AMERICANWAY

ITINERARY CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DANNY CLINCH (2); EMILY SHUR; EBET ROBERTS 2 2 O C TO B E R 2 01 4 A A .CO M/A M E R I C A NWAY { M U S I C } Can't Keep a Good Woman Down After a 16-year hiatus, singer-keyboardist CHRISTINE McVIE reunited with Fleetwood Mac, and the band's On With the Show tour takes North America by song. C hristine McVie of British-American rock ba nd Fleet wood Mac ha s beg u n one of the greatest second acts in history. T hat smolder i ng voice beh i nd " Don't Stop" a nd " You Ma ke L ov i ng F u n" ret i red f rom t he ba nd at t he top of her ga me in 1998. W hen she f i na l ly decided to u n ret i re la st yea r at age 70, her d r e a m job w a s st i l l w a it i ng for her. "It's quite remarkable," the singer- keyboardist says during rehea rsa ls for her f irst tour w ith Fleetwood Mac in 16 years. "I feel like the prodigal daughter coming back to the family." In the 1970s, Fleetwood Mac wrote the book on family dysfunction and turned it into Rumours, an album inspired partly by McVie's divorce from bassist John McVie. By the late '90s, band mem- bers had buried the hatchet, but McVie was fraz- zled after 28 years of touring. "I'd developed all sorts of weird phobias, and that big earthquake threw me for such a loop that I wanted to get out of L.A.," she says, referring to the 1994 Northridge temblor. She bid farewell to her Mac mates and settled into a 17th- century mansion in her native England. "I did the 'country lady' bit with the dogs and the Range Rover, baking cookies. It was the kind of life I'd dreamt of." She eventually tired of coun- try living. Last year, she flew to Maui and sang "Don't Stop" with Mick Fleetwood's blues band. Months later, she got up the nerve to ask if she could rejoin. "There was this big tsunami of grinning faces when we found out Christine was coming back," Fleetwood says. "It's truly amazing. The chemis- try is still in place, devastatingly so." Stevie Nicks presented McVie with all her old keyboards — Nicks had stored them at her L.A. home, hoping McVie would rejoin Fleetwood Mac one day — and the quintet has spent much of the year writing and recording songs for a possible studio album. W hether or not it ever comes out, McVie says she's thrilled simply to be back per- forming with her old crew. "I just want to squeeze in every last bit of excite- ment and great music with my band," she says. "I didn't want to sit on my bum for the rest of my life doing nothing." —T H O R C H R I S T EN S EN Cloud Nine It's been 20 years since the release of Weezer's influential Blue Album, which shot the California-formed band from the garage to major venues. Now, Weezer returns with its ninth album, Every- thing Will Be Alright in the End (Republic Records, $14), out this month, the third produced by The Cars' Ric Ocasek. Here, frontman Rivers Cuomo talks about what he calls "a very deep and thought- ful record." What daily recording was like: "Usually the band rolled in about 10:30 a.m., and we tightened up some loose ends from the day before or rehearsed the songs we were going to record that day with Ric. Ric came in around noon, we'd all have lunch together, and then we'd get down to work. The four of us in the band would go into the live room and start playing through the song until Ric said some- thing sarcastic like, 'That was great; do it again.'" On the meaning behind the song "Back to the Shack": "I think I was referring more to the symbolic shack, meaning any old low-budget room where the four of us get together and come up with our songs. Although it's true that I've often referred to my most creative workspaces as 'shacks.'" Favorite track on the record: "My favorite song changes de- pending on how I'm feeling, but the song 'Da Vinci' rarely fails to give me a tremendous surge of goose bumps by the end of it. The last song on the album, ["The Fu- turescope Trilogy"], usually sends me into cardiac arrest." —JA M E S M AY FI EL D What: An Evening with Farm Aid When: 6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25 Where: Luscombe Farm in Anna, Texas Willie Nelson , Neil Young and John Mellencamp are among the musical moguls actively involved in supporting 29-year-old Farm Aid, a nonprofit on a mission to make life easier for the struggling family farmers of America's heartland through increased awareness, fundraising and sweet, sweet tunes. This month's benefit dinner party is no exception. It's not the organization's massive annual festival-style blowout — but it stays true to the group's ideals, combining music from Los Angeles folk duo HoneyHoney with a farm-to-table dinner in an intimate, rural setting about an hour outside of Dallas. Tickets are $250 per person and are available at farmaid.org/luscombe — P E T E F R EED M A N LEFT TO RIGHT: Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and Christine McVie Rivers Cuomo (left center)

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