Prince Launches Residency Tour of West Coast in April

Next month, Prince will head out on a residency tour of the west coast that will find him playing four shows in two days at each city he visits.

The trek will begin at the Vogue in Vancouver, where Prince will perform two shows each on April 15 and April 16. He will perform the same show schedule in Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego and Anaheim, California. The tour will last until May 7.

About a month after the trek, he will make previously announced appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. He will perform one show each July 13-15. Later, he will appear at the Stockholm Music and Arts Festival on August 4 and Denmark’s Smuckfest on August 7.

News of the tour was revealed by Prince’s current all-girl backing band, 3rd Eye Girl, on a podcast on the Prince fan site Drfunkenberry.com. `

Prince has been keeping an increasingly public schedule lately, and recently appeared with a 22-piece backing band in Austin, Texas at South by Southwest. This followed a short residency at the Dakota Jazz Club in the Minneapolis earlier this year.

He also has released a new song, “Screwdriver,” which he played with 3rd Eye Girl during an appearance on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” earlier this month. As yet, however, there has been no official word on a new album, though the possibility seems likely considering all the new tour dates.

During that Fallon appearance, he also played his 1979 song “Bambi,” after which he launched the Gibson guitar he was playing into the air, letting it crash to the stage, subsequently breaking the headstock of the guitar. It was later reported that Prince had borrowed the guitar from a member of the Roots after liking the way it sounded during rehearsals. Oops.