Mumford and Sons to Debut New Material During Railroad Revival Tour

Posted on Mar 11th 2011 7:30AM by Andrew Kerr
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Simone Joyner, WireImage

Mumford and Sons have said they can't wait to hit the tracks next month when they embark on the Railroad Revival tour with fellow folk acts Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and Old Crow Medicine Show.

The jaunt, inspired by the 1970 Festival Express tour which saw the likes of Janis Joplin, the Band and Grateful Dead cross Canada by train to play a series of disastrous gigs, kicks off in Oakland, Calif., on April 21 and finishes in New Orleans, La. six days later.

Mumford and Sons keyboardist Ben Lovett is clearly excited by the memories the experience will create. He told the Rolling Stone, "I'm expecting little pockets of people playing and sharing songs with each other, having some drinks. The idea of this train tour is to make stories to tell our kids about it, and even though it's for only a short time, I think it's going to feel a lot longer than those seven days."

The tour will afford the London quartet the chance to test out new material but getting the balance of old and new is something Lovett is wary of. He explained, "We want to play as many as we can. We'd like to test them out. We'll play a couple each night and see how they go, or pick up some on the train, and see where the boat takes us."

He continued, "I think the way to do it is on rotation. Us novices, [we've learned,] 'Oh yeah, let's maybe not play all of the new ones on each night.' It's something that every band goes through but we haven't yet, so we're just learning."

Watch the Video to Mumford and Sons' 'Winter Winds'