Stephen Stills

JUST ROLL TAPE, A COLLECTION OF 12 PREVIOUSLY UNISSUED AND LONG-LOST 1968 DEMOS OF NOW-CLASSIC STILLS SONGS IS SET FOR RELEASE JULY 10 ON RHINO RECORDS/EYEWALL RECORDS

Highlights include first-ever recordings of 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,' 'Helplessly Hoping,' 'Wooden Ships' and 'Change Partners' plus bonus demo of 'Treetop Flyer'

Stephen Stills is one of rock and roll's pre-eminent guitar virtuosos -- he's #28 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time" -- and one of its most legendary singer-songwriters.

For four decades, through his solo work and as a member of a stellar array of iconic groups -- including The Buffalo Springfield, Manassas, Crosby, Stills & Nash and CSN&Y -- Stills has helped shape the popular music landscape and remained one of its most enduring artists.

This summer, fans will have the chance to experience Stills' extraordinary music first-hand as he embarks on the second leg of his solo tour, "An Evening With Stephen Stills," beginning with a June 15 date at the Music Hall in Toronto.

Stills -- the only artist ever to be inducted twice in one night into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for the Springfield and CSN -- will be joined on the road by an ace band including drummer Joe Vitale (who's played with Stills since the early '70s) and bassist Kenny Passarelli.

Highlights include shows at Chicago's Park West (6/20), Minneapolis' Pantages Theatre (6/23), Aspen, CO's Belly Up (6/29), the Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom (7/4), San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts (7/9), Los Angles' House Of Blues (7/13) and Phoenix, AZ's Dodge Theater (7/17).

As of this writing, the tour wraps at Indio, CA's Fantasy Springs Casino on July 22. Prior to the spring leg of his solo tour, Stills' last road outing was CSN&Y's summer 2006 "Freedom Of Speech" tour.

Stills will perform songs from throughout his career, including selections from his most recent solo album, 2006's acclaimed Man Alive!. "Doing this tour is all about having fun," Stills told the Winston-Salem Journal in May.

"I haven't done anything this intimate in a long, long time, and I think it will be good for me and for the fans. People will be surprised by the new songs, and by how well many of the older ones hold up ... I'll actually get to talk, and tell a few stories, so it's all kind of like my short-cut autobiography."

An especially amazing piece of that autobiography unfolds while Stills is on the road this summer with Rhino Records/Eyewall Records' July 10 release of Just Roll Tape -- April 26th 1968. The disc -- the first on Stills' Eyewall imprint through Rhino -- is a collection of 12 previously unreleased demos from an impromptu '68 session in a NYC studio.

Included among the sonic gems are the first-ever recordings of songs that would later become classics for Stills solo and his various groups including "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Helplessly Hoping," "Wooden Ships" and "Change Partners." After recording these now-historic demos, Stills left the masters in the studio, and they were almost discarded when the facility closed in '78. Joe Colasurdo, a musician rehearsing there back then, was told by the owner that he could cart off any tapes he wanted to before they cleared the place out. After seeing Stills' names on several of the boxes, Colasurdo kept them safe until he could find a reel to reel machine to play them on.

Realizing the treasure he had, Joe began attempting to get the masters safely back into Stills hands, an undertaking that took much determination, and -- amazingly -- 25 years.

In 2003, he was connected to Graham Nash after happening to meet a close friend of his. Nash received the tapes, passed them on to Stephen, encouraging him to release them. The rest is music history, as made by Stephen Stills on Just Roll Tape.

For more information, visit http://www.stephenstills.com.

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Source: Rhino Records
LOS ANGELES, June 12, 2007 /PRNewswire/ --