News - Temple of the Dog Tour

Yesterday was Chris Cornell's birthday and it's been celebrated by the announcement of a tour by Temple of the Dog and news of a re-release of the classic album...

In a statement on the Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden websites, it was announced that the Seattle supergroup featuring Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, and Mike McCready, and drummer Matt Cameron (who plays drums with both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam) — has reunited and will tour for the first time ever since forming in 1990. The band will play five cities, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, in November.

The tour marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Temple of the Dog’s first and only album. “We wanted to do the one thing we never got to do … play shows and see what it feels like to be the band that we walked away from 25 years ago,” Cornell says of the 2016 tour.

Temple of the Dog formed following the death of Cornell's close friend and room-mate, the Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood, Cornell wrote the songs “Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down” to help process his grief, “but the songs didn’t have any destination,” he says. “I was compelled to write them and there they were – written in a vacuum as a tribute to Andy. My thought was that maybe I could record these songs with the remaining members of Mother Love Bone and that maybe we could release them as a tribute.”

The group performed live only a handful of times, most notably in Seattle, in November and December of 1990 and those shows have become some of the most legendary Seattle concerts of all-time. Their 2016 shows marks the first time the band has ever toured.

“This is something no one has ever seen,” Cornell says of the official reunion. “We wanted to stop and recognize that we did this and pay homage.”

For more information on the Temple of the Dog tour and how to get tickets, go here.

In related news, on September 30th, UMe will release a special Temple of the Dog 25th anniversary reissue collection of their landmark album, newly mixed by Brendan O’Brien. The collection will be available in four configurations, including a four disc Super Deluxe, a double LP, a two CD Deluxe, and a single CD. Find out more and pre-order here.

Image - Temple of the Dog