Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) announces twenty-three new US tour dates, supporting Bright Eyes, beginning May 19 in Oklahoma City and continuing through July 3 in Omaha. Segarra is currently on a North American headlining tour in celebration of their Nonesuch debut album, LIFE ON EARTH. Summer dates in Europe begin July 16 in the UK and continue through September 20 in Berlin, with stops in Dublin, London, Paris, and Amsterdam, among others.

Pitchfork, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, has published a list of 'The 200 Most Important Artists of Pitchfork’s First 25 Years,' including Wilco, The Magnetic Fields, Conor Oberst, Fleet Foxes, and Björk.

The 2014 Record Store Day split vinyl 7" single on which Conor Oberst and Dawes covered each other's tunes—Oberst performing Dawes' "Million Dollar Bill" and Dawes performing the Bright Eyes song "Easy/Lucky/Free"—is now available digitally to download and stream. "As far as I’m concerned, between Bright Eyes and his solo records, Conor Oberst is one of the greatest songwriters that has played the game," says Dawes' Taylor Goldsmith. "We tried our best to make 'Easy/Lucky/Free' sound like a Dawes song and Conor did the same thing to 'Million Dollar Bill.' Happy to bring these recordings back to life."

In the winter of 2016, Conor Oberst found himself hibernating in his hometown of Omaha after living in New York City for more than a decade. He emerged with the unexpectedly raw, unadorned solo album Ruminations. The results are almost sketch-like in their sparseness: Oberst alone with his guitar, piano, and harmonica. The Ruminations (Expanded Edition), first released on vinyl for RSD Drops earlier this year, is now available on CD and digitally as well, and includes five bonus tracks, four of which are previously unreleased. The vinyl, pressed on two 140-gram LPs, includes an exclusive etching on side D.

Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record stores, takes place over two RSD Drops on two Saturdays this year, and included among the special releases are: on June 12, Conor Oberst's Ruminations (Expanded Edition), a two-LP remastered edition of his acclaimed 2016 solo album with five bonus tracks; and on July 17, Randy Newman’s Roll with the Punches: The Studio Albums (1979–2017), an eight-LP set of his latest seven studio albums, including Bad Love on vinyl for the first time and Faust demos.

Conor Oberst released his Nonesuch Records debut album, Upside Down Mountain, in May 2014. Earlier that spring, he had previewed what was to come with the release of a limited-edition vinyl 7" for Record Store Day, featuring the album track "Hundreds of Ways" b/w the album outtake "Fast Friends." Later that year, for Record Store Day: Black Friday, came another limited-edition vinyl 7" with two non-album tracks recorded during the Upside Down Mountain sessions: "Standing on the Outside Looking In" b/w "Sugar Street." All of those tracks are finally available digitally and can be heard here.

Conor Oberst is the guest on the latest two episodes of the LSQ podcast with Jenny Eliscu. Oberst is "one of my favorite artists of all time and a dear friend of mine as well," says Eliscu, and "has released some of my favorite albums of the past couple decades." Listen to both episodes here. Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band are on tour now.

Conor Oberst stopped by KEXP in Seattle during a recent tour stop in the city to perform four songs from his new albums, Salutations and Ruminations, and talk with host Troy Nelson about the music. You can watch the session here. Oberst also performed on PBS's Bluegrass Underground with The Felice Brothers as his backing band. The set was filmed live at the Volcano Room, a subterranean amphitheater 333 feet below McMinnville, TN, at historic Cumberland Caverns.

The full line-up for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has been announced, and, as is often the case, featured among the performers are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal, including Emmylou Harris, Randy Newman, Conor Oberst, and Dan Auerbach. The free, annual outdoor music festival returns for the seventeenth year to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and will take place October 6–8, 2017.

Conor Oberst, with the Felice Brothers as his backing band, has returned to North America to begin the next leg of his Salutations tour. They perform a sold-out show at The Wild Buffalo in Bellingham, WA, Friday, followed by shows in Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee, Chicago, Toronto, Pittsburgh, and more over the next few weeks. The tour picks up again in October with stops back West and across the South.

Conor Oberst, with the Felice Brothers as his backing band, begins a European summer tour of music from his new album, Salutations, with a festival set at A Summer’s Tale in Germany on Friday. The tour continues with festival sets and concerts in Germany, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, including O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire in London, and culminating in Glasgow on August 22.

Conor Oberst was a guest on the Charlie Rose show on PBS/Bloomberg News last week. He spoke with Rose about and performed songs from his new albums, Salutations and Ruminations. The episode opens with a performance of a "Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out" and closes with "Mamah Borthwick (A Sketch)." You can watch the performances and interview here. Oberst his tour to Europe this coming weekend; the next leg of the US tour starts September 1.