Adrian Belew begins new Power Trio tour, hoping to present a taste of FLUX

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As his Power Trio kicks off an expansive new tour today (October 22, 2014), Adrian Belew is making clear that a forward-thinking music app hasn’t lessened his desire to take his music to the people. If anything, he hopes FLUX will add another dimension to the shows.

This new music, presented online in a constantly shifting stream promising to never play the same way twice, presents no small challenge for Belew on stage. See, when you create something of a piece, everything that follows becomes its own cool little mystery.

Yet, the hope with these upcoming shows — completed by do-anything bassist Julie Slick and drummer Tobias Ralph — is that Belew can include the FLUX concept, at least in part. But that was very much still a work in progress as practice began in advance of this tour-opening concert at Charlottesville, Virginia. Dates will continue across 22 states and three provinces in Canada through December 21, 2014.

“It wouldn’t be different every night; it wouldn’t be never the same, like the tag with FLUX,” Belew tells us, in an exclusive SER Sitdown. “But it could involve the same concepts of things happening quickly, and being interupted by other things and then moving on to the next thing — which I think is at the heart of the FLUX concept, as well.”

Still, there are inherent limitations in working collaboratively on stage that simply aren’t there in the studio, where FLUX was created by Belew along with Daniel Rowland and MOBGEN.

“Of course, with FLUX there’s also the idea that’s it’s never the same,” Belew says. “We couldn’t do that, I don’t think, because I haven’t figured that out. But I’m hoping we can do it for this very important upcoming tour. It just really depends on how smoothly that idea works. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks. Maybe there’s a way that you can actually get a little of the FLUX experience, right there in front of you.”

Future tours might be presented in a one-man format, Belew adds, with huge screens to convey the app’s striking visual component. That kind of show would be ideally suited for college campuses.

“Maybe you could be there for two days, and on the first day you could do a seminar and maybe an acoustic show,” he tells us. “Then, the next day you could put on the big FLUX show, and it would have visuals that would change with everything you are doing.”

FLUX will be formally released online after a November 25, 2014 launch party, during a break from these Power Trio dates. The app is being funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign that allows fans — depending on the amount pledged — to learn more about FLUX from Belew himself, discover archival material from his career and take home a print featuring some of the app’s newly created art.

Nick DeRiso