MC50 “Kick Out the Jams: The 50th Anniversary Tour”

Today, Wayne Kramer, leader of Detroit’s proto-punk/hard rock band MC5, announces 35 North American dates for “Kick Out the Jams: The 50^th Anniversary Tour.” Touring with the MC50 – which includes guitarist Kim Thayil (of Soundgarden), drummer Brendan Canty (of Fugazi), bassistDug Pinnick (of King’s X), and frontman Marcus Durant (of Zen Guerilla) – Kramer will be celebrating the landmark anniversary of the MC5’s incendiary debut album Kick Out the Jams and the release of his memoir The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities, to be published August 14^th by Da Capo Press.

The North American tour begins in early September with a September 6^th performance at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre Backyard Stage and culminates with an October 27^th concert back where it all began: in Detroit in 1968, where Kick Out the Jams – recently cited by Pitchfork as one of the 50 best albums of the 1960s – was recorded live in front of a raucous home town audience at the Grande Ballroom on Halloween night. On the MC50 tour, Kramer and the band will play the album Kick Out the Jams in its entirety followed by an encore of MC5 material that will change each night.

As Kramer explains, “This band will rip your head off. It’s real, raw, sweaty, total energy rock and roll, like a bunch of 40 to   70-year-old punks on a meth power trip.” Super Fan Pre-Show Experience Pre Sale starts Wednesday, April 4^th at 10AM local time. Details are available at www.cidentertainment.com/events/mc50th-anniversary-tour-2018.

Kick Out the Jams is recognized as the galvanizing live document that introduced a major voice of late ’60s counterculture and proved incomparably influential on metal, punk, stoner rock and almost every other form of loud, limitless, long-haired music to come. The recording took place just months after the band’s appearance at Chicago’s riotous 1968 Democratic National Convention — a pivotal moment in modern American politics.

Says Kramer of revisiting Kick Out the Jams, “Today, there is a corrupt regime in power, an endless war thousands of miles away, and uncontrollable violence wracking our country. It’s becoming less and less clear if we’re talking about 1968 or 2018. I’m now compelled to share this music I created with my brothers 50 years ago. My goal is that the audience leaves these concerts fueled by the positive and unifying power of rock music.”

About Wayne Kramer

MC5 founding member and guitarist Wayne Kramer worked for racial and economic equality during the Vietnam War and was a target of the FBI’s counter-intelligence program. After serving a federal prison term, he released 10 solo albums and was named by Rolling Stone as one of the top 100 guitarists of all time. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and four-year-old son.