Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie Album, ‘Tour’

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BFF’s McVie and Buckingham on the cover of 1982’s Mirage

After a quiet period, there’s been a burst of Fleetwood Mac news, most notably the formal announcement on March 29 that The Classic East and West concerts in Los Angeles and New York in July are a “go.” Mac will headline the two weekends with the Eagles, with “support” from Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, Journey and Earth, Wind & Fire.

Today (March 31), a 30th anniversary reissue of the band’s 1987 Tango in the Night arrived in a variety of formats. (Details are here.)

Fleetwood Mac fans eager for a follow-up to 2003’s Say You Will will have to make due with the news from January 13 of the unlikely pairing of members Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie. In an interview published in the Los Angeles Times, the pair revealed that they are collaborating on a studio album with the rather ordinary working title, Buckingham McVie.

According to a mid-March interview with Uncut, the album is now scheduled to come out in the summer. McVie told the magazine about the band’s longer-range touring plan: “The 2018 tour is supposed to be a farewell tour,” says McVie. “But you take farewell tours one at a time. Somehow we always come together, this unit. We can feel it ourselves.”

So far, Buckingham and McVie have announced a single concert date scheduled in between their Classic East and West Sunday night performances. They’ll be playing at Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville, WA, on Wednesday, July 19. Lawn seats are still available here. Seats are also available at TicketNetwork.

To further tease Mac fans, two of the quintet’s other members–the band’s namesakes, in fact–Mick Fleetwood and John McVie are participating in the album project. That leaves Stevie Nicks as the sole member of the band who’s not involved, though she’s been busy with her 24 Karat Gold tour.

After her return to the band, following a long (1998-2004) hiatus, McVie and Buckingham began collaborating. McVie told the Times: “We’ve always written well together, Lindsey and I, and this has just spiraled into something really amazing that we’ve done between us.”

Watch the band perform at her first concert back, September 30, 2014…

Buckingham had apparently been noodling around with various songs. “It was just pieces with no wording,” McVie says. “So I put melody and lyrics on some of his material.”

“That was a first,” says Buckingham. “She would write lyrics and maybe paraphrase the melody — and come up with something far better than what I would have done if I’d taken it down the road myself.”

The collaboration’s working title is reminiscent of a 1973 release from Buckingham Nicks. Though a commercial flop, the two were subsequently invited to join Fleetwood Mac in 1975.

Of the new work, Buckingham says: “All these years we’ve had this rapport, but we’d never really that about doing a duet album before.”

As for “the mother ship,” for those keeping score at home: since 1990’s Behind the Mask–a span of 27 years–the group has released a whopping two studio albums.