As it so often has in recent years, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest has quite a lineup for this year, with the Eagles, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, John Mayer and the Foo Fighters performing headline sets this year. The performances will be the first time either the Eagles or Tom Petty have performed at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, as it is commonly known.  The 2012 festival will take place over two consecutive weekends, April 27-29 and May 3-6. Other notable names playing the festival this year are My Morning Jacket, Florence + the Machine, the Zac Brown Band, Bon Iver, Al Green and Bonnie Raitt.

As always, however, most of the performances will be by Louisiana musicians, with an estimated 85 percent of the performers native to the Bayou state. Some native Louisianans performing this year are Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas and clarinetist Pete Fountain. Festival organizer Quint Davis emphasized the importance of having a varied line up in a press release.

“At its heart, the New Orleans Festival celebrates with our own,” he said. “In addition, this year may be the broadest and most powerful line up of ‘special guests’… This festival really offers the best of both worlds. The heart and soul of the festival is all the Louisiana artists, but added to that is the very best of all these other genres.”

New Orleans Jazz Fest was started in 1970, and has been held as an annual event since that time. It is held on multiple stages set up at the Fair Grounds Race Course, and music is played all day. Additionally, the festival includes local venders who sell crafts and local food, with traditional New Orleans foods such as po’ boy sandwiches and crawfish. Though the festival began as a showcase of exclusively Louisiana musicians, it soon opened doors to performers from beyond the state’s borders, as well as to many different genres.

Joe Walsh, guitarist for mega selling classic rock band the Eagles, has announced that the group plans to tour next year to celebrate its 40^th anniversary as a group.

The band has been touring sporadically over the past four years since the release of its most recent album, Long Road Out of Eden, which was released in October 2007. Walsh says the band will put together something different for this next tour that will be different from their recent tours and commemorate the time the band has been together.

“Everybody’s seen our show, so we have to put together something new,” Walsh told Rolling Stone recently. “We’ve been archiving so much stuff from the band’s early days, concert footage and interviews and stuff. Those will be the visuals to go along with the songs. We’ll also revisit some old songs and some new stuff.”

Though no dates have yet been announced, Walsh says the tour likely will take place in the latter half of 2012. The band’s last scheduled performance will be tomorrow night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

The Eagles were formed in 1971 in Los Angeles and became the most popular act of the southern California country rock scene of the 1970s that also included the Doobie Brothers and Jackson Browne. The band released its first album in 1972, and the self-titled record featured the now classic hits “Take It Easy,” “Witchy Woman” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling.”

In 1976, the band released Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), an album that has become not only their best-selling album, but also one of the best-selling albums of all time in the United States. The Eagles broke up in 1980, but reunited again in 1994 for the Hell Freezes Over tour, and subsequently released a live album recorded during the tour. The tour was named for Don Henley’s recurring statement at the time of the break up that the Eagles would get back together, “when hell freezes over.”

In recent years, most of Don Henley‘s time on the road has been spent touring as a member of the Eagles. However this fall, he will be taking some time away to perform some solo gigs in California.

Henley will kick off his trek in Saratoga on September 21, with additional stops scheduled for Friant, Murphys, Valley Center and Santa Barbara. His Santa Barbara Bowl September 24 show will also be featuring Emmylou Harris.

Henley’s solo hits include “All She Wants To Do Is Dance,” “The End Of The Innocence,” “Boys Of Summer,” “Heart Of The Matter” and “Dirty Laundry.” The last solo album he released was “Inside Job” in 2000. Beginning in 2010, there were rumors Henley was working on an album that leaned country. However, no specific release dates have been announced.

This year the touring efforts of the Eagles have been focused overseas. However on November 5 and 19, they will be playing shows in Las Vegas at MGM’s Grand Garden Arena.

Have you ever wondered how many acts you have to pack onto a bill to fill up a stadium? Well evidently it is three. The Eagles, Keith Urban and the Dixie Chicks will be heading out to a stadium near you this summer. The trio of bands will kick things off in Toronto, Ontario on June 8 and carry through the month of June to end up at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium on June 24. A full listing of tour dates are listed below. A note to the Toronto, Winnipeg and St Louis residents, Keith Urban won’t be on the bill for these dates just the Eagles and the Dixie Chicks.

Tickets go onsale to the general public via Ticketmaster on March 29, but if you are lucky enough to have an American Express card you can jump to the front of the line and get presale access on March 22.

The Eagles already have dates on the calendar, touring in support of their 2007 effort “Long Road Out of Eden.” The Dixie Chicks haven’t toured in four years, and Chicks Maguire and Robinson are set to release a new album via their side project Court Yard Hounds. Keith Urban released his most recent effort “Defying Gravity” last March.

