG OF THE YEAR

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - “ Rise Up With Fists”

MUSIC VIDEO OF THE YEAR

Cat Power - “Lived in Bars”
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness - “The Owl”

ALBUM ART/PACKAGING OF THE YEAR

Cat Power – The Greatest

We wish luck to all our bands, but we already knew you rocked!

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins' fall tour is announced and pre-sale tickets are available.

Click here to buy tickets for Jenny Lewis

We are also pleased to announce Cursive's fall tour.

Pre-sale tickets go on sale Wednesday August 16 at 1pm local time.

Click here to buy tickets for Cursive

Robert Pollard, lead singer of the bygone Guided by Voices, will release a 26 song solo album titled "From A Compound Eye" on Merge Records January 24th. He'll also be playing a few shows on the weekends this spring around the States.

In the spirit of the Holidays and to help fight poverty and hunger,Merge Records has organized a series of auctions to benefit two very worthy charity organizations: Oxfam and The North Carolina Food Bank.

Oxfam fights poverty, responds to global emergencies, and addresses world issues such as trade, conflict and HIV/AIDS. They also organize worldwide campaigns to control arms, make trade fair, make poverty history, and to develop international goals to halve poverty by 2015.

The North Carolina Food Bank was established in 1980 to provide food to people at risk of hunger in North Carolina. Almost half of the over 400,000 people served by the Food Bank's network are children, and another 11 percent are elderly. Nearly half the families served are the "working poor" - people who work hard and still have to choose between eating and other basic necessities.

From Wednesday, November 23rd until January 1st, we will be auctioning off, via eBAY, silk-screened tour posters from designers and shows all over the country signed by many of your favorite Merge bands/artists. The fourth batch of auctions are live online now:

CROOKED FINGERS

GUIDED BY VOICES

SUPERCHUNK

We hope you will join us in helping those less fortunate this Holiday season, and enjoy some autographed, one-of-a-kind artwork from our Merge family!

Bands participating in the auction include:

Spoon
Destroyer
Tenement Halls
Arcade Fire
Crooked Fingers
Lou Barlow
Guided by Voices
Superchunk
Portastatic
M. Ward
American Music Club
The Clientele
The Rosebuds
Lambchop

For more info, and to stay up to date on all auctions, please check out our eBay Seller's Page today!

Bright Eyes, The Clientele, CocoRosie, Dungen, M Ward, Scout Niblett & Spoon have all been nominated for PLUG awards. PLUG is a collection of music lovers - writers, DJs, webmasters, bloggers, artists, filmmakers, managers, indie retailers, and most importantly fans - who gather together each year to celebrate the artists who live and flourish in the margins.

Bright Eyes & Spoon are the big favorites of ours to win, with Bright Eyes getting nominations for Artist of the Year, Male Artist of the Year and Live Act of the Year. Spoon is riding nominations for Artist of the Year, Song of the Year and Indie Album of the Year. The Clientele are also nominated for Song of the Year and CocoRosie & Scout Nilbett are both up for Female Artist of the Year. M Ward is nominated for Americana Album of the Year for the amazing Transistor Radio and newcomers to the roster this year, Dungen, are nominated for New Artist of the Year.

Good luck and congratulations to all the artists up for awards!

The North Carolina office of Ground Control will be changing office suites. Please direct all future correspondence to:

Ground Control Touring

104 Jones Ferry Rd., Suite A

Carrboro, NC 27510

Everything else will remain the same!

Sons and Daughters will be the special guests on MTV2's Subterranean this Sunday night, 10/9 at midnight! They will also be showing their video for "Dance Me In", so be sure to check it out.

In light of the tragedy that has befallen the city and residents of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, the Red Cross has set up a system where you can make a donation to the relief fund via credit card, mail, phone or even by donating stock. If you'd like to help or volunteer, click here to go to the Red Cross Donation Page.

We're looking for interns for the Fall semester in our Brooklyn office. We will be looking for 2 people to start sometime in the last week of August. The internship allows you to be in close proximity to the agent through every step of booking, promoting and playing a tour. The position is ideal for someone interested in live music but really applies universally to understanding what motivates labels, writers, publicists, other agencies, artists and managers.

A candidate for this position should have a love and knowledge of bands in the indie music scene and the new york club circuit. Communication and (mac) computer skills are most important for this position. We are a small office so our interns take on actual responsibility in our process; organization and ability to understand and work independently are as important as motivation. Intern duties include answering the phones, contacting promoters, contracting shows, obtaining ticket counts and, maybe most importantly, making sure the office stereo is always playing. This is an unpaid internship but we do offer college credit and good times.Perks include admission to lots of live concerts. To apply email resume and cover letter to interns@groundcontroltouring.com (please do not call to follow up on your resume. We will contact you if we are interested). We do credit too.

