Amanda Palmer Tickets

Short Biography

"LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, HOW CAN I SLIT MY WRISTS WHEN I CAN'T STOP DANCING? UNAPOLOGETIC AND TOTALLY LOST, DIRECT FROM NEW YORK CITY: THE GRAND THEFT ORCHESTRA!"
 
With a clash of the drums and a fuzzy synth reverb, these are the first words that you hear screamed in German down a megaphone on Amanda Palmer's sophomore solo record, Amanda Palmer and The Grand Theft Orchestra: Theatre Is Evil. The megaphone is wielded by one of Palmer's allies, the Melbourne-based "Kamikaze Cabaret" artist, Meow Meow. Then begins the music. And if anything could more succinctly summarize Amanda's special seasoning of musical prowess, it is not a sound meant for mortal ears.
 
Amanda Palmer
Coming into public consciousness in 2002 with punk-cabaret troupe The Dresden Dolls, Amanda Fucking Palmer has heaved her way to the top of the music industry's summit wearing little more than a corset and a bra. Four albums and five tours later, she and her independent attitude went solo, releasing Who Killed Amanda Palmer, produced by Ben Folds, in 2008. After extricating herself and her art from a suffocating record contract with Roadrunner Records, two self-released EP’s followed (Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukelele and Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under), along with a musical theater-esque Evelyn Evelyn album and tour with Jason Webley.

Beyond her recorded work and touring, Palmer also starred in Statuesque, a short silent film with well-known author and now-husband Neil Gaiman, inspired by her years as a living statue of the Eight-Foot Bride in Harvard Square. She co-wrote and produced a play, With the Needle That Sings in Her Heart, with the students at her high school alma mater in Lexington, Massachusetts, based on Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. She played the Master of Ceremonies at 43 sold-out performances in the American Repertory Theater’s 2010 Boston production of Cabaret. She toured the West Coast with Gaiman in the fall of 2011 and recorded an album of the performance that was released to fans who pre-ordered the album online, and which will be released commercially at some point in the future.

Queen of the Internet
In addition to all of the above, Palmer has made a name for herself in the last few years as the quintessential social media artist, engaging in daily interactions with her fans 365 days a year and making an art form out of using Twitter for everything from finding her band and crew a place to crash on the road to canvassing for band names (her new band’s name - The Grand Theft Orchestra – is a lyrical nod to their belief in crowd sourcing all that they do). With over half a million Twitter followers, a deeply personal blog where she bares her soul and her tits, and the ability to amass hundreds of people for spontaneous 'ninja gigs', Amanda Palmer has one of the most responsive and supportive online fan bases on the internet.

“It’s sort of like filling up a room one by one and then stage-diving,” she says. “You make a million connections and they’re all just there waiting to catch you. And I love that part of the job. I fucking love connecting with people. So I am lucky; if this is the age of the social artist, I’m in the right place at the right time.”

Which is why it was no surprise when Artist/musician/world citizen Amanda Palmer achieved this year what many would have predicted to be impossible; she changed the music industry and, indeed, art and commerce, forever. Palmer made global headlines with her wildly successful Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, raising $1.2 million dollars by selling close to 25,000 copies of her new album Theatre is Evil, her first full-length release since 2008, along with assorted premium merch and “experiences”, like house-parties and other opportunities to interact with the artist.

“My fans are so fucking great, and are literally, I mean thousands of them, holding me up and making me possible. They are literally making it possible for me to make music for them - the way I want.”

The new album
This September, Theatre Is Evil will become the first studio record her rambunctious fans have heard in four years. But first, determined to bring together the perfect ingredients for her musical stew, she knew that the city she recorded in would affect her biggest album yet. New York was too busy, Dallas was too remote, San Francisco would be too distracting and LA "just sucks". "Then I kind of sat myself down and thought, 'You know what? I want to make my fucking record in fucking Melbourne!'" she exclaims. So, following the 2011 Dresden Dolls reunion tour that sold out multiple shows across Australia and New Zealand, Amanda bunkered down in an apartment above a Melbourne costume shop.

