Van Morrison’s 37th studio album, Roll With The Punches is scheduled for release on September 22, including an ensuing fall tour promoting his new album.
Roll With The Punches will feature 15 songs, including blues and soul covers with five new songs from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and six-time Grammy award winner.
Van Morrison talked about the basis of the new album in a statement:
The songs on Roll With the Punches – whether I’ve written them or not – they’re performance oriented. Each song is like a story and I’m performing that story. That’s been forgotten over years because people over-analyze things. I was a performer before I started writing songs, and I’ve always felt like that’s what I do.
He went on to talk about some of the encounters he had with other musicians who helped him along his journey.
The thing about the blues is you don’t dissect it – you just do it. I was lucky to have met people who were the real thing, people like John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bo Diddley, Little Walter and Mose Allison. I got to hang out with them and absorb what they did. They were people with no ego whatsoever and they helped me learn a lot.
After the release of the album, Van Morrison will go on tour in the fall, including shows in the U.S. and Europe, ending the tour in his hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The album is available to pre-order now. Listen to his new song, “Bring it On Home To Me” below.