Just days after Polyphonic Spree frontman Tim DeLaughter explained how David Bowie changed his life, and his band's, Dallas' fragile army has been added to an ever-growing roster of acts at a New York City tribute concert that has turned into a memorial.
A March 31 Carnegie Hall concert, featuring the likes of R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, the Roots, Cyndi Lauper, Laurie Anderson (wife of the late Lou Reed, a Bowie friend and collaborator) and others was already on the schedule; that show has sold out.
On Thursday an April 1 show at Radio City Music Hall was added, with a roster that, for now, includes the Spree, Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, Cat Power and Heart's Ann Wilson. Many more are expected to be added to the bill, which will also include a house band featuring producer Tony Visconti and drummer Woody Woodmansey, members of Bowie's 1970 band The Hype.
"I am sure people are doing tributes all over the world for David Bowie, because that's what you do for someone like this," DeLaughter said Friday morning. "But I am glad to be part of this. There's going to be a lot of love."
It was Bowie who asked a then-unknown Polyphonic Spree to play the Meltdown Festival in 2002; and it was Bowie who asked the band to open for him on his 2004 tour; and it was Bowie who once again recruited the Spree to play the High Line Festival a few years after that. They repaid him by covering his "Five Years," which may or may not be the song they perform in New York on April 1. They could also do "Slip Away," which DeLaughter and the Spree performed with Bowie during his Reality Tour. Or, for that matter, "Memory of a Free Festival," which the band performed in 2008 (see below).
But just being on the bill's enough, says DeLaughter; what they play won't matter as much as who they'll be performing with.
"We're paying tribute to a bona fide legend, and you want to be surrounded by people who played with him, who collaborated with him, who were part of his world," DeLaughter says. "You're all on the same page. It's gonna be pretty special ."
