• News

• All

Jul 23, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Tegan and Sara

Tegan and Sara have announced some new fall tour dates. They are acoustic dates. Sisters Tegan and Sara Quin are releasing a new album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, that features them reworking old unreleased songs they originally wrote in high school and were thought lost for over 20 years. It is due out September 27 via Sire, only three days after the release of their first memoir, High School, which is due out September 24 via MCD, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux (and Simon & Schuster in Canada and Virago in the UK). The shows will include readings from their memoir. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. local time and $1.00 from every ticket will be donated to the Tegan and Sara Foundation. Check out the dates below.

Tegan and Sara issued this joint statement about the tour: “This tour is going to be like nothing we have ever done. We’ll be solo (can we still call it ‘solo’ if there are two of us?). We’ll be playing acoustic (mostly). We’ll be reading from our memoir High School, and performing songs from the new album Hey, I’m Just Like You. And we’ll be playing a collection of songs from our older records (don’t worry!). We’ve pulled our favorite moments from all the old video footage from our teenage years we discovered last year, and we will be screening clips throughout the evening. We have so much in store for you. It’s going to be a super special evening that you don’t want to miss. We’ve been away from you all for nearly two years and can’t wait to see you.

“To celebrate the release of our first book, we’ve partnered with local independent book stores and will be including a copy of High School with the purchase of any ticket to the shows from Sept 24 - Oct 4 (Brooklyn, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland and both shows in Seattle).”

The band discovered 40 songs they wrote in high school, which led to Hey, I’m Just Like You. “While working on our memoir, we discovered lost cassette tapes that had been unheard for over 20 years,” said Tegan in a previous press release. “They contained dozens of our first songs, written between the ages of 15 and 17…we immediately recognized the songs as an essential part of our high school story.”

“With only minor tweaks to lyrics and structure, we tried to remain true to the original essence of each song,” added Sara.

Hey, I’m Just Like You was recorded in Vancouver, Canada in April and May 2019. The previous press release pointed out that it is “the first Tegan and Sara album created with a team of all women.” This includes producer Alex Hope (Troye Sivan, Broods), Rachael Findlen (engineer), Beatriz Artola (mixing), Emily Lazar (mastering), Annie Kennedy (assistant engineer), Carla Azar (drums), and Catherine Hiltz (bass).

Tegan and Sara summed up Hey, I’m Just Like You with this previous press release statement: “This is the record we never could have made as teenagers, full of songs we never could have written as adults.”

The band also previously issued this longer statement about the album on Instagram: “Last year while writing our new memoir, we came across two cassette tapes with dozens of songs we wrote in high school. Defiant and melodramatic, the songs captured the exultation and grief of first loves, first losses, ecstatic kiss-offs, and psychedelic tributes to the friendships we had as teenagers. It had been over twenty years since we had heard the songs and quite honestly, we both expected to listen once, cringe, and bury them for another couple decades. But they were good. Like, really good. They were raw, and in some cases the lyrics were hard to decipher. But the melodies, the honesty in the words, and the joy listening to them after all these years was undeniable. We decided immediately that those songs were the demos we’d use to build the new Tegan and Sara record. Hey, I’m Just Like You has twelve songs, but in making those twelve songs we pulled sections from nearly twenty of those lost high school demos. We kept the original lyrics where we could, and we only wrote four new sections. In some cases, Sara sings songs I wrote, and in other cases I sing songs she wrote. For the first time ever, we share vocal duties on a handful of songs making them the first truly ‘Tegan AND Sara’ songs. Alex Hope produced the record in Vancouver, where we recorded this past April and May. It is also the FIRST Tegan and Sara album produced, performed, engineered, mixed, and mastered by a team of all women.”

When High School was announced it was dubbed “the origin story of Tegan and Sara.” It recounts their high school years, with alternating chapters written by each sister.

Here’s how the previous press release described the book: “High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of the identical twins from Calgary, Alberta. It follows Tegan and Sara as they grew amid grunge and rave culture in the ‘90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan’s point of view and Sara’s, the book is a raw account of the music, drugs, alcohol, love and friendship they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, it captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from one another. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.”

Tegan and Sara previously offered this joint statement about the book: “How did you start your band? When did you know that you were gay? What were you like before Tegan and Sara? We have spent 20 years answering those complicated questions with simple answers. Writing High School gives us the opportunity to tell the intricate stories that shaped our relationship as sisters, musicians, and queer girls.”

Tegan and Sara Tour Dates:

September 24 - Brooklyn, NY @ MurMrr Theatre
September 28 - Los Angeles, CA @ Orpheum Theatre
September 30 - San Diego, CA @ Balboa Theatre
October 1 - San Francisco, CA @ Sydney Goldstein Theater
October 3 - Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater
October 4 - Seattle, WA @ Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroyal Hall (early and late show)
October 5 - Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre
October 9 - Edmonton, AB @ Myer Horowitz Theatre
October 10 - Calgary, AB @ Bella Concert Hall (early and late show)
October 12 - Winnipeg, MB @ The Garrick
October 13 - Saint Paul, MN @ Fitzgerald Theatre
October 15 - Evanston, IL @ Northwestern University - Cahn Auditorium
October 16 - Columbus, OH @ Lincoln Theatre
October 17 - Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak Music Theatre
October 19 - Toronto, ON @ Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre
October 22 - Ottawa, ON @ Algonquin Commons Theatre
October 23 - Montreal, QC @ Corona Theatre
October 25 - Boston, MA @ Wilbur Theatre
October 26 - Glenside, PA @ Keswick Theatre
October 27 - Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theatre
October 29 - Nashville, TN @ CMA Theater
October 30 - Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse
November 1 - Austin, TX @ State Theatre (early and late show)

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.