Australia will be delivered one of hip-hop’s most authentic acts, Philadelphia’s The Roots, by year’s end after drummer and DJ Questlove revealed to a fan via Twitter that the group will visit Australia in December.
Questlove responded to an Australian fan, saying “(The Roots) will be in Aussie day after Xmas for a week in 2013”.
The Roots last visited Australia way back in 2007 when they toured with the Blues and Roots festival and will this time land right in the middle of the country’s crazy summer festival season. The group’s last intended trip Down Under in 2009 to play at the Good Vibrations festival was cancelled due to commitments in the US.
The return of The Root’s Australian visit may coincide with the release of a 12th studio album, entitled & Then You Shoot Your Cousin…, while a collaboration album recorded with Elvis Costello called Wise Up Ghost is expected in mid-September.
The Costello collaboration should be an interesting one, a project Questlove described as a “a moody, brooding affair full of cathartic rhythms and dissonant lullabies,” in an interview with Billboard back in January.
Part of the reason The Roots have neglected their Australia fans for so long has been their regular gig as the house band for late night television host Jimmy Fallon, a move that initially caused fans to wonder if the group would stop touring altogether when they took on the job in 2009.
The band is preparing to join Fallon’s impending move to takeover as the new host of The Tonight Show, a working relationship that has lasted some four years, however Questlove originally described the move to television as one that enabled The Roots to financially survive
“This would basically match or surpass what we would make touring 200-plus days out of the year. And, two, this allows us to be home,” he said back in 2009.
“We were sinking into economic disaster. When the economy went into recession, ticket sales (their chief source of income) started to slow,” MC Black Thought said at the time.
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