Blues Traveler rolls out summer tour plans

Blues/jam-rockers Blues Traveler [ tickets ] have lined up a run of summer dates as the band continues to support last year's "Cover Yourself," a set of newly recorded old favorites.The group kicks off the next portion of its schedule May 17 in Grand Ronde, OR, southwest of Portland. The itinerary, a mix of headlining and festival dates, features several co-headlining shows in July with Live and Collective Soul, and includes the group's traditional Fourth of July appearance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO. The complete schedule is included below.The Grammy-winning band's "Cover Yourself" is a mostly acoustic affair that features new takes on the group's old songs, and the tracklist was chosen via fan voting. According to lead vocalist/harmonica virtuoso John Popper, the band is also working on material for a new studio album."We're making two [albums] right now," Popper told music website Ultimate-Guitar.com last year. "One we wanted to write, and one [is the] acoustic covers album ['Cover Yourself.'] ... I left the band alone to work on it and they started writing completely new arrangements for the [old] songs. The band's most recent set of original studio material was 2005's "Bastardos!"--its eighth studio album and first for Vanguard Records. The set was produced by solo artist and ex-Wilco multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett.