Mike Mills of R.E.M. joins the Modern Skirts - JoJo Glidewell, John Swint, Jay Gulley and Phillip Brantley - on stage at Westerpark in Amsterdam on July 2. (Photo by Justin Gwin)

The Modern Skirts recently returned from a European sojourn where they performed at three festivals, including an opening slot for R.E.M. Keyboardist JoJo Glidewell kept a diary of the trip and shared it with us, and check out a photo gallery from the trip:

Wednesday, June 25

Arriving in London, the opening of our European tour, and greeted by the nasty little surprise of our instruments once again being lost in transit somewhere. To make this kind of tour happen, a band typically has to rent a lot of equipment, as sending amps and drums on the plane is expensive, and actually, probably not allowed at all. We did bring our guitars and my piano, though, and thus that whole mess. We didn’t have a show the first few days, so it wasn’t a problem, but when you pay a cool hundred to get something onto a plane, you kind of would like it to arrive with you. That’s just not how it is, I guess. We did get them the next day, so no problem, really.

Our driver was a Scottish fellow named Keith who we would quickly become very fond of. Before we arrived, Keith rented most of our equipment for the trip from a backline company, and was there with all of our gear to whisk us off to the hotel when we arrived at Heathrow.

Saturday, June 28

After a few days off exploring London, we drove deep into the British countryside to Glastonbury for our first huge show. We were hurried and hungry, and by the time we got there I was feeling completely overwhelmed. The festival was enormous, 175,000 people packed into a valley with people and tents as far as you could see in every direction. It was to the point of being too much to be pleasant. It was impossible to get out of the crowd and it was muddy and kind of smelled like urine everywhere.

We were the smallest fish in the music world’s biggest fishbowl. The show was fine, though. Got in front of a hundred or so people and played well. Nothing that special, to be honest, but bigger things were yet to come.

Keep on reading…

When the members of Still, Small Voice & The Joyful Noise take the stage sometime late tonight at the 40 Watt, they’ll not only have a new song or two to preview but they’ll also welcome a founding member back into the fold. Mikey Dwyer, the band’s original drummer has returned. “It’s great, it’s beautiful,” says bassist-vocalist Trish Scurry, who along with guitarist-vocalist Chip McKenzie and Dwyer started the band in 2004. “We played a six-song set at Kingpins (on Sunday), which was his official return to the band. It’s really exciting.” Read the full story…

The students at Nuci’s Space’s Camp Amped got a special treat on Tuesday - a visit from Patterson Hood, Brad Morgan and John Neff of the Drive By Truckers. Here’s some background on the camp from Nuci’s site: Camp Amped is a two week long summer day camp for youth ages 11-17 at Nuçi’s Space in Athens, GA. Students are taught and mentored by some of the most amazing people in Athens, GA who just happen to be some of the city’s most talented and accomplished musicians. This year’s instructors include Carl Lindberg, Dan Nettles, Claire Campbell, Ben Mize and Joel Byron. While at Camp Amped, participants form bands and have the opportunity to write, learn, and record new music. At the end of the two week long camp, students perform in their own rock show at the Grand Finale, which will take place at 7:00 pm on July 19, 2008 at Nuçi’s Space.

Patterson writes about the visit here.

Here’s Patterson, Brad and “Nothin’ but Neff” performing “World of Hurt”:

Of Montreal has announced dates for its fall tour, which begins Oct. 7, the same day the band’s new album, “Lamping,” is due out. Athens is not on the itinerary. Bummer.

A big congrats goes out to Widespread Panic, who will be inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in September. I think they’re truly worthy of the honor, and we’ll be having a lot more about this in the next few months. But for now, here’s the official press release:

Widespread Panic will be inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame at the 30th Georgia Music Hall of Fame Awards Show on Saturday, September 20th in Atlanta, GA. The show will broadcast live on Georgia Public Broadcasting and will include a special performance from the band.

Past inductees include Georgia musicians including Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, R.E.M., and the Allman Brothers Band as well as industry professionals such as music attorney Joel Katz and record label owner Antonio “L.A.” Reid. “Sharing this honor … with so many of our greatest musical influences, is something I’m sure none of the Band members imagined when we first started making music together. September 20th is going to be a truly special day for the entire Widespread Panic Family,” says John Bell, vocalist and founding member of Widespread Panic.

