David Byrne is many things. The former Talking Heads front man is a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, a writer, a film director, an actor, an avid bicyclist, and one Emmy short of EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) status.
He’s also a big fan of cognitive neuroscience, and Byrne’s latest venture, a partnership with friend and writer Mala Gaonkar, is a visceral theatre experience inspired by neuroscientific experiments. And it’s set to debut in Denver this summer.
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David Byrne is all about connectedness these days. “Everybody’s coming to my house/And I’m never gonna be alone,” he sings on Broadway in “American Utopia,” half joyful, half fretful, still open. His online magazine, “Reasons to Be Cheerful” — which bills itself as “a tonic for tumultuous times” — catalogs all the ways in which people are pulling together to make sure the world does not in fact go to hell in a handbasket. And on Feb. 2, he reprises this theme of connectedness at Pace Gallery in Chelsea with a show of 48 whimsical line drawings that span 20 years of art making, from his “tree” series of the early ’00s to the “dingbats” he made in lockdown in 2020-2021.
You could be forgiven for thinking that 2020 was little more than a slow-motion train wreck broken up into 365 individual units. But if you’re a regular RTBC reader, you know that’s not true. Yes, it was a most difficult year. But it was also a year of problems solved, hopes sustained and seemingly insurmountable challenges met. We reported on literally hundreds of good things that happened this year, from the earth-shaking to the arcane. Here are 112 of the highlights.
Read the story here.
If there’s been one constant over David Byrne’s four-decade career, it’s his perpetual evolution. That, and others comparing him to the beloved children’s-show host Mister Rogers.
“When I was younger, during my Talking Heads days, that was not meant as a compliment,” Byrne says. “It was meant as ‘You are a weird, geeky, creepy guy. You are in your own little world.’”
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David Byrne has reasons to be cheerful. In fact, he has an entire website called Reasons to be Cheerful. It’s a solutions-based, online magazine of sorts, filled with uplifting success stories that may pull you out of your day-to-day frustrations.
Another reason to be cheerful: David Byrne has taken his most recent tour, “American Utopia,” to Broadway.
On this edition on All Songs Considered, I talk with the Talking Head, author, cyclist and creative soul, David Byrne about his Broadway show and his remarkable Reasons To Be Cheerful website. We begin our conversation with how he got the idea for this inspiring project.
Read / Listen to the story here.
David Byrne’s immersive, sensory-rich theater project Theater of the Mind will now be premiering in 2021.
The production was supposed to open this year at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, via its DCPA Off-Center arm, but the city’s pandemic shutdown has upended Byrne and co-creator Mala Gaonkar’s plans. They plan on announcing rescheduled dates in the future and promise to send updates via the project’s website.
Read more here.
Lineup Includes Stacey Abrams, Bill Gates, Madeleine Albright, Anthony Fauci, David Byrne, and Anna Deavere Smit.
Aspen, CO & Washington, DC, June 24, 2020––The Aspen Institute has announced the agenda for the Aspen Ideas Festival, which will take place online in 2020. Offered free to everyone for the first time in its 16-year history, the five-day Festival will take place from June 28 – July 2, with daily 90-minute episodes streaming from 7:00pm ET.
Read the entire press release here.
Like so many, national arts reporter Geoff Edgers has been grounded by the coronavirus. So he decided to launch an Instagram Live show from his barn in Concord, Mass. Every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, Edgers hosts an hour-long interview show he calls “Stuck With Geoff,” with whoever will take his calls. So far, that has included comedian Tiffany Haddish, television journalist Katie Couric, sportscaster Joe Buck and Bill Nye “The Science Guy.” Recently, Edgers chatted with musician, writer and biking enthusiast David Byrne.
Read the whole story on The Washington Post.
Throughout his long and colorful career, David Byrne has done a lot of things. He revolutionized popular music as the leader of one of the 20th century’s most innovative bands, Talking Heads. He redefined what a live performance could be, only to redefine it again and again. He pushed the boundaries of film with his concert documentary Stop Making Sense and his Americana slice-of-life musical True Stories. He has made successful forays into theater, literature, acting, visual art and more. In short, Byrne is a textbook Renaissance man whose innovative spirit has only sharpened with age.
Read the full story on American Songwriter here.
