A good friend of mine from Kansas City shot me an email this morning with the simple subject line, “Whoa.”

Now, “Whoa” could mean a lot of different things. Maybe he found a hilarious video of a talking dog, maybe he just won the lottery, maybe he meant to send the email to someone else.

Fortunately, the latter was not the case, and the body of the email was better than I could have imagined. A simple “Whoa” summed it up perfectly.

The Yardbirds Announce Brief Northeast Tour

The headline comes courtesy of GuitarWorld.com. Now, if you don’t know anything about The Yardbirds (which I’m sure is not the case), then let this serve as an introduction: This English rock band jumpstarted the careers of a handful of guitarists you might be more familiar with…Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck.

The Yardbirds set the stage for guitar innovation in the 1960s, and really created a blueprint for rock and roll that is still used today.

From TheYardbirds.com: “We really didn’t know what we were doing in those days. We were just trying everything and thumbing our noses, not knowing that it would become a blueprint for a lot of stuff.” – Co-Founder Chris Dreja

According to Guitar World, “The lineup includes original member Jim McCarty (drums) plus guitarist Ben King, bassist David Smale and vocalist Andy Mitchell, whose sound is straight out of the mid-’50s Chicago school of blues.” Unfortunately, Dreja will not be part of this short tour as he is recuperating after a recent illness.

Needless to say, if you have the chance to see one of these shows, don’t miss out. I know I’ll be there.

2/1/12 – Buffalo, NY – The Tralf
2/2/12 – Nichols, NY – Tioga Downs Racetrack
2/3/12 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
2/4/12 – Glenside, PA – Keswick Theatre
2/6/12 – Alexandria, VA – The Birchmere
2/8/12 – Tarrytown, NY – Tarrytown Music Hall
2/9/12 - New Brunswick, NJ – State Theatre