2010 The Eagles, Keith Urban, Dixie Chicks Tour Dates
June 2010
8 – Toronto, Ontario – Rogers Centre
10 – East Rutherford, NJ – New Meadowlands Stadium
12 – Boston, MA – Gillette Stadium
14 – Philadelphia, PA – Citizens Bank Ball Park
15 – Washington, DC – Nationals Park
19 – Chicago, IL – Soldier Field
22 – Winnipeg, Manitoba – Canad Inns Stadium
24 – St. Louis, MO – Busch Stadium

Will Stevie Nicks and Don Henley share the limelight and stage, as the rumored Fleetwood Mac and Eagles co-headlining tour of classic rock appears to be close to being official? With Nicks and Henley as the most recognizable faces and names from their respective rock super groups of the 1970s, the pair also share a history which is both well publicized as well as shrouded in mystery.

The hardest aspect probably for putting a concert tour together like this one isn’t the logistics of it all. Although logistics can be challenging, the toughest obstacle in this case could be the various egos who are involved. Which band is the biggest? Is it Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles? Who will be closing the show out? Will there be more Fleetwood Mac or Eagle fans coming to the shows? How will all this affect the dynamics between the major principals from the two groups?

Then throw into the mix that Stevie Nicks and Don Henley had a love affair that was on and off again during the late ’70s to early ’80s. Now the situation is even more complicated. Although the pair are much older at this point, old romances are quite often hardwired into people’s psyches. To make things even more complicated, Nicks was also involved with three other participants from the proposed mega concert tour: Mick Fleetwood and Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac as well as Joe Walsh of the Eagles.

If that wasn’t enough for the makings of a potentially very tense situation, there’s an additional issue from the past as well. During an interview with GQ Magazine in the early ’90s, Don Henley said he thought that Nicks had become pregnant from him and then had an abortion, naming the unborn baby Sara. Henley said that he thought Nicks had written “Sara,” one of the most famous of her songs and dedicated the tune to the love child sired by Henley that never was.

In later years, Nicks made it quite clear that she was very unhappy over the statements made by Henley. She didn’t ever deny that she had been pregnant with a child of Henley’s, however she was quite unhappy that Henley had shared that during an interview given to a national magazine.

Over the years it does appear that Nicks and Henley patched things up to a certain extent. In recent years the pair have performed together on stage. The most notable of the appearances being during a mini tour that did not include Fleetwood or the Eagles, where they performed alone as well as together.

Although Nicks and Henley both become solo stars, neither were ever as big as solo artists as they were when they were members of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, respectively. So although the small solo tour including the King and Queen from 1970′s rock seemed to go well, a pairing of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles would garner much more attention and have higher stakes.

There’s been plenty of internal drama in both groups. However if they were brought together in order to sell out baseball and football stadiums all over the country, it could be quite interesting to watch the on stage dynamics, if they do end up performing together, as well as any off stage drama potentially leaking out to the public.

Although Nicks and Henley are both true professionals, as well as both nearly senior citizens, it’s unlikely there would be real dirty laundry exposed. Henley, for his part, is a married man. However if once again any of the interpersonal relationships should get complicated or emotional, it will be quite intriguing to see how that could affect the product performed on stage as well as the tour.

Its been about a year since the Eagles were touring the US on their Long Road Out of Eden Tour, and they are ready to storm the stage once again. This time its the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California for a 3-night stint April 16,17 & 20. It will mark the group’s first performance at the 17,376 capacity venue. Tickets go onsale to the general public on Monday, December 14 with a round of American Express presales starting today (12/7) (password: 8002973333 – AMEX required for purchase).

The Eagles continue to support their latest album release ‘Long Road Out of Eden’ released in 2007. Its release marked the band’s first new studio album in 28 years. It debuted on the Billboard 200 Album Charts at number 1 and would go on to become the highest selling album by a group in 2007. ‘Long Road’ also awarded the group with new hardware in the form of two Grammy Awards for Best Country Performance for “How Long” and Best Pop Instrumental Performance for “I Dreamed There Was No War.”

The Eagles are one of the most successful groups of all time, with two albums ranking among the 20 best selling albums of the 20th Century — Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) and Hotel California. Rolling Stone ranked Hotel California as 37th of the top 500 albums of all time and the group as 75th on their list of top 100 artists of all time in 2004

2010 The Eagles Concert Tour Dates
April 2010
16 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl
17 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl
20 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl

According to a recent press release, the Eagles are one of the recently announced acts that will be performing at the CMA Awards 42nd Annual awards ceremony which will be airing live from Nashville’s Sommet Center on November 12. The Eagles have been nominated as CMA Vocal Group of the Year for the third time.

The Eagles will be joining a lineup of eclectic performers that include Kid Rock, Trace Adkins and Lady Antebellum. The Wailers will also be making their debut at the CMA Awards. They will join Kenny Chesney in a performance of “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven,” their No. 1 ranked collaboration that will appear on “Lucky Old Sun,” Chesney’s upcoming album.

Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley, co-host of the CMAs this year, will also be performing along with Keith Urban, Taylor Swift, Sugarland, George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Alan Jackson and Brooks & Dunn.