Dr. John kicks off a two-week tour of the United States featuring music from his Nonesuch debut album, Locked Down, and favorite tunes from throughout the New Orleans legend's 50+ year career. Joining him for the tour will be his band The Lower 911 featuring Jon Cleary. In addition to his own headline shows, Dr. John will join Gov't Mule for several shows across the South and will be a special guest of Iron & Wine for a show at the Ravinia Festival. At the end of the month, the tour heads to Europe for several club shows and festival sets through July.

Dr. John's video for the track "Revolution," which premiered yesterday on NPR, is now available via Dr. John's YouTube channel. The song is from the New Orleans legend's universally-lauded collaboration with The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, Locked Down. Directed by Reid Long, the video offers a behind-the-scenes look at Dr. John's recent three weekend residency at BAM. NPR calls it "three and a half minutes of horn-laden rock that are simultaneously relaxed and tightly wound." Watch the video here.

NPR has premiered the new video for Dr. John's "Revolution" from the New Orleans legend's universally-lauded collaboration with The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, Locked Down. Directed by Reid Long, the video offers a behind-the-scenes look at Dr. John's recent three weekend residency at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Watch the video here. Dr. John will take songs from Locked Down across the US and Europe, appearing with his band The Lower 911 featuring Jon Cleary as well as Iron & Wine, Gov't Mule, and more.

The 2012 New Orleans Jazz Fest got under way last weekend. Carolina Chocolate Drops gave "a joyous, emotionally committed show," reports the Times-Picayune, which calls Cheikh Lô's set "as colorful and unique as his signature patchwork tunic," and notes that Dr. John sounded "newly invigorated" as on his new album, Locked Down. He also joined Bruce Springsteen on stage to help close the first weekend in style. This coming weekend sees Dr. John's return and a set from another favorite son of New Orleans, Allen Toussaint.

The 2012 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, better known as Jazz Fest, gets under way today and runs through this weekend and the next at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans. Among the performers set to take the various stage at the festival this year are four artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: two New Orleans legends and hometown heroes, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint, plus two artists whose unique musical styles will make them feel right at home at Jazz Fest, Carolina Chocolate Drops and Cheikh Lô.

Happy Record Store Day! Nonesuch Records has made a series of special releases available today in honor of the fifth annual Record Store Day, a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA and hundreds of similar stores internationally. Among the artists releasing albums and singles today are The Black Keys, Dr. John, Billy Bragg & Wilco, Sara Watkins, and Carolina Chocolate Drops. A limited quantity of each Record Store Day title is also available on the Nonesuch Store now.

Dr. John is the guest on this week's Jamie Cullum show from BBC Radio 2. Dr. John, whom Cullum calls one of his "true musical heroes" and “the coolest guy in the universe,” discusses his life and career and his new album, Locked Down, which the Boston Herald names Album of the Week. "It’s voodoo rock, dense, strange, tangled, beautiful in its darkness," says the Herald. "It also adds wild, welcome new flavors to the gumbo. West African highlife grooves Fela would flip for are everywhere. ’60s Stax soul sneak in during select choruses and bridges. Shaft-style funk drops in for a few druggy intros and outros." The A.V. Club calls it "an inspired collaboration ... at once classic and modern."

Dr. John's collaboration with The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, Locked Down, landed at #33 on the Billboard 200 this week, making it, remarkably, the highest chart debut in the New Orleans legend and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s 50-plus-year career. It also debuted at #1 on Billboard's Blues Albums chart and #8 on the Rock Albums chart, and had an excellent first week outside the US as well, entering the charts in the top 100 in many countries. Locked Down has received rave reviews everywhere from SPIN and Pitchfork to The Guardian and NPR, with many echoing David Fricke’s assessment in Rolling Stone that “Dr. John has made his best album in four decades.”

Dr. John was joined by Dan Auerbach and the band from his new album, Locked Down, for the live premiere of Locked Down at BAM last week. "Physical and spiritual, earthly and supernatural, a memento mori and a promise of transcendence—all were aspects of Dr. John’s music for the night," reports the New York Times. Rolling Stone says the "band's potent sound and focused energy pushed the New Orleans legend into new sonic territory." The Times-Picayune calls the new album "timeless." The Morton Report says: "This is prime time light-up-your-eyeballs sound, complete with twisting rhythms, curvalicious horn lines, croaky vocals, and irresistible freedom at the heart of what the players are putting down." The Star Telegram calls it "one of 2012's great albums thus far." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calls it "phenomenal."

Dr. John, whose new album, Locked Down, is out this week, performed the album track "Revolution" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night. He was joined by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, who produced Locked Down, and the album's band. Watch it here. They premiere more live music from the album at BAM this week as part of Dr. John's residency there. In a feature on Locked Down on NPR's All Things Considered, Tom Moon says: "Incredibly, in the few weeks they spent creating this, Dan Auerbach and Dr. John roused some spirits not heard from since the late 1960s and got them to speak about what it means to be alive and kicking in 2012."

Dr. John's new album, Locked Down, is out now on CD and digitally, with the vinyl to follow on April 21, and is streaming in full all week at MSN Music. Dr. John and producer Dan Auerbach perform on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight. They spoke to NPR's Morning Edition about the album's more personal side. The LA Times gives Locked Down a perfect four stars: "As Bob Dylan did with Time Out of Mind and Tom Waits did last year with Bad as Me, Dr. John does here ... creating something magical, the embodiment of everything he’s done but pushed in a clear new direction." The Seattle Times calls it "stunning." The Boston Globe says: "It's Dr. John in full splendor." The Independent on Sunday, Observer, and Financial Times all give it four stars. The Sunday Times calls it a "tour de force."

Dr. John, who launched his three-week residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) last night, is the subject of a feature article in the New York Times that looks at his career and the unexpected turn it takes on his new album, Locked Down, produced by Dan Auerbach. They are featured in the Wall Street Journal, which says the "incendiary new album ... both harks back to [Dr. John]'s past and breaks new musical ground." Locked Down earns four stars from the Independent and the Times of London, which says Auerbach "has brought out the best in a true American original." The Guardian gives a perfect five stars to this "inspired" album: "[N]o one makes music like this: the Night Tripper rampages inimitably through swamp blues, voodoo funk and Afrobeat, with his trademark piano ... Terrific stuff."