Ida Maria on tour

After a fast 6-week hiatus since the end of her first March-April U.S. tour, Norwegian “Punk-Pop Spitfire” Ida Maria (as she was characterized by Rolling Stone) returns for an extended stay, this time from June through August, in support of her Upper 11/Fontana debut album, FORTRESS ROUND MY HEART and its first two hit singles “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” and “Oh My God.” It’s all part of a groundswell of fascination for Ida Maria, a “punky pop hellion” (says Rolling Stone), “whose debut album was getting rave reviews nearly a year before it was released here.”

The climax of Ida Maria’s tour will be two weeks of shows with Scottish alt-rock darlings Glasvegas starting July 27th, including gigs in San Francisco, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Tucson, Austin, Dallas, Lawrence, (Kansas), and wrapping up in Chicago on August 8th at Lollapalooza. (Please see tour dates below.)

FORTRESS ROUND MY HEART, in-stores March 24th, got off to an auspicious start with a 3½¶ review in Rolling Stone’s March 19th issue. Ida Maria supported the release with her first U.S. tour dates, opening at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Music and Media Confer­ence, and moving on to shows in New Orleans, Atlanta, Washington DC, West Chester (PA), Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Boston.

After California’s Coachella Festival on April 18th, the young singer and her band (Stefan Törnby on lead guitar, bassist Johannes Lindberg, drummer Olle Lundin) were seen on NBC’s Last Call with Carson Daly and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, followed by club dates in Sacramento, San Jose, Portland, and Seattle. Coinciding with Ida Maria’s West Coast stay, “Oh My God” was chosen to air on this season’s Gossip Girl tv promos (which started in February).

24-year old Ida (pronounced ee-dah) Maria grew up in Nesna, Norway, a university town of fewer than 2000 people north of the 66th latitude. When she moved to the great city of Bergen as a teen, she rubbed shoulders with everyone from metal bands to avant garde jazz musicians and bluegrass singer-songwriters. There she “discovered the inner beast that was hiding in my vocal chords.” At the same time, she developed into a formidable songwriter, informed by a benign variant of synaesthesia, a rare condition in which perception in one sense mode arouses imagery from another, so that one can see sounds or hear colors, for example.

Following the success of “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked,” “Oh My God” was issued as a new single, and earned a 4¶ review from RollingStone.com. Time magazine placed the song at # 3 on their “Top Ten List of Everything in 2008,” praising her “powerhouse voice – deep, commanding, a little masculine, exotic, too, like Nico, but with an abundance rather than an absence of feeling.” Audio of “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked,” “Oh My God,” “Keep Me Warm,” and “Stella” (as well as video clips of “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” and “Oh My God”) can all be sampled on Ida Maria’s MySpace website, http://www.myspace.com/idamaria which boasts over 1.5 million profile views and more than 4.2 million total plays.

IDA MARIA U.S. TOUR

Date City Venue ___
June
18 Iowa City, IA The Picador
19 Kansas City, MO The Backyard at Beaumont
20 Columbia, MO Mojo’s
22 Tulsa, OK Cain’s Ballroom
24 Scottsdale, AZ Martini Ranch
28 Costa Mesa, CA Detroit Bar
29 San Diego, CA Casbah

with Glasvegas:
July 27 San Francisco, CA The Grand Ballroom
28-29 Hollywood, CA Henry Fonda Theater
31 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues

Aug. 1 Tucson, AZ Rialto Theater
3 Austin, TX Emo’s
4 Dallas, TX The Loft
6 Lawrence, KS The New Granada
8 Chicago, IL Lollapalooza