On this long Memorial Day weekend in the US, Jessica Lea Mayfield, who was nominated for New/Emerging Artist of Year by the Americana Music Association earlier this week, launches a week-long European tour at Handelsbeurs in Gent, Belgium, tonight, followed by a Sunday-night set at Grand Social in Dublin and a Memorial Day show at the Borderline in London. Performances in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, and Amsterdam are still to come next week.

In advance of Monday's concert in London, Mayfield is the lead music feature in today's Daily Mirror, available at mirror.co.uk.

"Our Hearts Are Wrong," the opening track off Mayfield's Nonesuch debut album, Tell Me, was named American Songwriter magazine's Lyric of the Week this week.

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Laurie Anderson follows last night's performance of her latest piece, Delusion, at the Brighton Festival in England with two performances at the Kassel Theatre in Kassel, Germany, this weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, as well as a conversation about her work at the Hofgeismar Conference Center in Kassel on Sunday.

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James Farm—featuring Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland—continue their European tour with two performances in France, at the Auditorium du Casino in Hyeres tonight and Le Solarium in Gradignan on Saturday, and two in the Netherlands, at Bimhuis in Amsterdam on Sunday and at Lantaren Venster in Rotterdam on Memorial Day Monday. The band has two more shows next week then head back to the States, where they will hold a four-night residency at the Jazz Standard in New York City starting June 16.

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Ben Folds follows last night's one-night-only performance in Jakarta, Indonesia, with week's tour of Japan, starting with Sunday's performance at Hitomi Memorial Hall in Tokyo.

Folds recently complete a tour of Australia with a concert in Perth at which he "put on one hell of a show," says Perth Now's Jay Hanna, who describes Folds's collaboration with novelist Nick Hornby on their 2010 Nonesuch album, Lonely Avenue, "a match made in heaven."

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Philip Glass has three shows in Spain with violinist Tim Fain this weekend: at Teatro Principal in Vitoria tonight, Centro Cultural Miguel Delibes in Valladolid on Saturday, and Teatro Auditorio de Ciudad de Alcobendas on Sunday.

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Emmylou Harris launched her European tour earlier this week in Scandinavia and heads to Ireland to perform at the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin on Saturday and then to the UK, where she has a show at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Sunday and at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester Monday night.

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Wanda Jackson plays the final headlining date on the current leg of her tour this weekend, with Holly Golightly and the Broke-Offs opening, before she joins Adele for nearly a dozen sold-out shows in the coming weeks. Following last night's performance at Minglewood Hall in Memphis, the hometown of her former boyfriend and mentor Elvis Presley, Jackson performs at the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville tonight.

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Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica perform two concerts in Germany this weekend: at the Prinzregententheater in Munich tonight and Audimax der Universität in Regensburg on Saturday. On the program are works by works by Bartók, Schumann, and Bach.

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Natalie Merchant helps celebrate the 71st birthday of the legendary Levon Helm at the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston, New York, tonight. Also slated to perform are Donald Fagen and Marc Cohn.

"If you wanted a delicious birthday cake and the only ingredients were musical," says the Times Herald-Record's Deborah Medenbach, "you might get what's being served up at Levon Helm's 71st Birthday Bash Ramble."

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Randy Newman gives two performances at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona, this Saturday and Sunday. The Arizona Republic includes the performances among the "shows of the week." The Phoenix New Times's Jason Woodbury says: "He's one of the songwriters, as far as I'm concerned, up there with Harry Nilsson, Warren Zevon, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Tom Waits, and Sam Cooke."

Earlier this week, Newman appeared on Soundcheck, a program of New York NPR member station WNYC, to discuss his 40-plus year career and perform songs from his latest Nonesuch album, Songbook Vol. 2. You can listen to the complete episode below:

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Chris Thile, having just completed his recent tour with guitarist Michael Daves, featuring music from their recently released debut album, Sleep with One Eye Open, joins up with his fellow Punch Brothers for two festival sets this weekend: this afternoon at the Summer Camp Festival in Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe, Illinois, and Sunday afternoon at DelFest in Cumberland, Maryland.

"Mandolin master Chris Thile has proven to be one of the most dynamic and interesting bluegrass musicians—an artist driven to push the boundaries of a genre rigidly steeped in tradition," says Country Standard Time contributor Greg Yost in his review of Sleep with One Eye Open. On the new album, says Yost, "Thile returns to his traditional roots and in doing so creates a fresh and exciting tribute to some of the songs and artists that pioneered bluegrass music." Read the complete review at countrystandardtime.com.

Both the Thile/Daves duo and Punch Brothers are headed to Colorado next month for the weekend-long Telluride Bluegrass Festival in mid-June.