Widespread Panic was founded in Athens, GA in 1986 and has since become a national touring force that has landed in Pollstar’s top 50 tours of the year for the past decade, has sold 3 million albums and played over 2,374 shows over their career. Despite thousands of concerts, the band has managed to never perform the same set list twice. The band released their 10th studio album, Free Somehow, in February 2008 via their own Widespread Records and has a catalogue of 19 albums to date that includes 8 live albums and 1 compilation.

Widespread Panic is currently on the road on their Summer 2008 tour, which kicked off with their 7th headlining performance at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. In addition to Bonnaroo, the band has headlined almost every major festival in the US including Lollapalooza, 10,000 Lakes, Rothbury, Austin City Limits, Jazz Aspen, Vegoose, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Their incomparable live show has earned Widespread Panic attendance records across the country. This June, the Mayor of Denver, CO declared June 27 “Widespread Panic Day” in the City and County of Denver marking Widespread Panic’s 32nd sold out show at Red Rocks Ampitheatre - more than any other band in history.

Widespread Panic utilizes their large success to give back to the community. Widespread Panic has played an active role in the Georgia music community, most notably playing annual concerts that benefit “Tunes for Tots,” an organization dedicated to support music education in Georgia area schools. To date, the concerts have raised over $350,000. In addition, the band recently sponsored a home in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward through the Make It Right foundation which inspired fans to spearhead a house of their own, “The House that Widespread Panic Fans Built.” Their fans have also come together to form Panic Fans for Food, a volunteer organization that holds food drives at shows to benefit the local food bank in that market. To date, PFFF have collected over $70,000, 13 tons of food in 28 cities. Widespread Panic charitable contributions also include John Bell’s annual Hannah’s Buddies Charity Golf Classic that raises money for Spinal Muscular Atrophy research.

The 30th Annual Awards Banquet, to be held Saturday, Sept. 20 in the Thomas B. Murphy Ballroom of the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, will recognize those who have made significant contributions to Georgia’s music industry. The banquet is hosted each year by the Friends of Georgia Music Festival, Inc. and the Senate Music Industry Committee.

R.E.M. has released it newest video, this one for “Man Sized Wreath,” from “Accelerate.” It was produced by Crush, a Toronto-based video production company that also produced the video for “Hollow Man.” The new video, which you can view here on spinner.com or sometime today on remhq.com, is a computer-generated “trail of cubes and a crudely designed motorcade are used to make a bold statement on the callous power of authority, and the distractions that keep people from recognizing the trouble around them,” according to Spinner. So don’t expect to see the band, though I did catch one clip of Michael singing during one short clip.

Here’s a video of The Whigs being interviewed on an Irish radio station. The band is wrapping up a European tour, and are they going to take a break? Nooo! They’re booked back in the States through the end of August. They’re going from California to New York and back to Washington. Jeez.

Nearly 20 years after their initial performance in Athens, it’s safe to say that the days of heavy touring are over for the “y’all-ternative” duo Stewart & Winfield. “These days, we’re more interested in the quality of gigs over the quantity,” says Stewart Marshall, who with Winfield Smith has logged untold miles performing thousands of concerts in Southeastern college towns, as well as in the ski towns of Colorado, since 1999. “We’ve had some incredible gigs over the last five years.” Read the full story…

Listen to “We’re In Trouble Now” from “Sandy Britches”:

Listen to “Sometimes” from “Sandy Britches”:

Got an update from Jim from Casper and the Cookies. Sounds like they’re very busy:

We’re wrapping up work on our next record and we’re really excited about it! We’ve been recording it ourselves with help from Bill Doss (Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, Sunshine Fix) who has been lending a hand on the egineering side. Right now we’re getting ready for the annual Athens Popfest, which is thrown by our label, HHBTM. Though it will be hard to top Popfest ‘07 when we backed up Daniel Johnston, we will be playing mostly new songs and we can’t wait to hear what people think of them.

In the meantime, we’ve been releasing a video diary of our Febuary trip to Japan called “Watashi-Wa Vegetarian”. It features some of the new songs plus performance clips, cultural places of interest, and us losing our shit on a van ride to Kyoto (check episode three!). We’ve been uploading an episode every week, and we’re up to No. 4. You can find them all here.

Here’s episode 4:

A call for entries: The Austin City Limits Music Festival’s “The Sound and the Jury” competition is now open for entries. It’s kind of a battle of the bands where the winner gets to play the ACL Festival stage next year. Winners are decided partially by online fan voting. Last year, Athens’ Blue Flashing Light made it into the Top 5. Det the details here.