THE REINTRODUCTION OF AMERICA WITH SMASHING PUMPKINS…

America are set to release ‘Here and Now’ a two disc set featuring an album of all new original material and a live concert featuring the bands all time hits.

America, best known for such classic rock standards ‘Ventura Highway’ and ‘A Horse with No Name’ are set to release their latest studio album of all new material titled ‘Here and Now’ and for the album, the band decided to release a two disc set featuring one disc of all new material and one disc with the bands greatest hits performed live. ‘Here and Now’ is the first album of all new material from America since 1998’s ‘Human Nature.’

We caught up with Gerry Buckley and Dewey Bunnell of America to talk a little about the new album and what fans can expect with the package.

“Well it’s a double album and it’s one of those things where we we’ve done the seventies stuff, our old hits, but we had done a live recording at XM Satellite Radio of our greatest hits, from the first song to the last it’s a show that they air called ‘Then and Again.’ So it was already in the can, that thing had been done and Sony said ‘What do you think about packaging the new CD with this live thing if we can liscence it?’ I hesitated at bit personally because hearing ‘Horse’ and ‘Sister Golden Hair’ and those songs again, but it’s kind of a win win, it really worked well and it was already in the can and we didn’t have to lift a finger. Sony liscenced it, XM said ‘Sure’ and so it’s bundled together. I think it works well for someone maybe not so familiar with us to look at that CD and recognize those songs and say ‘Oh that’s these guys.’ So it’s kind of a reintroduction of America. America reintroduces themselves with these ‘Da

For ‘Here and Now’ America also enlisted the producing skills of Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and James Iha of The Smashing Pumpkins, who not only shared producing credit on the new album, but also make guest appearances throughout the album as well. We also wanted to discuss with Dewey and Gerry the decision of using both Schlesinger and Iha as dual producers.

“We’ve had albums where we’ve had many different producers but I don’t think we’ve had a partnership like James and Adam before. To be honest, all the years that we’ve worked with George Martin, to be really accurate, Jeff Emerick who was his engineer, was in many ways his partner. But, these guys work very very well together and they bounce things emotionally back and forth. Adam relies a great deal on James’ opinions and emotions and feelings about things and it also helps to not just vote, but to kind of decide by conventional wisdom as to which way things are going to go. I found both of those guys integral, although you could say Adam is more steering the ship, James was equally as important. More subtle, you know.”

The album, which was originally slated for an end of 2006 release, has been pushed back by America and Burgundy Records until early 2007. As always look for the band to perform close to 100 live shows in 2007 as the band tours in support of ‘Here and Now.’