Pixies' Frank Black released his sophomore solo album, Teenager of the Year, on May 20, 1994. To celebrate its 30th anniversary, he's announced a 2025 tour — including a lone Canadian date in Toronto — where he'll perform the whole thing from front to back, and a 4AD vinyl reissue of the LP.
Here's what Black had to say about the reissue and tour:
Sometime in the early '80s, I'd have to look up the date, I matriculated high school. This school held an awards banquet for some of the departing students at the school. I received an award called the Teenager of the Year award; my brother received the same award the following year. Our award was a 50 dollar credit for textbooks, a Teenager of the Year medallion (my mother still has this), and also the banquet hall dinner, soup to nuts. My brother and I had no complaint about the award (it was given for being all-around-good-guy as best as we could determine). But for such a grand title to be given as Teenager of the Year, I felt the glory had not been amplified enough.
In 1993, I was doing "solo recording" sessions with Eric Drew Feldman in Los Angeles. We had settled on a core band with Nick Vincent and Lyle Workman, occasionally augmented by Joey Santiago and Moris Tepper. Though we had to change studios numerous times for actual forest fires and earthquakes, the whole process was such an addictive musical buffet that Eric and I couldn't stop. We did some vocals at a studio rumoured to be owned by Sergio Mendes; in the control room was a wall of television screens broadcasting the brush fire which crept toward us. We eventually evacuated to someplace else. We never met Sergio but we saw him perform a few weeks later when we vacated to Las Vegas after the Northridge earthquake, which had trapped the Teenager of the Year tapes in a studio vault for some time. Our zeal plus empathy from our financiers, they safely observing our travails from London, was enough to keep the money flowing until Eric and I relented and declared "Consummatum est." We tried to make it grand. 22 in 62. I called it Teenager of the Year. It is 30 years old now, and the original band will perform the record at various venues in early 2025. 4AD has remastered the LP for a fresh printing. Enjoy.
The tour kicks off on January 15, 2025, with the first of two back-to-back nights in San Francisco, CA. Black and co. make their lone venture to Canada near the end of the month to perform at Toronto's History on January 29.
From there, they'll play two final US shows in Boston, MA, and Brooklyn, NY, before wrapping the currently scheduled shows with overseas gigs in Paris, France (February 4), and London, UK (February 6). Tickets go on sale to the general public Friday (July 19) at 10 a.m. local time, following various presales that begin tomorrow (July 17). Find the full itinerary below, and stay tuned for further details on the reissue.
Frank Black 2025 Tour Dates:
01/15 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
01/16 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
01/18 Los Angeles, CA - The Orpheum
01/19 El Cajon, CA - The Magnolia
01/22 Denver, CO - The Paramount
01/24 Minneapolis, MN - TBA
01/25 Chicago, IL - The Metro
01/26 Chicago, IL - The Metro
01/28 Detroit, MI - St Andrews Hall
01/29 Toronto, ON - History
01/31 Boston, MA - Citizens House of Blues
02/01 Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel
02/04 Paris, France - Trianon
02/06 London, UK - The Palladium