INTERVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham on new Fleetwood Mac Album, Co-Writing w/ Stevie Nicks + Australia

Great interview with Lindsey... Lots of information to dig into!

• Lindsey acknowledges that to get a new Fleetwood Mac album together, Stevie needs to bring some written material of her own to the table.... OR take some of what Lindsey has in raw form (music) and he suggests they do some co-writing together on the songs.
• He talks about the potential to do more touring after the first of the year (2014) whether a new album accompanies it or not... and there's the potential that another EP could be released if a full album doesn't work out.  He also mentions that the 2014 touring would would happen after they get back from Australia... So basically that kind of confirms Australia will happen before the end of this year.
• Would still love if Christine came up on stage for "Don't Stop" in the UK, or anything she would like to do... (This will likely happen).

Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham on his 'mythology' with Stevie Nicks
What is holding up a new album and the latest on Christine McVie
by: Melinda Newman
HitFix

Fleetwood Mac is having tremendous success on its current sold-out tour. The band is playing its classic hits with verve and enthusiasm, plus, since the recent release of 4-song EP,  "Extended Play,"  the quartet has new material to sink its teeth into.  Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham spoke to HitFix about the current state of Fleetwood Mac, the delight he takes in his still dynamic connection to Stevie Nicks, the latest on a full album from the band, and if Christine McVie will join her former band mates when they play London in the fall.

I saw the band two weekends ago at Jazz Fest in New Orleans and it seemed like you were on fire. The band was playing in daylight without any of the bells and whistles of an indoor arena show and no one missed them at all.  

There’s a lesson there. We’ve all come to feel that we need to rely on the constructions of quite elaborate set design and the backdrop that changes from song to song and, really, this band, because we are a band of musicians and a great singer, we could go up there and with a couple of spotlights prevail probably just as well. It should be about the music first and, of course, with us, it is.

“Extended Play,” a four-song EP with your first new music in 10 years, came out on April 30 and landed in iTunes top 10.  How gratifying was it that people were so eager to hear new music?

 I haven’t paid too much attention to how things are going with it because, really, Mick [Fleetwood] and John [McVie]  and I got together last year and we cut a bunch of tracks and then Stevie came to the table later. Even early on,  Mick and John and I felt that the songs that we were doing were some of the best stuff we’d done in quite a while.

I am also happy with what it represents with the subject matter. The dialogues to Stevie that are, miraculously, still going on back and forth between Stevie and myself after all these years, I find that to be quite touching and somewhat surprising— something that neither one of us would have predicted years and years ago that we’d still somehow be driving each other’s motivation from a distance, and so I’m very happy with the way the EP turned out and it’s great to be doing some new things on stage.

You wrote one of the new songs, “Sad Angel,” for Stevie. What was her reaction when she first heard it? 

REVIEW | PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Winnipeg 5/12/13

Fleetwood Mac fans never stop believing
By: Randal King
Winnipeg Free Press

"You would think after all this time, there would be nothing left to discover ... "

So said singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham to the 11,500 people who constituted a nearly sold-out crowd at the Fleetwood Mac concert Sunday night at the MTS Centre.

Buckingham suggested more discovery was imminent, with some justification. Fleetwood Mac is a band that evolved more than most, starting in 1967 as a raw blues entity, and morphing into a sophisticated pop sound in the early ’70s.

All that was before the Fleetwood Mac everyone knows — the incarnation of their monumental 1977 hit album Rumours. Of that lineup at the MTS Centre: original drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, singer/guitarist Buckingham, and ephemeral singer Stevie Nicks. (No Christine McVie on this tour, which means most McVie-penned tunes were also absent.) The band was rounded out by two backup vocalists. The question of their continuing evolution was not a big concern for the baby boomer majority at the MTS Centre Sunday evening who would have been cheerfully resigned to be stuck in the ’70s, if it meant all Rumours all the time on Mac’s impressive two hour plus set list, without intermission.

At 8:20 p.m., the band seemed to deliver on that promise, starting off with Second Hand News, the first track on that venerable 45 million-seller. Next song: The Chain (first song on Side Two), a song that demonstrates Fleetwood’s driving drum style.

The song Dreams saw Nicks take her place, dressed dramatically in black with her de rigueur scarf. These days, Nicks avoids the higher notes so easily scaled in her youth, though it retains its inimitable single-malt texture. (No robotic Cher-esque auto-tuning for 64-year old Nicks. Respect.)

Preventing the song Second Hand News from being prophetic, Buckingham introduced a new song, Sad Angel, from their newly-released four-song EP Extended Play, which elicited cheers (to Buckingham’s evident delight), largely on the power of the virtuoso guitarist’s close-enough-to-classic riffs.

They quickly returned to one familiar hit — Rhiannon — before the leather jacket-clad Buckingham returned to offer his own kind of guided tour to the band’s history recalling their effort to deviate from the expected. This of course was by way of introduction to songs from their experimental 1979 concept album, Tusk, including the punk-flavoured Not That Funny and the epic Tusk (alas, the only marching band was on the video screen, unlike past performances of that song). Nicks unleashed her pagan self with Sisters of the Moon, and followed with her comparatively plaintive ballad Sara.

