On August 9, Blind Boys of Alabama and Marc Cohn will release their collaborative album, Work To Do via BMG. To support the release, the two acts shared the LP’s title track. Plus, the Blind Boys of Alabama announced additional summer and fall tour dates.
Work To Do was produced by John Leventhal and features 10 songs. Three of the songs are new studio tracks, which merge Cohn’s lauded songwriting abilities with the Blind Boys of Alabama’s soulful vocals. The remaining seven songs were recorded live at Old Saybrook, Connecticut’s Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center for a taping of the PBS series, The Kate.
As Cohn explained in an interview with Billboard:
We had intended this to just be an EP at first, of three studio tracks. … It wasn’t intended to be that big of a deal, just a transitional idea till I made another record. But we had these live tracks, and we said, “Maybe this could be something” and added those to the mix and wound up with a full album.
You can hear their newest single, the Cohn-penned “Work To Do,” below:
Both Cohn and the Blind Boys of Alabama are currently on tour together to support Work To Do. Both groups will join up with Taj Mahal in August for a West Coast run spanning from August 12 to 20. Following this run, the Blind Boys Of Alabama will continue to tour, with new dates announced in November and December.
The majority of the band’s new shows fall after Thanksgiving, with the group kicking off their Fall Tour 2019 with a three-night run in Canada. From there, the Blind Boys will continue on to a trio of dates in New York at the start of December, followed by shows in Kentucky and Tennessee on December 10 and 11. The outing closes with Nicki Bluhm joining to support a two-night run in Arizona on December 14 and 15 and a three-night California run across December 15 through 20.
Work To Do Tracklist
- Walk In Jerusalem
- Talk Back Mic
- Work To Do
- Ghost Train
- Baby King
- Listening To Levon
- Silver Thunderbird
- Amazing Grace
- Walking In Memphis
- One Safe Place
