Jefferson Starship

Legendary rock band Jefferson Starship (featuring David Freiberg, Donny Baldwin, Cathy Richardson, Chris Smith, and Jude Gold) has announced the release of their new EP, Mother of the Sun, their first collection of new songs in 12 years. Released on Golden Robot Records, Mother of the Sun will hit stores and streaming platforms on August 21. The seven tracks include two songs co-written by original Jefferson Starship/Jefferson Airplane members — one co-written with Grace Slick and another co-written with Marty Balin. The collection also features the return of original Jefferson Starship member Pete Sears, who plays bass on three tracks.

Ignore who is making this album. Strip it all away and the first song “It’s About Time” would be just about one of the finest that anyone has released this year…

Original Jefferson Starship bandmembers Marty Balin, Jack Casady, and Paul Kantner were back with some songs about the millennium, protests, and life in general on 1999's Windows of Heaven. Guest vocalist Grace Slick, who sings on one track, makes the album almost a full-scale reunion. New bandmates Prairie Prince (the Tubes) and T. Lavitz (Dixie Dregs, Jazz Is Dead) add even more spice to the mix, as the offshoot of one of San Francisco's finest '60s psychedelic bands prepared itself for the 21st century…

Jefferson Starship was among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s, an even greater commercial entity than its predecessor, Jefferson Airplane, the band out of which it evolved. Many Jefferson Airplane fans decried the group's new, more mainstream musical direction, especially after Airplane singers Grace Slick and Marty Balin departed in 1978. But with shifting personnel, Jefferson Starship managed to please its new fans and some old ones over a period of a decade before it shifted gears into even more overtly pop territory and changed names again to become simply Starship.