Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls has announced that while her band have had to cancel a string of European festival dates, she plans to go ahead with three Scottish shows next week on her ownsome.
Confirming the cancellation of those festival dates, which includes the upcoming Reading and Leeds festivals, Palmer writes on her website: "We've never cancelled a single show, and now three days before the flight we're pulling out of an entire tour. Brian doesn't want to go, is going through his own thing, and I am very supportive of him ... while also going through my own understandable frustration about it. I know, deep down, that we've made the right decision and that things could be no other way, but then I find myself plagued with haunting visions of a girl from Finland showing up at a Festival that she's spent a years allowance on a ticket, defied her parents orders and driven 23 hours with her best friend who is dying of leukemia only to arrive there and find, a la the Wally World scene in 'Vacation', a tattered sign scotch-taped to a chainlink fence, blowing in the wind: "Sorry, Dresdin Dolls show is Cancell". She the bursts into tears and forthwith curses my name every night before she goes to bed until she dies. fine fine. Maybe it won't be that bad."
Despite the cancellations Palmer will play three dates on her own - Moshulu in Aberdeen (23 Aug), the Exchange in Edinburgh (24 Aug) and ABC in Glasgow (25 Aug).