Robyn Hitchcock and Joe Boyd Chinese White Bicycles
British psychedelicist Robyn Hitchcock is headed back to the US for a very special tour this March. Robyn will hit the stage with one of his childhood idols; Joe Boyd, who will read excerpts from his memoir, White Bicycles, about his time working with legendary acts like The Incredible String band, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention and Nick Drake among others during the late 1960s or, as Robyn referred to it: "when modern life began as we know it."
Robyn will accompany Joe; playing songs from some of his childhood idols that his friend helped to nurture.
"The records these acts released were all, in the early days, produced by Joe, and they sank deeply into and helped form my teenage consciousness, like a vampire transforms their prey into one of their own. But I was willing prey," Robyn said. "Or you may prefer to see Joe as Dr Frankenstein and me as his monster: 11 years his junior, I now sit in middle age with a paisley shirt and coloured glasses, interpreting the songs that he helped inject into my young system. At the end of each extract I play a song by the artist he mentions: this also includes Bob Dylan, whom Joe stage-managed when Dylan lost his electric virginity at Newport in 1965, and Muddy Waters whom he tour-managed in the UK the previous year. I usually ask Joe a few fan-type questions during the show, and he asks quizzically what my younger self made of things at the time."
In addition to playing his idols' music, Robyn will likely play a few tracks of his own during the tour.
March 18 at Detroit Institute of Arts