Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is no stranger to staging shocking, out-of-this world performances, whether it be choice of venue or of his amazing ability to play non-stop for a nearly two hour set.

Last year, Anderson and US astronaut Colonel Catherine Coleman celebrated the 50th anniversary of Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight in 1961 by taking part in a duet. The duo’s performance was telecast to an audience in Perm, Russia – Anderson played the flute live on stage and onsite in Perm, while Coleman participated in the epic collaboration by playing floating in space in the International Space Station.

Jethro Tull, as a British rock outfit formed in Luton, Bedfordshire in 1967, is characterized by Anderson’s vocals, acoustic guitar, and flute-playing. Anderson has been leading Jethro Tull since its founding in a career that has spanned over forty years. Known as a blues-rock experimental band who incorporates elements of classical music, folk music, jazz, hard rock, and art rock into their music, Tull released their most critically acclaimed work, Aqualung in 1971. The conception of their following release Thick as a Brick would be offset by the success of Aqualung.

Coined as a conceptual album by music critics, in hindsight, Aqualung, was nothing compared to the mammoth of a concept album that followed. Anderson decided to give the critics plenty to talk about in Thick As A Brick, an album that welded together lyrics hypothetically written by a fictitious child, called, Gerald Bostock, whose parents supposedly lied about his age.

Now 40 years later, Ian is plagued by the question – where is Gerald Bostock today? When we asked him he told us:

“Several times over the past decade, I was approached by record companies over the subject to do a sequel for Thick As A Brick. I gave the same standard stock house not on your nilly I don’t really want to go down that route and revisit in those nostalgic sense something I did 40 years ago, but towards the end of 2010 I was having a chat with another chap in the recording business; his name is Derek Shulman lead singer for a rock band called the Gentle Giant back in the 70s and went to become A&R man and a record executive in the US, and we were chatting about this sort of thing and one of us proposed the question I wonder what Gerald Bostock would be doing today? Gerald Bostock, being a fictitious child that I wrote the lyrics for Thick As A Brick and the other question was what would happen to the St. Cleve Chronicle, the 16 page newspaper that was prepackaged with the original Thick As A Brick album."

Piqued by the idea, Ian was suddenly excited again and very much interested in executing Thick As A Brick 2 - the band decided to keep the original album title intact in the sequel, as a pervading note that the album marked 40 years since ‘part one’ was released.

“It was not a sequel in a sense of what happened next,” Anderson explains, “it was something that took a leap into the future 40 years and used Gerald Bostock as a vehicle to take us into the present. Looking at 40 years changes people, as well as society, culture, and also technology along with everything else, we find ourselves in a very different world today. I wanted us to have a kind of feeling of it being a contemporary 2012, one that has people in their vintages years, who can look at their lives and share those feelings of dark fascination of the decision making process.”

Ian also made the prediction that people who are just embarking upon their adult lives can also benefit from this fascinating take of how fate and even the chance and the decisions they make can all contribute to the outcome of their lives.

Hinging on a deeply metaphoric sense as well as a taking a highly reflective stance on life, our lifestyles, and life choices overall, Anderson makes this caveat on Thick As A Brick 2, which is to be released in this coming April – “this album is one that certainly doesn’t chime with the entertainment needs of those who watch X-Factor or in the sense of those cheesy talent shows that are highly repetitive, and very derivative and very generic pop rock music. This album might be too difficult for those who don’t have the stomach for the fight or for those who don't have the intellectual curiosity.”

Thick As A Brick 2 will be released in a standard jewel case CD and digital download, and in a Special 2-disc package with DVD featuring 5.1 stereo mixes, 24-bit stereo mix, video of the making of the album, interviews with the musicians and with Ian Anderson reading the lyrics in various venues.

Ian continues to say that he is glad he got to embark on the project. “It’s nice to have a project and at my age it will be easy to just settle back and go on little tours and play things that are proven repertories, you know the musical comfort blanket for an aging generation of fans, but life’s too short to stay in that comfort zone."

And for that we commend Anderson for keeping us on our toes and as well as for giving us something to get us riled up all over again – in an intellectual as well as a stimulating sense.

North America Tour Dates

SEPT
18 Miami Beach The Fillmore Miami Beach at The Jackie Gleason Theater
19 West Palm Beach, FL Kravis Center for the Performing Arts - Dreyfoos Hall
21 St Augustine, FL St. Augustine Amphitheatre
22 Orlando Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre
27 Atlanta Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
28 Asheville, NC Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
29 Durham, NC Durham Performing Arts Center

OCT
3 Lynn, MA Lynn Auditorium
5 New York Beacon Theatre
6 Atlantic City, NJ Caesar's Circus Maximus
7 Newark, NJ Nj Performing Arts Ctr-Prudential Hall
17 San Diego, CA Balboa Theatre
20 Long Beach, CA Terrance Theater
Long Beach Performing Arts center
22 Salt Lake City Abravanel Hall
23 Denver Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre
26 Grand Praire (Dallas), TX Verizon Theatre
27 Houston, TX Bayou Music Center

NOV
1 Milwaukee, WI Pabst Theater
2 Chicago, IL Chicago Theatre
3 Detroit, MI Fox Theatre
4 Akron, OH Akron Civic Theatre