Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe to Cross U.S. by Train on Railroad Revival Tour

This April, in an adventure that will go straight into the history books, three bands -- Mumford & Sons (pictured left), Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros (pictured right), and Old Crow Medicine Show -- will get to jam out on a railroad, all the live long day. The bands will cross the continent in vintage railcars for one week, performing concerts at nightly stops along the way, as part of the Railroad Revival Tour.

OK, so the shows won't be held at actual train stations -- but they will take place at a total of six unusual, outdoor locations in California, Arizona, Texas and Louisiana, respectively. The itinerary begins at the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park in Oakland, Calif. on April 21 and wraps in New Orleans' Woldenberg Park on April 27, with each band performing their full stage show at each stop.

If the unique arrangement sounds vaguely familiar, it may be that the Railroad Revival Tour looks to be a modern-day recreation of the famed Festival Express that once took acts such as the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin clear across Canada. But it's another artist altogether that Mumford & Sons' Winston Marshall has in mind when thinking about the Railroad Revival: "To misquote the great Woody Guthrie, this train is bound for disgrace. Glorious disgrace," Marshall says in a statement about the tour. "Woody rode with his fellow drifters around North America. We get to do it with a bunch of other musicians, although not strangers, from different corners of the world."

Or, as Alex Ebert (Edward Sharpe) put it: "This tour is going to be rad." Indeed. Three bands, 15 vintage railcars, two locomotives and one documentary crew? Casey Jones had better watch his speed!

Check out the itinerary and full details at the official Railroad Revival Tour Website.