Buckingham went solo and acoustic for Big Love from the 1987 Tango in the Night, demonstrating his astonishing fretwork. Nicks drolly dedicated Landslide (from the 1975 album Fleetwood Mac) to the Winnipeg audience, courtesy of the line "snow-covered hills," but scored a curiously timed cheer for the lyric "I’m getting older too."

Call it an acknowledgement of the inevitable, but the band demonstrated a potent case for not going quietly, with energetic and fully engaged performances of Gold Dust Woman and Stand Back, climaxing with (back to Rumours) Go Your Own Way.

The crowd wasn’t taking the hint, cheering the band back for an encore including World Turning (featuring a Mick Fleetwood drum solo that didn’t seem gratuitous) and a climactic performance of Don’t Stop, which had the audience on its feet and singing along.

A second encore included a song with a history: Silver Springs was a Nicks tune intended for Rumours that ended up as a B-side for Go Your Own Way. After the last song of the evening, the downbeat confessional Say Goodbye, the audience took the hint, but left inspired.

We are, after all, getting older too.

GYPSY
TUSK
RHIANNON
GO YOUR OWN WAY

FAN PHOTOS (click the link below)

Fleetwood Mac Dig Deep: Lindsey Buckingham Breaks Down The Hits, Rarities and New Tunes

Rolling Stone Magazine - May 23, 2013 
(with The Rolling Stones on the cover).

It's been exactly a decade since Fleetwood Mac released an album, but that hasn't stopped a new generation of fans from discovering the band. "We're ding the best business we've done in 20 years!" says guitarist Lindsey buckingham, a few hours before the Tulsa, Oklahoma, stop on the Mac's latest world tour.  "There's been a lot more young people in the crowd than three years ago.  Maybe it's a generational thing."  Buckingham called from his Tulsa hotel room to explain how they're choosing the set lists for this tour - mixing up the hits with plenty of deep cuts and tunes frm their new EP, Extended Play. - Andy Greene

Fleetwood Mac Return To The Concert Stage This Sunday in Canada

FLEETWOOD MAC IN CANADA

After a week long break from their current 2013 World Tour, Fleetwood Mac are set to land in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at MTS Centre on Sunday May 12th for their 3rd Canadian date of the tour. Previous Canadian dates were Toronto and Ottawa in mid-April.

The next week through next Sunday will be dedicated to entertaining Canadian fans across western Canada with dates scheduled in Saskatoon Tuesday, May 14th, Edmonton May 15th, Calgary May 17th and Vancouver May 19th.  The 8th and final Canadian date doesn't take place until June when they hit Montreal on June 18th.

A few tickets left for each show at Ticketmaster.

Couple of Concert Previews from The Winnipeg Free Press and The Edmonton Journal:

STEVIE NICKS "IN YOUR DREAMS"

The new documentary from Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart titled "In Your Dreams" chronicling the making of Stevie's last solo album "In Your Dreams" follows the Fleetwood Mac tour across Canada with it's first theatre screenings coming up in Edmonton on Sunday, May 12th at Metro Cinema, with Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, and Vancouver to follow. Tickets available at the box office, or in advance if available. Complete list of Canadian screenings listed below.

Mother's Day 2 For 1: 
On Sunday in Edmonton...  Bring someone's mother and they get in FREE! 

via @billboard Fleetwood Mac: Releasing More New Songs a 'Matter of How and When'

Fleetwood Mac: Releasing More New Songs a 'Matter of How

and When'

by Gary Graff, Billboard

Lindsey Buckingham says the group has five more unreleased tracks. "The whole thing is just kind of wide open now, and it really is tantalizing to be able to put together just a few things, three or four songs on an EP"

Lindsey Buckingham says there's more where Fleetwood Mac's new "Extended Play" came from.

Buckingham tells Billboard that he, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie "cut eight songs" with producer Mitchell Froom last year after Fleetwood Mac decided it would be touring this year. Three of those -- "Sad Angel," "It Takes Time" and "Miss Fantasy" -- are part of the "Extended Play" digital release that came out May 6, joined by "Without You," resurrected by Stevie Nicks from the Buckingham Nicks days before they joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975.

Check out the full article at Billboard

Album Review | Fleetwood Mac, 'Extended Play'

by Jeffrey Lee Puckett

Courier-Journal

Fleetwood Mac chose to release “Extended Play,” the band’s first new recordings in a decade, with a minimum of fanfare, as if too much hype might raise too many expectations. Good move.

The four-song EP is a nice little Lindsey Buckingham record, without a single moment that screams Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac is certainly suggested, albeit gently, and that’s a pretty serious miscue after 10 years of silence.

Still, Buckingham records are always pretty solid, especially in small doses, and “Extended Play” has some fine moments. “Sad Angel” is the kind of adult pop that Buckingham does so well, with an insistent chorus that lifts off with a wistful rush and harmonies from Stevie Nicks that almost, but not quite, get us there.

“Without You” is an old Buckingham-Nicks track, pre-Fleetwood Mac, that sounds pretty enough but lacks the band’s famous drama. Even prettier is “It Takes Time,” a piano ballad that’s pure Buckingham (with a healthy dose of Eric Carmen’s sugary pathos).

The last song didn’t even register, and with a four-song record, that’s not good.