Stevie Nicks talks Fleetwood Mac's 2013 tour, teases new songs

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham with Mick Fleetwood on drums at the Honda Center in Anaheim in 2009.

By Randall Roberts

Dec. 3, 2012 12 AM PT

Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

As long rumored, Fleetwood Mac will hit the road in 2013 with a 34-date American tour that will see the band visit all the major U.S. markets, along with a stop at the Hollywood Bowl on May 25. The dates, which the band announced Monday, will feature co-founders Mick Fleetwood and John McVie along with longtime vocalist Stevie Nicks and singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood Mac is touring for the first time since 2009. (Christine McVie no longer tours with the band.)

In addition, according to Nicks, Fleetwood Mac has been working on new songs and is hoping to release at least two of them in anticipation of the tour. Nicks and Buckingham spent four days in the latter’s home studio in November, an interaction that hasn’t happened in a decade but whose history stretches over 45 years.

“This band never breaks up,” Nicks said on the phone from her home in Santa Monica. After the ’09 tour concluded, she added, “everybody said, ‘Goodbye, talk to you soon, and this will start happening again when everybody’s done with what we do when a Fleetwood Mac tour ends. We’ll go out and do something else and then we’ll come back and do Fleetwood Mac.’ ”

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Nicks said that the rest of the band wanted to tour last year, but that she’d been so happy with her most recent solo album, “In Your Dreams,” that she wanted to dedicate more time to supporting it. “I sat everybody down and said, ‘Listen, please understand. I’m never going to break this band up. Never. I’m never going to leave you. I’m just going to go away for under a year’ to focus on the record.

“It’s been a little longer than that,” she conceded, but that as the self-described party planner of the Mac tour, she didn’t want to shove Fleetwood Mac down peoples’ throats so soon after ’09. Her commitment, she stressed, is unwavering: “My first loyalty has always been to Fleetwood Mac. And it will always be.”

On the phone, Nicks was chatty, offering unfiltered thoughts on planning the set design, the set list, and the ways in which she prepares to get back into Mac. But she sounded relieved and most enthusiastic about reconnecting with her longtime creative -- and, for a time in the ‘60s and ‘70s, romantic -- partner Buckingham to work on new material.

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That process started when bassist McVie, drummer Fleetwood and Buckingham got together in early 2012 to work on new material. Nicks was unavailable due to the death of her mother. But a couple weeks ago, said Nicks, “I went up to Lindsey’s house, he played me all of the songs, and we chose two. He said, ‘I really tried hard to be you, to really see through your eyes when we were doing these songs, and make these songs that you would really like, and that you would really relate to.’ ”

Whether the new material ends up in the set is to be determined.

Of course, the 2013 tour will mostly focus on the dozens of classics that the band has created over the years, the volume of which dictates that any set list be partially written even before the conversations begin. The rest, says Nicks, they’ll work out in rehearsal.

Fleetwood Mac’s 2013 tour begins April 4 in Columbus, Ohio, hits New York City on April 8 for Madison Square Garden and moves westward from there. The full tour schedule is below. Pop & Hiss will have more of Nicks’ conversation on Tuesday.

April 4, 2013, Columbus, Ohio, Nationwide Arena

April 6, 2013, Philadelphia, Wells Fargo Center

April 8, 2013, New York, Madison Square Garden

April 9, 2013, Washington, D.C., Verizon Center

April 11, 2013, Louisville, Ky., KFC Yum! Center

April 13, 2013, Chicago, United Center

April 16, 2013, Toronto, the Air Canada Centre

April 18, 2013, Boston, TD Garden

April 20, 2013, Uncasville, Conn., Mohegan Sun Arena

April 23, 2013, Ottawa, Canada, Scotiabank Place

April 24, 2013, Newark, N.J., Prudential Center

April 26, 2013, Pittsburgh, CONSOL Energy Center