Bluesfest has announced a world premiere with the 30th anniversary of the festival becoming the first date in the world to be announced for the re-united SABOTEURS. It will also be the first time ever that THE SABOTEURS have played in Australia.
THE SABOTEURS (known outside of Australia as THE RACONTEURS) is made up of four friends who got together in Detroit way back in 2005. Jack White, Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, hailed from other influential bands of the time – and together released two albums, ‘Broken Boy Soldiers’ (2006) and the Grammy-Award winning ‘Consolers Of The Lonely’ (2008), spawning the singles: ‘Steady As She Goes’, ‘Salute Your Solution’, ‘Many Shades Of Black’ and ‘Consoler Of The Lonely’ .
THE SABOTEURS have played the prestigious stages of the Montreux Jazz Festival, Coachella, Glastonbury, Austin City Limits and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
The band will also release their first new music in more than 10 years with two new songs released by Third Man Records, ‘Now That You’re Gone’ featuring Brendan Benson on lead vocals and ‘Sunday Driver’ with Jack White singing lead. Both songs are available digitally today. This release coincides with the delivery of the only physical version of the tracks available on 7” vinyl as part of Third Man’s Vault Package #38 celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the bands’ acclaimed second album, Consolers of The Lonely.
‘Now That You’re Gone’ and ‘Sunday Driver’ both stem from recent sessions for the long-awaited new Saboteurs LP, due for release sometime in 2019. “We’re knee deep in the trenches of our first new album in a decade,” White said to Mojo Magazine recently. “We have a vast amount of genre-pushing songs that bridge the gap between Detroit and Nashville rock and roll. The album sounds like a World War. It’s great to be co-writing songs with Brendan Benson again, the man is a song craftsman.”
Bluesfest Festival Director, Peter Noble OAM, says: “It’s not every day you get to have a simultaneous worldwide announcement of one of the world’s great bands, The Raconteurs, known in Australia as The Saboteurs. The members include Jack White, who is someone I have wanted to present at Bluesfest for a very long time. In fact, this began as a Jack White headline performance, but literally morphed into The Saboteurs when the guys decided to get back together again after 10 years, and Bluesfest has the ONLY announced show in the world currently. There is a lot to be said about this, however, I’m sure the media will be on fire about this announcement, so please let me say this……Bluesfest has had many great artistic bills over the years…. I now believe we are up there for our 30th Anniversary Festival in 2019 with our best festival bills…. it is a testament to the tireless work of our team, and the belief of artists and their representatives all over the world that allows us to do this, and our Bluesfesters, who support us in coming to revel in our spectacle…
To all of you, I wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
By the way … our next artist announcement is in January…. and it’s a beauty !!! “
Peter Noble, Festival Director