The Bird and the Bee's tribute to Hall & Oates

John Oates, guitar in hand, made a surprise guest appearance with The Bird and The Bee on March 5.

Anybody that is a frequent reader of this blog or my music coverage in The Orange County Register knows I am a long-time fan of Hall & Oates.

So it's no surprise I'm pleased with The Bird and The Bee's Interpreting The Masters Volume 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall and John Oates, set for release by EMI's Blue Note Records on March 23, 2010.

Here is the release from EMI that landed in my inbox earlier today:

The Bird and The Bee, the duo of singer Inara George and multi-instrumentalist/producer Greg Kurstin, kicked off a musical scavenger hunt for their fans today by premiering all nine songs from their new album Interpreting The Masters Volume 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall and John Oates on nine different Web sites: AOL Spinner, BrooklynVegan, Entertainment Weekly, Idolator, MySpace, PerezHilton, Prefix, and SPIN, and USA Today. The acclaimed band's third full-length album, which will be released March 23 on EMI's Blue Note Records, is a love letter to famed "rock and soul" duo Hall & Oates that features eight classic covers along with one new (and awesome, I might add) original song "Heard It On The Radio."

The Bird and The Bee played a once-in-a-lifetime concert on Friday night (March 5) at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles to celebrate the album release, and were joined on stage by very special surprise guest John Oates for performances of "Maneater," "She's Gone" and "I Can't Go For That." In a rave review in today's Los Angeles Times, writer August Brown wrote that Oates "couldn't have asked for a more articulate love letter than the one the bird and the bee just gave him." The entire concert was webcast live at Livestream.com, and will be archived on the site starting on Monday, March 22.

I know I was at writer Whitney Matheson's popular Pop Candy blog on USA Today earlier today and they were streaming "Private Eyes." It sounded so great that I had to go back and listen to my digital advance of the full tribute album. I'll have more to say about this wonderful The Bird and The Bee tribute the week of its release.