Lake Street Dive Announces Memory Lane Club Tour

The BMA nominees are playing shows at Passim and Lizard Lounge, with proceeds going to Oxfam America’s Syria program. —Michael Marotta

This post originally appeared on Vanyaland.


Lake Street Dive

Lake Street Dive / Courtesy photo by Jarrod McCabe

Lake Street Dive are getting back to their club roots.

The Boston-born jazz-pop quartet, whose members all met as students at New England Conservatory, today announced a six-date Memory Lane club tour, an intimate run of small-room shows that includes two nights at Club Passim (November 18 and 19) and a closing gig at the Lizard Lounge on November 20. In addition to the three Cambridge appearances, Lake Street Dive will also play Rockwood Music Hall in New York City (November 11 and 12), and a November 16 show at the Parlor Room in Northampton. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m.

“We’re coming back to some of our fave small venues on the East Coast so we can play for you right in your face, up close and personal!” writes the band. “In the past few years the number of fans coming to our shows has skyrocketed and we are so grateful for that, but we are also, forever and always a ‘dive bar’ band, and it’s important for us to get back into these intimate venues from time to time and remember how good it feels!”

But wait, Passim and Lizard Lounge aren’t dive bars!

“Not that these venues are ‘dive bars’ per se,” Lake Street Dive add, calming us down. “They are all wonderful, clean establishments! Can’t wait to walk down memory lane with all of you guys.”

The shows will have a charitable component as well. From each ticket purchased, $3 will be donated to support Oxfam America’s Syria program, which provides Syrian families with clean drinking water and relief supplies like blankets, stoves, and hygiene tools, as well as connecting them with human rights groups and legal counsel.

Lake Street Dive, meanwhile, signed a record deal last month with Nonesuch Records, home to Wilco, Leonard Bernstein, Stephin Merritt, and others. They are currently on tour in California, and are nominated for Jazz Artist of the Year in the 2015 Boston Music Awards, a category they won last year, when they also took home Song Of The Year for breakout single “Bad Self Portraits.”