Tift starts the European part of the tour this Saturday, May 3rd in Kilkenney, Ireland at the Kilkenny Rhythm & Root Festival. There are rumored to be upcoming shows in Germany and Paris, but you did not hear that from me. I am slowly getting the European tour dates on the Calendar, but would appreciate your help. If you see anything that is missing, or an incorrect date or time, please let me know. I'm a bit behind on the Calendar, but you probably noticed that already :).

Also, I can't remember which shows she'll be doing solo, and which will be with the band. Her manager, David, keeps in regular contact with Phillip and I, but I'm losing things in the shuffle. Things have been really crazy for the last month, but I mean that in a good way. I know that David is getting a lot of fan e-mails on the .com site, and we are noticing a lot more interest in our site. New fans are discovering Tift, sending in pictures, e-mailing Tift, etc. There seems to be a couple blogs on the Internet each day about her music or one of her shows. 

As the European part of the tour starts on Saturday and our 2 year anniversary comes up this week (May 1st), I wanted to thank everyone for contributing to the site. It has been a huge success.

And we've kept the band well stocked with Maker's Mark .

And thanks Chris and Phillip too, for feeding us Tift fans with our essential pieces of Tift news every day!

EUROPE AND THE UK ARE READY AND WAITING FOR THE 2008 TIFT INVASION!

Things are hotting up for Tift in the UK already...  She has just let us know that Another Country is Album of the Week on BBC Radio Scotland http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/radioscotland/programmes/iainanderson/

Plus some fantastic news about Broken too.... As from this week the track has made it as a new entry onto the national BBC Radio 2 playlist !
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/playlist/#clist

This means she is GUARANTEED at least 5 spins of the song per week on shows that are broadcast across the whole of the UK. This may not sound like much at the moment but records tend to move up the playlists each week after joining.  If the record gets onto and up to the A-list it'll get 20 spins per week at least. More info on the playlist here...http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/playlist/latestrecordsofweek.shtml#playlist

Radio 2 have been great to Tift in the past as I'm sure you know  and it looks like they're continuing to be so - it is almost definitely the most listened to radio station across the country so this is a great bit of promo work to get the song on the list.

In case you haven't received the latest Tift-mail listing all her European dates (and if not why not?  Sign up here http://www.tiftmerritt.com/index.php?page_id=51)

Here's the full Tift Merritt Europe 2008 tour dates... 

Sat & Sun May 3 & 4 Kilkenny, Ireland Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Festival
Mon May 5 Maidstone, England Zebra Bar
Wed May 7 Swansea, Wales Monkey
Thu May 8 Bristol, England St Bonaventure
Sat May 10 Buckingham, England The Radcliffe Center
Sun May 11 Edinburgh, Scotland The Pleasance
Tue May 13 London, England The Green Note
Thu May 15 York, England National Center For Early Music
Fri May 16 Chorley, England, St Bedes
Sat May 17 Newcastle, England The Cluny
Tue May 20 Berlin, Germany Quasimodo
Wed May 21 Paris France La Java
Fri May 23 Amsterdam, The Netherlands Paradiso
Sat May 24 Brussels, Belgium Toogenbiik
Tue May 27 Stockholm, Sweden Nalen
Thu May 29 Goteburg, Sweden Storen
Fri May 30 Malmo, Sweden Kulturbolaget
Sat May 31 Lund, Sweden Mejeriet Café
Sun Jun 15 Oslo, Norway Norwegian Wood Festival
Sun Jun 29 Glastonbury, England Glastonbury Festival
Tue Jul 1 London, England Bush Hall
Wed Jul 2 Sheffield, England Memorial Hall
Thu Jul 3 Nottingham England Rescue Rooms
Sat Jul 5 Manchester, England Academy 3  (new date not on the email)
Sun Jul 6 Cornbury, England Cornbury Festival

Tift is solo 5 - 31 May, All other dates with full band.