“This is the kind of band all of us wanted to be in as we got older”: New supergroup bringing together members of R.E.M., Screaming Trees, QOTSA and more announce first UK shows

A supergroup comprised of members from some of the biggest and best rock bands of the 90s and 00s have announced their first UK and European shows in November and December. Drink The Sea feature R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, Screaming Trees and Mad Season drummer Barrett Martin, multi-instrumentalist Alain Johannes, who’s played with Eleven, Queens Of The Stone Age, PJ Harvey and more, percussionist Lisette Garcia (the Barrett Martin Group) and bassist Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays).

The band will be performing new material alongside “selected classics” from across their careers. Not that there’s a shortage of new material: ahead of the tour, they will release two albums, with one coming on September 19^th and a sister release arriving on 3^rd October. Both will be available as a double CD edition on 3^rd October.

“Drink The Sea is kind of the band that all of us wanted to be in as we get older,” explained Martin. “When we were young, we played all the new alternative music, even invented a few styles of our own, and that happened back in the 1990s. Now as older musicians who have known and worked together on different projects over years and even decades, what we have found to be the most interesting thing in this new collaboration, is our focus on songwriting. It’s in our blood to write songs and everyone is really working hard to create something beautiful. I think we have succeeded with these first two debut albums, and it wasn’t hard to do it either, we all had songs flowing constantly and it was just a matter of which ones we were going to finish.”

“In fact, we’ve already started working on album number three,” he continued.” So for this first tour of Europe, the US, and South America, we’re going to play most of these new songs, along with a few favourites from our former bands (R.E.M., Screaming Trees, Mad Season, etc.). We are also playing with beautiful films that are projected behind us, created by the PBS filmmaker, Tad Fettig. Tad filmed these scenes around the world and they show incredible natural landscapes, people from all over the world, and they just kind of visually weave together the same feelings that our music has: that the Earth and the people are intimately connected and it’s much more beautiful than what the powers above us want us to believe. It'll just be us on stage with our various instruments, playing these songs along with these beautiful films, and telling the occasional story to bring it all down the Earth. Give us a couple hours of your life, it’s really special and you won’t regret it.”

The UK and Irish tour dates are:

Nov 11: Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
Nov 12: Liverpool Artis Club
Nov 14: Dublin Button Factory
Nov 15: Belfast Empire Music Hall
Nov 17: London Jazz Café
Nov 18: Leeds Brudenell Social Club
Nov 19: Glasgow Room 2
Nov 20: Birmingham O2 Institue
Nov 21: Bristol Thekla