We're looking for an intern for our Carrboro, North Carolina office to start at the end of August. This position is ideal for a college student interested in all aspects of the music business and will offer opportunities to work closely with agents, managers, labels and other representatives of the industry.

Responsibilities will include answering the phones, contacting promoters, data entry, obtaining ticket counts, updating web pages, and anything else we can think of along the way. This is an unpaid internship but we do offer college credit.

To apply email resume and cover letter to dana@groundcontroltouring.com (please do not call to follow up on your resume. We will contact you if we are interested).

GCT is pleased to welcome Brooklyn's own Grizzly Bear to our NC roster! They are currently busy recording a new album but will be out touring a little bit in the fall and winter for select dates.

We are excited to announce the newest member of the GCT international family, Dungen. From Sweden, Dungen have signed to Kemado Records in the US and will release their amazing "Ta det lugnt" (for those not up on their Swedish, it means Take It Easy) later this year. Look out for upcoming US dates!!!

As previously reported, Olivia Tremor Control, the psychedelic savants of the Elephant 6 collective are dusting off breakup rumors and reforming to play the All Tomorrow's Parties festival later this month in East Sussex. Pitchfork has learned, however, that the group will be playing two other shows, one in their 90s hometown of Athens, Geo., at the 40 Watt on April 15-- as a sort of dress rehearsal-- and another in London before ATP.

Jon Polk from Team Clermont publicity said the band's reformation was brought about by a request to play at the ATP festival, but that the Athens date was added as a warm up of sorts and, "to please the local faithful who had been clamoring for an OTC show for years." According to Polk, the group has been practicing three to four times a week. Fellow Elephant 6ers Elf Power will offer support in Athens.

Olivia Tremor Control formed in Louisiana in the late 80s as the trio of Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum, but wound up in Athens in 1990. After Mangum left to focus on Neutral Milk Hotel, John Fernandes joined to fill the void and the group recorded The Giant Day EP. The band then added drummer and electronics whiz Eric Harris, who helped guide it toward Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle, the band's jaw-dropping 1996 debut LP.

However, following the 1999 album Black Foliage: Animation Music, the band went on an extended hiatus, as a few members left to pursue side projects. By 2001, the Olivia Tremor Control had pretty much splintered, with Doss forming the Sunshine Fix, Hart forming the Circulatory System, and keyboardist Pete Erchick forming Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't.

In January, Fernandes spoke to Pitchfork about future plans, but insisted the brief reunion is a one-time affair. As for the possibility of new recordings from the group, Fernandes responded: "Not at the present time, but we are going to reissue more out-of-print Olivia Tremor Control material later this year on Cloud Recordings. We recently got the rights back to Singles and Beyond from Emperor Norton, so we will reissue that along with the Olivia Tremor Control/Black Swan Network collaboration."

So at least we've got that to look forward to.

-- Matt Amis (Pitckfork)

Check out the dates!

Legendary Australian pop band the Go Betweens will be touring the US with a full band for the first time in 15 years! Check out the tours page for dates!

We are happy to welcome another amazing member to our family: CocoRosie. CocoRosie has been extremely busy lately, touring Europe with Devendra Banhart and supporting Bright Eyes for a 2 1/2 week U.S. tour, but that's not stopping them from recording the follow up to 2004's La Maison de Mon Reve, due out September 2005. If you're impatient, you can catch CocoRosie playing a few select dates with Antony and the Johnsons this March. Check the tour page for the latest updates and look out for the new record this fall.

We are very, very pleased to announce the newest addition to our NYC roster, London & Brighton's The Go! Team. Fresh off wowing crowds this side of the pond in TX and NYC (who knew those industry bigwigs could shake their asses like that??), they are ready to bring their, as Pitchfork says, "ridiculously unique" music to the American masses. With fans anxiously awaiting a US record release, the future promises to be bright for the half boy. half girl outfit. GO! TEAM!

Due to some postal service (not the band) rigamarole, GCT NY has a new address but has not moved. Please direct all future correspondance to:

Ground Control Touring
190 N 10th St, Suite 301
Brooklyn, NY 11211

All else stays the same.

We're very excited to welcome two more fine acts from Omaha to our roster. Maria Taylor is a member of bands Azure Ray and Now It's Overhead. This spring she will be releasing a solo album, 11:11, and will be touring with Ben Lee and Har Mar Superstar in April. Neva Dinova are just wrapping up a tour of the US which saw them play several shows with Bright Eyes (with whom they released a split EP with on crank! last year). Last month they released their second LP, The Hate Yourself Change, on Sidecho Records.