Five years after reuniting to play live, The Dream Syndicate plans to release its first new album in 29 years, a collection that bandleader Steve Wynn has revealed will feature a guest vocal by founding bassist Kendra Smith — who has sat out the ongoing reunion, but agreed to appear on a song Wynn calls “the perfect coda to the record.”
Wynn announced on his website late last summer that he’d completed work on The Dream Syndicate’s fifth album, the very belated follow-up to 1988’s Ghost Stories. He wrote, “It’s mind-blowingly good and we can’t wait to get it out there,” and said he was looking for the right label to put it out.
The album’s title has not yet been announced, nor a release date confirmed. But Wynn has prepared a new band bio for booking agency Billions that discusses the album recorded by the current lineup of Wynn, original drummer Dennis Duck, bassist Mark Walton (who joined after 1984’s Medicine Show) and guitarist Jason Victor, who plays in Wynn’s band, The Miracle 3.
It’s in that bio that Wynn drops the shocker about the famously elusive Smith:
“Oh, and there was one last surprise, one more perfect link to our past and completing of the circle. One of the more intriguing of the songs we recorded was a hypnotic trance and mantra called ‘Recurring.’ I had a pretty decent lyric and sang a good vocal, but somehow it just didn’t work. The song and the riff were cool, the band’s recording was evocative and beautiful. But I began to realize I wasn’t the right singer for the song. And I knew immediately that the perfect singer would be the only other person to sing lead on a Dream Syndicate song, our original bass player Kendra Smith. I was amazed and delighted that my old friend and bandmate agreed to do it and then wrote some astounding lyrics and sang a vocal that at once as true to the spirit of the song and also turned the whole thing upside down. The song, now called ‘Kendra’s Dream,’ is the perfect coda to the record, tying up loose ends from the past and then opening them up again to the future.”
In the meantime, The Dream Syndicate has announced its first shows of 2017: a pair of concerts in Pennsylvania in May, and appearances at a Norwegian festival in June.
See full dates below:
The Dream Syndicate tour dates:
May 18: Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center, Harrisburg, PA
May 20: World Cafe Live, Philadelphia, PA
June 23: Sun Station Vadsø, Vadsø, Norway
June 24: Sun Station Vadsø, Vadsø, Norway
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Watch The Dream Syndicate’s 30-minute set filmed for KEXP at Bumbershoot
- Video: The Dream Syndicate live in Cleveland — watch full 100-minute reunion set
- Q&A: Steve Wynn on The Dream Syndicate reunion, upcoming tour — and new music
- The Dream Syndicate reuniting to mark 30th anniversary of ‘The Days of Wine and Roses’
- Q&A: Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn on Baseball Project, ‘Northern Aggression’
Excellent news. I hope that this is as good as it sounds and that Kendra joins the group once again.
This is going to be amazing.
Wooooow beautiful news