Author and former punk singer/songwriter Anna Joy Springer just released a new album, YOUR METAFOREST GUIDEBOOK, (Jaded Ibis Productions), a collaboration with musicians Rachel Carns and Tara Jane O'Neil. The trio's California tour begins June 1 in San Diego, where Springer is now a professor of literature at the University of California. The tour celebrates the release and the book's publication, with special discounts for for audiences. (REF: VICIOUS TOUR)

Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, writes: "There is only one Anna Joy Springer. Only one. Her words take me from kitten to monster and back again in a way only she can do."

The 14-track album is, in Springer's words, "a really beautiful, odd, creepy, queer, hilarious, melodramatic, somber and lush punk soundscape."

Lyrics are from her raw and refreshingly explicit memoir, THE VICIOUS RED RELIC, LOVE (Jaded Ibis Press, 2011) which focuses primarily on her years in the San Francisco Bay Area punk scene when she sang with Blatz, The Gr'ups, and Cypher in the Snow, while working in the sex trade, studying literature and trying to define her sexual identity.

Springer, who is a also a writer and visual artist, recently reunited with The Gr'ups for a three performances in Northern California.

Rachel Carns is a founding member of the artpunk metal outfit The Need, sugar pop darlings, Kicking Giant, and stoner sludge duo TWIN (originally, The King Cobra) and has collaborated with luminaries such as Mocket, Two Ton Boa, Miranda July, Wynne Greenwood, Carrie Brownstein, Kathleen Hanna, and the experimental performance art group, Cloud Eye Control.

Tara Jane O'Neil, who performs under her own name, founded the Ecstatic Tambourine Orchestra and has played with the likes of Papa M, Mount Eerie, Ida, Mirah, Michael Hurley, Lori Goldston, and the King Cobra. She composes and performs music and sound for films, theater and dance performances, and writes ensemble experimental architectures.

TOUR CITIES & DATES:
San Diego - 6/1/11 (4:30pm) UC San Diego at The Loft in Price Center. With special guest Eileen Myles. Free and open to the public. Food, beer, wine.

Los Angeles - 6/2/11 (7:30pm) - - Pieter (performance art space DANCE) 420 West Avenue 33, Unit 10. Lincoln Heights, 90031. $5-$10 donation requested, no one turned away.

San Francisco - 6/4/11 (7:30pm) - Needles and Pens, 3253 16th Street San Francisco CA 94103. Donation requested, no one turned away.

Berkeley 6/5/11 (5:00pm - 10:00pm) - 924 Gilman, 924 Gilman St. Berkeley, - CA 94710. $7