Lake Street Dive has announced new tour dates for January 2019 in support of their album Free Yourself Up. Following a successful run of more than eighty performances this year, many of which sold out, shows in the New Year include Charlotte, Ponte Vedra Beach, Birmingham, New Orleans, and more.

While in New York next month, the group has two major headlining performances scheduled for the Beacon Theater, on November 5 and 6. They will then be honored for their support of music and arts education at the tenth annual Little Kids Rock Benefit on November 8 in Manhattan. Then on November 12, Lake Street Dive sits down for a conversation with one of their biggest fans, Stephen Colbert, celebrated host of CBS’s Late Show, and plays a few songs live at a sold-out 92nd Street Y event.

The title of Lake Street Dive’s Free Yourself Up is both an exhortation to listeners and a statement of purpose for the band. The songs have an infectious swagger, even when dealing with awkward breakups or the unsettled state of our world. Free Yourself Up is Lake Street Dive’s most confident album yet, seriously soulful and exuberantly rocking. And, in many ways, it is Lake Street Dive’s most intimate and collaborative, with the band itself taking over the production reins and working as a tightly knit unit to craft these ten songs. In addition, the quartet drafted touring keyboardist Akie Bermiss to join them in the studio, literally freeing the band up to explore a wider range of instrumental textures, construct more full-bodied arrangements, and build stacks of lively background harmonies. The sound is influenced by late sixties-early seventies R&B, AM pop, and FM rock while the lyrics are informed more by contemporary events.

Lake Street Dive was for many years a self-reliant unit. After forming in 2004, while members (Bridget Kearney, Mike Olson, Mike Calabrese and Rachael Price) were studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, they assiduously built a following through a series of independent album releases, countless club tours, and a few lucky breaks. In 2013, producer T Bone Burnett invited them to join a star-studded lineup at a New York City concert where they practically stole the show—and wound up with a deal from Nonesuch Records. The band’s label debut, Side Pony, was greeted with raves. Rolling Stone called it “irresistible” and the Boston Globe said, “Side Pony is a confident, expertly played statement from a band that’s been honing its approach for more than a decade, and it clearly shows that Lake Street Dive is ready to make itself known to whatever audiences have yet to succumb to its many charms.”

Presented in partnership with Flying Saucer Presents.