Drop your plans for tomorrow evening and get on down to the Book Soup bookstore on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood where Joe Vitale, legendary drummer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer and all-around good guy will be autographing copies of his book Backstage Pass, a behind the scenes must-read for fans of the classic 70′s and 80′s rock ‘n roll era.

Joe is currently winding up the Crosby, Stills & Nash tour in the southern California area. He’ll be back east by October 29th playing with the band on the first night of two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Anniversary concert shows in Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Read our Backstage Pass excerpt here

Don Felder and Band personnel shuffle: bassist Shem von Schroeck will tour with Spooky Tooth for a handful of dates beginning the end of this month. The first gig is during the 50th Anniversary of Island Records concert week on May 29 in London together with Paul Weller, with a half-dozen shows to follow in Germany. Don’s band is currently without the services of keyboarder Timothy Drury who is already on the road with Whitesnake. They kicked off their 2009 world tour yesterday in Norway . . . . . .

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland will host “An Evening with Joe Vitale” coming up on Wednesday, April 15 (4th Floor Theater) at 7 p.m. The event is part of the museum’s free Songwriters to Soundmen: The People Behind the Hits series sponsored by the education department and designed to give “audiences an inside look at aspects of the music business that are often concealed from view.”

Joe recently released his third solo album Speaking in Drums as well as an autobiographical collection of stories entitled Backstage Pass, a collaboration with his wife Susie and son Joe, Jr. The book highlights some of the lighter moments of life on the road and in the recording studio during his 40+ years in professional music. Backstage Pass will soon be appearing in bookstores throughout the U.S. You can read our excerpt from Joe’s book >>here.

Crosby, Stills & Nash have announced a pair of European concert dates, June 29th at the Marquee in Cork and July 4th at the Olympia in Paris.

Fans might want to bookmark the CSN Site Tour page as more dates are certainly forthcoming.

Update: 2-25-09: Yesterday it was announced that CSN are among the 2009 inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The 40th anniversary ceremony will be in June in New York City. Story..

Joe Vitale’s new biography, Backstage Pass, ships this week, hot on the heels of his new album Speaking in Drums which was released in mid-December.Backstage Pass is a compilation of road tales gleaned from Joe’s four decades in the music business big-leagues, as told to Susie Vitale, his wife of 35 years. His experiences filled over 20 sixty-minute tapes and resulted in over 488 pages of text, including some 750 personal photographs (96 of which are in color), each one selected and sorted for publication by Joe himself.

It’s a real-life inner sleeve spanning a playing, recording, writing and producing career shared with the likes of Joe Walsh, the Eagles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Dan Fogelberg, Peter Frampton, Ted Nugent, John Entwistle, Rick Derringer and Boz Scaggs among many, with the stories continuing up to the most recent tour with Stephen Stills in October 2008. Stills, along with David Crosby and Graham Nash, penned the book’s forwarding page.

“I hope everybody enjoys reading the book as much as I did writing it,” Susie Vitale tells us, “and when you finish it, you’ll feel like you had a really great time. There are many things in the book that even his friends don’t know, and I hope the fans of all of the stars Joe has played with will get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their personalities and how sweet and kind – and funny and crazy – they are.”

“The guys have always been really wonderful to Joey and me, so I have tremendous affection for all of them,” she continues.

The project itself was, in fact, a family affair. Susie was responsible for transcribing and texting a year’s worth of recordings, while son Joe Vitale Jr. provided the graphics and technical assistance, even down to shooting the photo for the dust jacket.

“Joe Jr. and I sat and formatted the book, choosing and inserting each of the black and white photos in the stories and sizing each one to fit the layout, for what seemed like forever,” Susie explains. “His computer and graphic skills were a really important part of making this all happen.”

“It sounds ironic, but the worst part was seeing the book actually be put up for sale in August. I wasn’t nearly finished! That really put the pressure on,” she admits. “But I couldn’t rush – it had to be right. And we’re really pleased with the result.”

>Book and CD signing: Jan. 23rd at the Blue Olive Jazz Club in Canton, Ohio from 8-11 pm
>Product information: Hit records
>Joe Vitale Jr.