Simple Minds have announced 20 more gigs across Europe this summer including a reunion with old pals The Waterboys at the Lots Festival in the Netherlands. You can also catch ‘Lostboy!’ the side project from Scotland’s Greatest Ever Vocalist* at King Tuts in Glasgow on Saturday night. Details below:

Jim Kerr, Scotland’s Greatest Ever Vocalist*, recently spoke with Fiona Shephard from the Scotsman about his formative years and the new ‘Lostboy!’ songs. Lostboy! will be at the Warehouse in Aberdeen on Friday night (tickets here), and at Kings Tuts in Glasgow on Saturday (tickets here). Full European dates with ticket links below:

Kerr grew up in Toryglen on Glasgow’s southside. When asked to recall his formative years, he is drawn back to a time in the mid-1970s when he and Burchill and their weirdo peers would hang around Glasgow city centre in their make-up and pointy boots waiting for the world to catch up with them.

“We were the wilful outsiders,” he says. “We weren’t an elite but I guess there wasn’t enough going on in Glasgow itself to entertain us so we were kind of inventing ourselves. We’d get p*ssed off if you looked at us and p*ssed off if you didn’t. Our heads were full of about six books – one would have been a Kerouac book, and something cosmic, a Tibetan Book of the Dead, and we’d be expecting Andy Warhol to come and see us any minute soon.”

While it may have been important for Kerr to tap into that youthful spirit of entitlement and expectation, Lostboy’s music is just as likely to recall the Minds’ mid-1980s stadium pomp anthems as their doomy electro-punk Bowie freak roots. There is nothing here to scare off long-term Kerr followers, though he feels that Lostboy! mines darker territory than Simple Minds with songs about domestic abuse and natural disaster. The album also features a tribute to Billy Mackenzie, called Return Of The King, a cover of a pre- Silencers Jimme O’Neill song called Bulletproof Heart which Kerr has adapted to reflect what he calls the “incredible schizophrenia” of his hometown, and a closing track, The Wait, which Kerr feels is the loneliest song he was ever written.

True to his newfound daily work ethic, Kerr has already made a start on producing a follow-up and hopes to keep the momentum going by getting the Lostboy! show on the road before Simple Minds duties start calling in earnest again. To that end, Lostboy! AKA Jim Kerr makes his live debut this weekend with a trio of intimate club shows in Aberdeen, Glasgow and London. Kerr is only too aware that he has it “all to prove”, starting from scratch with a new band (featuring some old faces) and a full set of unfamiliar material for the first time in 30 years. Even at the earliest Simple Minds gigs, they would not have rolled out so many brand new songs in one go.

Full interview with Fiona Shepherd published in The Scotsman, May 20, 2010

Buy Lostboy! here

Buy Simple Minds on itunes here

Simple Minds

Lostboy!

Simple Minds – Someone Somewhere (In Summertime) Live in The Netherlands 1983

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7XZPhgmTaw

www.simpleminds.com

Photo Credit: Enrico Celotto

*according to the readers of Dear Scotland