Liz says that she will be touring the East Coast and Midwest soon, but she can't confirm the dates just yet. However, expect those dates soon...

Sunday evening (October 3rd):

MAIN STAGE (The Pearl):

• Guided By Voices
• Yo La Tengo
• Liz Phair
• The New Pornographers
• Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
• Shearwater

MC's : Tom Sharpling & Jon Wurster

[Liz] Phair's first new album in five years – Funstyle – enters the music marketplace Oct. 19. Bundled with the new release will be a second CD, Girlysound, a collection of demos and obscure tracks predating Phair's 1993 debut, Exile In Guyville.

Packaged as a two-CD set, the Funstyle / Girlysound combo marks the artist's beginnings as well as where she is musically in 2010. During the early 1990s Phair distributed her music via cassette tapes under the "Girlysound" moniker, leading to her signing with Matador Records in 1992 with some of the tracks evolving into the songs that appeared on Exile in Guyville.

• Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - The Belly Up Tavern, Solana Beach, CA
• Friday, October 8, 2010 - El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
• Sunday, October 10, 2010 - The Independent, San Francisco, CA
• Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - Crocodile Cafe, Seattle, WA
• Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR
• Friday, October 15, 2010 - Venue, Vancouver, BC

In the meantime, Liz has a question for you all:

I have a question for fans: what are the top 10 most popular songs live?? Trying to make a set list... Please let me know! Xxx Liz

[Regarding "Bollywood"] Really, the pissed-off rap just rattled around in my brain for a while until one day while I was in the studio scoring scenes for 90210, Evan Frankfort (composing partner) and I scrolled through a few beat selections and landed on the Taal loop and I just lit up immediately. I knew it had to be a marriage between that sound and the rap. Ridiculous musical contrast to represent the ridiculous conflict between art and commerce.

You can read the whole interview at Movieline.

Phair's new album has been registered with SoundScan, granting it eligibility to chart on the Billboard 200. However, its first-week sales were less than 1,000, and, thus, the title did not rank among the top 200-selling sets of the week.

Here are the U.S. sales of the Connecticut-born singer/songwriter's prior five albums, according to SoundScan:

• Exile in Guyville (1993) = 491,000
• Whip-Smart (1994) = 412,000
• Whitechocolatespaceegg (1998) = 293,000
• Liz Phair (2003) = 433,000
• Somebody's Miracle (2005) = 83,000

Phair's career U.S. album sales stand at 1,718,000, according to SoundScan.

"It's important to have people who will say to you that you're really off the beaten track. And I knew, with Funstyle -- I've been told, in no uncertain terms, how awful it would be if I put out these songs. And I have waited over a year to release them because I trusted the people who were telling me this, but at the same time after 13 months of not putting out any music, I thought I couldn't go forward 'til I put out what I'd done. I thought, "Fuck it, I'll put these out, people will hate me. What's new."

You can read the whole interview at The Daily Beast.

In an e-mail to Speakeasy, Phair insisted there are “no hard feelings, only circumstances” that led to her split -- "almost a year ago" -- with ATO Records. The label, co-founded by Dave Matthews, signed Phair in 2008 and re-released her acclaimed and influential debut album, Exile in Guyville later that year. Billboard reported at the time that a new studio album was "penciled in" for the fall of 2008, though Funstyle marked Phair's first album of original material since 2005’s Somebody’s Miracle, released on Capitol Records.

In her e-mail to Speakeasy, Phair explained that, following a shift in management at ATO, "the people who were still there didn't like, or didn't know, what to do with the music I was making, so we just stalled out and I asked to leave."

In an e-mail response, ATO Records spokesperson Ambrosia Healy did not comment directly on the details of the split, though she confirmed that Phair and the label "have parted ways".

"“All of us here love Liz very much and wish her well," Healy wrote.

Despite the apparent rancor at the music-industry in general, and ATO in particular, on Funstyle, Phair told Speakeasy that her relationship with her former label isn't all sour: "A few of them [at ATO] just contacted me after I put out Funstyle to tell me how hilarious some of the songs were. All good."

A brand new album from Liz Phair, Funstyle, featuring 11 new songs, is now available for purchase / download at LizPhair.com. The cost is $5.99, and the formats are MP3, Apple Lossless, and Source Audio (WAV).

