Green Day announes tour of United States and Canada

Green Day have announced that they will hit the road for their first proper tour of the United States and Canada in more than three years beginning July 3rd in Seattle, WA. The first leg of the tour will cross North America through the summer and finish up with two shows in Los Angeles on August 26th.

Green Day are touring in support of their long-awaited eighth studio album 21st Century Breakdown, which will be released globally by Reprise Records on Friday, May 15th, 2009. Singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool have been at work writing, arranging, and recording 21st Century Breakdown since early 2006 with producer Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins). The first single, “Know Your Enemy” was released to radio and digital retailers on April 16th.

Green Day recently performed 21st Century Breakdown in its entirety during a series of warm-up club shows for hometown fans in the Bay Area. In its review of a show at Oakland’s Fox Theater, Rolling Stone commented that the band, augmented by guitarists Jason White and Jeff Matika, and keyboardist Jason Freese, had the “Quadrophenia-like hang of 21st Century Breakdown’s classic rock melodies and lifetime-punk drive down solid” and that the album is “rock opera in which the rock always comes first.” “21st Century Breakdown is Green Day’s best album,” the reviewer concluded, “and at the Fox, they proved that the rock opera can be as punk as a Clash 45.”

21st Century Breakdown is Green Day’s first studio album since 2004’s two-time Grammy Award-winning punk-rock opera American Idiot, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, spawned five hit singles, and went on to sell more than 12 million copies worldwide.

Green Day’s upcoming North American tour dates are as follows:

July

3rd Seattle, WA

4th Vancouver, BC

6th Edmonton, AB

7th Saskatoon, SAS

9th Winnipeg, MAN

10th Fargo, ND

11th Minneapolis, MN

13th Chicago, IL

14th Detroit, MI

16th Hamilton, ONT

17th Ottawa, ONT

18th Montreal, QUE

20th Boston, MA

21st Philadelphia, PA

22nd Pittsburgh, PA

24th Hartford, CT

25th Albany, NT

27th New York, NY

29th Washington, DC

31st Nashville, TN

August

1st Atlanta, GA

3rd Tampa, FL

4th Miami, FL

5th Orlando, FL

7th New Orleans, LA

8th Houston, TX

9th San Antonio, TX

11th St. Louis, MO

13th Omaha, NE

15th Denver, CO

16th Salt Lake City, UT

18th San Jose, CA

20th San Diego, CA

21st Las Vegas, NV

22nd Phoenix, AX

24th Sacramento, CA

25th Los Angeles, CA