Blues Traveler to release new album

AUSTIN, Texas, July 15 (UPI) -- The Grammy Award-winning quintet Blues Traveler is gearing up for the release of its latest CD, "North Hollywood Shootout," Verve Music Group announced Tuesday.

The album, which was recorded in the NoHo district of Los Angeles, is to drop Aug. 26.

"We're still trying to cultivate what we're individually good at into something that's bigger than the sum of its parts," front man and harmonica player John Popper said in a statement. "When we're all playing and it's working, it becomes this separate entity, and that's still the thing that we're chasing."

"On the last few records, we concentrated so much on the crafting of the songwriting and arrangements that we started losing some of the live spontaneity that the five of us created on-stage," said guitarist Chan Kinchla. "So, on this album, instead of doing the usual preproduction process, where we really worked out the songs before taking them into the studio, we decided to go straight into the studio and do songwriting there. We recorded all the parts as we were working them out and then built the songs from there."

Blues Traveler is on the road through the end of the year in support of the new album, Verve Music said.