Grammy Winner Peter Frampton
to Rock The Paramount

Media Contact:

Kristen Gleason
Director of Marketing
The Paramount Theater
215 East Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434.979.1922 ext. 103
kristen@theparamount.net

For Immediate Release

July 31, 2007

Already a seasoned music industry veteran in his early 20s, guitarist/singer Peter Frampton’s superstar status was sealed with the album Frampton Comes Alive! (1976).  From hits “Show Me The Way” and “I’m In You” to playing David Bowie’s “Glass Spider” tour, introducing his Framptone talkbox to recording the 2007 Grammy® Award-winning Fingerprints, Frampton has proven to be an artist who makes music on his own terms. 

On the heels of this recent win, Frampton is crisscrossing the country with The Fingerprints Tour -- the artist’s first public performances since winning “Best Pop Instrumental Album” for his first all-instrumental recording.  The tour makes a stop in Charlottesville to rock The Paramount Theater on Wednesday, August 22 at 8 pm.  Special Media Sponsor for this event is SuperHits 102.3 -- Super Hits of the 60s and 70s.

Fingerprints, Frampton’s most successful album in almost two decades, was up for two Grammy Awards -- Best Pop Instrumental Album and Best Rock Instrumental Performance for his cover of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.”  “30 years ago, I got nominated for another record,” Frampton says. “I didn’t get that one as the pop star, but today I got this one as the musician.”

Early in his career, Frampton walked away from two commercially-successful bands -- mod pop foursome The Herd and blues-based Humble Pie -- in pursuit of his muse.  Humble Pie had worked diligently to crack the US market, which paid off with the 1971 double live LP Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore, but by then Frampton was ready to strike out on his own.

Within four years, he had established himself as a solid solo-record seller through the recordings Wind of Change, Frampton’s Camel, Somethin’s Happening, and Frampton.  Having earned a reputation as both a gifted guitar hero and a charismatic live performer, it was a logical move to consolidate his prior successes with a double live album, just as Humble Pie had.  But no one could have predicted the magnitude of what happened next. 

Frampton Comes Alive!, mostly drawn from a June 1975 show at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, featured a cross-section of his solo material as well as a memorable reworking of Humble Pie’s “Shine On.”  The album spent 17 weeks at the top of the US charts, becoming the biggest-selling live rock album at the time, and spawning a trio of hits in “Show Me The Way,” “Do You Feel Like We Do” and the ballad “Baby, I Love Your Way.”  His follow-up to this blockbuster, 1977’s I’m In You, featured the keyboard-driven title number which became his most successful single, rising to the Number Two slot on the Billboard album charts and selling over three million copies.

  Subsequent album releases have included Where I Should Be, Breaking All The Rules, The Art Of Control, Premonition, When All The Pieces Fit, and Frampton Comes Alive II (1995).  In 1986 Frampton did a stretch as a high-profile sideman, playing on childhood friend David Bowie’s Never Let Me Down and the subsequent “Glass Spider” tour.  

He’s launched Framptone, a company marketing high-end musical gear including the talkbox that he’d made famous on Frampton Comes Alive! He served as technical advisor on old friend Cameron Crowe’s rock-themed hit film Almost Famous, in which he also had a cameo as Humble Pie’s road manager.  His self-deprecating animated appearance on TV’s The Simpsons shows how gracefully Frampton has come to terms with his own history.

For his Paramount concert, Frampton will perform material from Fingerprints as well as favorites spanning his catalog.  His band will include Rob Arthur (keyboards, guitar and backing vocals) and John Regan (bass), as well as Audley Freed (guitar) and Shawn Fitcher (drums).  In a career full of accolades, Frampton’s particularly proud of Fingerprints.  Of the album’s diverse material -- American soul to Latin balladry and all-out rock tunes -- he says, “This has been the CD I’ve been waiting to make all my life. Every track has been a wonderful challenge, pushing me to raise my own bar again and again.”

Tickets for Peter Frampton’s Paramount Theater concert on Wednesday, August 22 at 8 pm are $65.50, $75.50, $80.50, and $90.50.  Half-price student rush tickets and group discounts are also available. 

Tickets are available online or through The Paramount’s Box Office at 434.979.1333.  

For more information about Peter Frampton, please visit www.frampton.com.