The central theme of Theatre Is Evil surrounds the concept of loss. "These last few years of songwriting are definitely about coming to terms with losing things..losing people, places, ideas, lovers. I sometimes worry about how extremely attached I am to things, and sometimes equally worried by how much I'm not," Amanda says. The songs have been written over the past four years in places and headspaces far and wide. With the assistance of producer John Congleton (Modest Mouse, St. Vincent), recording took place over two months in Melbourne's infamous Sing Sing Studios. Full of equal amounts of synth and rock, with a healthy dose of horns thrown into the mix, Amanda describes the record's musical style as "crancing" - when you're simultaneously crying and dancing. From undeniably dancey tracks like “Want it Back” and “Melody Dean” to the anthemic "Massachusetts Avenue" and the mid-tempo, backseat-sing-a-long "The Killing Type", it also contains "one of the best songs I will ever write": the mournful 3/4 waltz, "The Bed Song".
 
The band
Along with a slew of new songs, Amanda has concocted the ultimate band in the form of The Grand Theft Orchestra: Michael McQuilken on drums, Chad Raines on guitar and keys and Jherek Bischoff on bass. It all started when Jason Webley, with whom Amanda has the conjoined twin act Evelyn Evelyn, introduced her to Michael. "The funny thing about Michael is that he comes from a very different musical planet: planet funk. Whatever the opposite of Planet Depeche Mode is, that's the planet he comes from." Having found her creative co-conspirator, Michael then put forward Chad's name as the guitarist, whom was "definitely from planet Depeche Mode". The third cog in the wheel was coincidentally Jason's touring bassist, Jherek. In fact, Jason was the one that also introduced Amanda to her husband of two years, author Neil Gaiman. "So Jason has basically provided me with pretty much everything: husband, band and friendship," Amanda laughs.

The album art
For Amanda, art and music are entwined like DNA strands. The covers of Prince and Cyndi Lauper LPs were staples in her childhood and have instilled a sense of overarching artfulness into her music. "My brain doesn't separate rock 'n' roll from artwork." Alongside the record itself, Amanda has commissioned thirty artists to paint two pieces each - a portrait and a canvas inspired by lyrics from her new songs - which will form both a book and a touring gallery show that accompanies gig dates across selected cities in America and Europe. The artists involved range from street art gurus like Shepard Fairey to local Australian Aboriginal artists, dada-ist sculptors and someone who even created Amanda's portrait embedded with, wait for it: a working theremin.
 
The conclusion
Amanda Palmer has never confined herself to normality. Always wanting to extend above and beyond what is typically expected of a musician, she soars past it in a cacophony of gusto and enthusiasm. Passion is what drives Amanda, and her success proves how determined she really is to make a difference not only in her own music, but in the way that music is created and consumed around the globe. Amanda Palmer and The Grand Theft Orchestra: Theatre Is Evil has taken everything that was in her nimble fingered grasp, from tweeted keytars to Melbourne coffees and the expansive grounds of the internet, and has woven them into a world first. This is the future of music, and Amanda Fucking Palmer is leading the way.

In-depth Biography
Before she was the lead singer, pianist, lyricist, and composer for the "Brechtian punk cabaret" duo the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer was a Wesleyan University graduate who had been involved in theater for a number of years. After college, she founded the Shadowbox Collective, a group that performed plays as well as street theater. (Palmer herself was a busker who performed as a living statue.) In 2000 she met drummer Brian Viglione; though Palmer could not read music, she formed the Dresden Dolls a year later and became the main musical force behind the group. She also continued to explore other creative avenues, and in 2006 released The Dresden Dolls Companion, a book that featured original art, a history of the band and its first album, and a partial autobiography by Palmer. At the end of that year, the Dresden Dolls performed the Palmer-penned musical The Onion Cellar with the American Repertory Theatre. In 2008 she released the solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer, which featured Ben Folds as both a producer and a performer. After paying tribute to Radiohead on the 2010 EP Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele, in early 2011 Palmer released Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under, an album filled with references to Australia and New Zealand and written while on tour there. ~ Katherine Fulton, Rovi