The tracklisting:

• Smoke (3:12)
• Bollywood (2:36)
• You Should Know Me (2:56)
• Miss September (4:26)
• My My (3:32)
• Oh Bangladesh (4:39)
• Bang! Bang! (3:38)
• Beat Is Up (3:20)
• And He Slayed Her (3:36)
• Satisifed (3:34)
• U Hate It (4:36)

More details to come...

Sources also reveal to Rolling Stone that Liz Phair, who released her classic LP Exile In Guyville on the label in 1993, is slated to be added to the bill. Tickets for the October 1st-3rd weekend shows will also be reasonably priced — around $200 for three days of music — and the label is keeping ticket counts small (around 2,000) to ensure an intimate vibe similar to festivals like All Tomorrow's Parties.

The Robert Pollard-fronted alt-rock band Guided By Voices is planning to reunite for Matador Records' 21st Birthday in Las Vegas. The indie label is hosting a three-day festival at the Palms Casino and Resort to celebrate its long-running success.

In addition to the reunited GBV (performing their first show since 2004), the lineup reads like a who's who of '90s and '00s indie music. The reunited Pavement, Sonic Youth, Liz Phair , Superchunk, Belle and Sebastian, Yo La Tengo, Cat Power, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Spoon and the New Pornographers are all on the bill. More acts could be announced soon.

Ticket information will be released on Monday, July 5 on Matador’s website, www.matadorrecords.com.

[About "Rocks Off"] I had this huge crush on this guy in the music scene, and he and I had a couple interactions, but nothing really serious. But I invented this idea of him as Mick's character on Exile on Main Street. So whenever I listened to that album, I felt like I was listening to this guy talking to me. And then I sort of wrote back to him, vis-a-vis the Stones, on Exile in Guyville. You think about "Rocks Off": He's coming home from this one-night stand and he runs into some girl he knows, who's sort of like, "Where have you been?" And he's like, "Look, I just can't deal with you right now" and walks off. So I put myself in the shoes of that girl he meets on the street, and that's how I wrote "6'1". In Exile, there's a whole range of emotions and characteristics and personal traits and ambitions, and I used them all.

• Marc Eastman / Are You Screening
• Stephanie Nolasco / Starpulse.com

Here are some excerpts from the Starpulse.com interview:

[Regarding her novel]: It's sitting right in front of me. I got an intervention from one of my scoring partners. I handed him like a chapter here and there and he really likes it, but it's taking me forever to finish. He literally staged an intervention. I'll leave out the swear words but he’s like, 'Just finish it. I'm so tired of hearing like, it'll be done in eight weeks.' My hair is dirty, I'm in sweats, and when I'm not working on scoring I'm trying to finish this darn thing.

[Regarding the new album]: I'm writing a new record and it's interesting how scoring and writing facilitate each other. Scoring teaches me to pare down my melodic ideas and really focus on emotional shifts in music. That sort of enhances my ability to put the right musical moments underneath the lyric. I think it's actually improving my songwriting, although it complicates it in my mind. It's interesting. They both enhance each other.

[Regarding touring]: I hope so. I really have just started to feel like I want to get out there and play some more. I think maybe end of summer, early fall, sounds nice to me.

From LA Music Blog:

Rami Jaffee: "Last time, my friend Pete Yorn’s band has a side project where they do a live Beatles karaoke band, so people signed up and they played Beatles songs to the T. It was killer. They were on the stage all trippy, disco-ed out, and we played Beatles movies on this big screen, and that was pretty wacky. A lot of people signed up. Liz Phair was here. She did it, and Pete and everybody got into it."

In case you forgot, Happy Birthday, Liz!

However, Fanbolt.com has an interview with Liz as well, but it might be the same interview as the Pop Culture Passionistas one. Whatever the case may be, go check it out.

The Deadbolt also has a Liz interview.

She's working on a new record deal, which she hopes to see come together soon....

Johnny Sunshine was named after one of singer Liz Phair's songs, about her ex boyfriend and Lynne [Cornwall] met one of Liz's old band mates at a gig at The Red Lion in Stoke Newington Church St..

"He met Johnny Sunshine and said he had all the characteristics of the guy the song was named after - I was very pleased about that," said Lynne.

"Liz Phairand I had a 15-minute phone conversation booked, and she stayed on for an hour and a half and told me we were like 'sisters'. (Uh, grain of salt.) She is surprisingly girly -- as in, she wants to talk about hair and makeup and clothes. She's also a total beauty product junkie.".