Festivals/Concerts Archive

In 2012, iconic avant-garde weirdos the Residents will be celebrating 40 years as a band. Leading up to this milestone, they remain as active as ever with a sprawling world tour and three releases.


The Residents will embark on the “Talking Light Tour,” a rip that kicks off in Mexico City on March 15 and concludes in London on May 14. Along the way, the band will treat Canada well, with shows in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal. All dates are available below with many more tour dates promised for the future.

A press release details the story behind the “Talking Light Tour” with the following statement:

The inspiration behind the Talking Light tour lies in The Residents’ interest in ghost stories. Like many of their projects, it began at a germ of an idea, then took on a life of its own. As the idea evolved, the Residents began to realize that what they saw as ghost stories had become a show about aging and death. They wanted to have fun with the concept, and in true Residents fashion, their idea of fun is just a bit darker and scarier than how the mainstream tends to define it. Each show begins with the title piece, “Talking Light,” which follows the tale of a “lonely teenager” who comes upon a mysterious skeleton baby in a remote desert cottage, and concludes with “Unseen Sister,” revolving around a woman and her invisible twin sister — and the weirdly conflicting emotions surrounding the death of her mother when the woman was just a child.



Each show also includes a third piece — which might be “Perchance to Dream,” “The Sleepwalker,” “Ghost Snake,” “Florence,” “Milton” or “Pudding in Disguise” — each of which is equally engrossing. All of these ghost stories carry a common theme, centered around TV culture and commercials, which ultimately asks the question: In a world where nearly everything has become defined and categorized, how do we fill our obvious, purely human need for the fuzzy, vague and supernatural — with TV commercials? The Residents have some creative answers for you.

On the tour, the band will be selling a DVD of ghost stories called Randy’s Ghost Stories, along with an instrumental CD called Dolar Generar and a new album called Lonely Teenager. The Ghost Stories DVD will be released by MVD Entertainment on March 15.

The Residents Tour dates:

3/15 Mexico City, Mexico – Lunario del Auditorio Nacional

3/17 Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom

3/18 Seattle, WA – Neumo’s

3/19 Vancouver, BC – Rickshaw Theatre

3/21 Edmonton, AB – Myer Horowitz Theatre

3/22 Calgary, AB – The Uptown

3/24 Winnipeg, MB – West End Cultural Centre

3/25 Minneapolis, MN – The Cedar Cultural Center

3/26 Chicago, IL – Museum of Contemporary Art

3/28 Toronto, ON – The Opera House

3/29 Montreal, QC – Club Soda

3/30 Boston, MA – Somerville Theater

3/31 New York, NY – Highline Ballroom

4/1 Philadelphia, PA – World Café Live

4/4 Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse

4/5 New Orleans, LA – Republic New Orleans

4/6 Austin, TX – Mohawk

4/9 Los Angeles, CA – El Rey Theater

4/15-16 San Francisco, CA – Bimbo’s

5/14 London, England – The Roundhouse