Sam Amidon, who is touring Ireland this week, has just announced several new tour dates in North America supporting the band San Fermin in December. The dates begin at World Café Live at the Queen in Wilmington, Delaware, on December 2 and include stops along the Eastern US and Canada and into the Midwest, culminating at Bowery Ballroom in NYC on December 17. Amidon will play a number of previously announced shows in the Midwest with Wilco guitarist Nels Cline in November.

Punch Brothers have announced a number of new US tour dates for this December, starting at Overture Hall in Madison, WI, on December 1, and making their way across the Midwest, over to the Northeast and Southeast. Gabriel Kahane will again join the band for the first two weeks, after which Anaïs Mitchell will join for several shows. A limited ticket pre-sale begins Tuesday, September 15, at PunchBrothers.com; general on-sale begins this Friday, September 18. The current leg of the tour, which kicks off Friday at FreshGrass Festival, now includes a set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco.

Audra McDonald, a six-time Tony Award winner, now shares an Emmy Award as host of Live From Lincoln Center's telecast of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The show has won the Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Program. As the official host of the PBS series, McDonald shares the award with the show’s producers. She has served as the official host of Live From Lincoln Center since 2012. This marks her fourth Emmy nomination and her first win.

The Arcs—Dan Auerbach, Leon Michels, Richard Swift, Homer Steinweiss, and Nick Movshon—are the subject of a short introductory video directed by Nick Walker, who also directed the official music video for "Outta My Mind," off Yours, Dreamily, their debut album. "I think we just put The Arcs together as a means to have a platform to do this thing that we love to do," says Auerbach: "make music, make records, and be able to share it with people." Watch the video here. The band will perform on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Friday, September 25.

Joshua Redman kicks off a European tour at Musikfest Bremen in Germany this Saturday, joining the Metropole Orkest, Ibrahim Maalouf, and Lalah Hathaway on stage. He then tackles the piano-less trio format with Ole Morten Vågan on bass and Jorge Rossy on drums September 13–19 in Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Norway. In November, Redman returns to Europe to perform with the collaborative band James Farm. Before and after the James Farm tour, Redman resumes his North American tour with The Bad Plus in October and December. 

The Arcs have unveiled the video for "Outta My Mind," off Yours, Dreamily, their recently released debut album. The video premiered on The Huffington Post, which says: "A dreamy gift of garage blues wrapped in fuzzy, soulful guitar, the album is a refreshing shift from [Dan] Auerbach that you'll want to keep on repeat all weekend long." Watch the video here. Yours, Dreamily, is WFUV's New Dig and Album of the Week from The Current, which says "this album is chock full of memorable, hooky jams ... [Auerbach] can't help but write songs that get stuck in your brain."

The Arcs have confirmed eight European tour dates in November as part of their first tour in support of Yours, Dreamily, their debut album. They will be joined on stage by Mariachi Flor de Toloache. The European leg comprises concerts in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, UK, Holland, France, and Italy.  Tickets go on sale on Friday, September 11. The Arcs make their live concert debut via NPR Music’s First Listen Live series in NYC this Wednesday and perform at Bowery Ballroom in NYC later this month.

Rhiannon Giddens and Ry Cooder will be among the performers at the Americana Honors & Awards show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on September 16. Cooder is also among the presenters, as are Rodney Crowell and Punch Brothers' Noam Pikelny. The show will broadcast live on SiriusXM's Outlaw Country and will stream live via NPR Music. PBS will air highlights from the show November 21 on Austin City Limits. Giddens, Punch Brothers, and Carolina Chocolate Drops' Hubby Jenkins are all nominees. Giddens will also take part in NPR Music's "Songs We Love: Americana Edition" event with critic Ann Powers earlier September 16.

The Arcs' debut album is out now. "Yours, Dreamily, takes what [Dan] Auerbach does at his best, in and out of the Keys—confessional, texturally enriched blues propelled with garage-rock force—and adds a riveting jump in eccentricity," writes Rolling Stone. "Right from the drop, Yours, Dreamily, ignites like a cigarette flicked on a stream of gasoline," raves NPR. It's "one of Auerbach's most ambitious and fully realized albums." Mojo says: "Auerbach delivers some of his hottest-ever guitar. This one, for sure, is a keeper." NME concludes: "Dan Auerbach never fails to impress." You can hear him on NPR's All Things Considered here.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the debut of Ken Burns's acclaimed documentary The Civil War, PBS will rebroadcast the series over five consecutive nights starting Labor Day Monday, September 7. This is the first presentation of a newly restored, high-definition version of the landmark documentary. This is also the first time the film will be seen with the same fidelity and framing as the negative that Burns and his co-cinematographers Allen Moore and Buddy Squires shot more than 25 years ago. The film's soundtrack, released on Nonesuch Records in 1990, won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album.

The Arcs, whose debut album, Yours, Dreamily, is out this coming Friday, September 4, recently stopped by KROQ's Red Bull Sound Space in Los Angeles, where they performed "My Mind," a non-album track that's the b-side to the 7-inch vinyl single "Outta My Mind." You can watch the live performance here and get a copy of the vinyl in the Nonesuch Store.

Congratulations to Kronos Quartet and Nico Muhly, who have been named winners of ECHO Klassik 2015 awards. Kronos Quartet is the winner of the Classics Without Borders award for its 40th anniversary release A Thousand Thoughts, and Nico Muhly's opera Two Boys, recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera, has been named Opera Recording of the Year for 20th/21st century music. The ECHO Klassik awards are conferred by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie (German Recording Academy), akin to the Grammy Awards in the United States. This year's awards ceremony will take place in Berlin on October 18 and will be televised on ZDF in Germany.