Groove Armada are set to lead the next wave of British acts trying to crack the US with the news that they are to tour north America and Canada as a nine-piece band.
The dance act kick off 11 dates with a show in Seattle on June 4, winding up in New York on June 19.
Support on all dates will come from British electro pair Faze Action. Though not the first time Groove Armada have played Stateside, it is the first time they have headlined shows.
One half of the Armada core pair, Tom Findlay, said the decision to swell their ranks to nine was an easy one to make.
“We were really keen to avoid that dance producer syndrome of standing in front of a mixing desk twiddling knobs,” he said, “‘cos it does you no favours and does the audience no favours either. So we just thought there was no point in doing that.”
He added: “We’ve gone for a proper live band and it just feels like a proper funk band and it just feels loose but it’s cool. Someone told us it looked like Sly and the Family Stone once, which is obviously a great compliment.”
Groove Armada had been forced to change the lyrics to their ‘I See You Baby’ single before its release in the US. The lyric ‘I see you baby, shaking that ass’ was deemed unsuitable and replaced with ‘I see you baby, shaking that thang’. Nonetheless it didn’t prevent them scoring a top 30 hit with their American debut. The single went to number 27 in February.
Following the US dates, the band are keen to start work on their second album, the follow-up to 1999’s ‘Vertigo’. They have been scouting suitable studios in south America. The band released ‘Groove Armada – The Remixes’, last Monday (April 24) through Jive imprint Pepper.
The full dates for the tour are as follows:
Showbox, SeattleWA (June 4);Bimbos, San Francisco, CA (6) Mayan Theatre, Los Angeles, CA (7) Ogden, Denver, CO (10)Trees, Dallas, TX (12) House of Blues, Chicago, IL (14) Government, Toronto, Canada (15) Metropolis, Montreal, Canada (16) Axis, Boston, MA (17)9:30 Club, Washingt