The Sea and Cake have announced tour dates in support of their eighth full-length studio album, “Car Alarm.” The tour begins in November. For a complete list of stops, check out Thrill Jockey’s Web site. “Car Alarm” will be released Oct. 21.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Steven Garcia pulled into a Houston gas station recently to fill up the old Dodge van his punk band uses on summer tours.

For months, the 23-year-old singer-guitarist had been budgeting money and booking show dates for Something Fierce’s third tour - but skyrocketing gas prices have put the brakes on those plans.

“Once I ran the numbers it was a ‘There’s no (expletive) way’ kind of moment,” Garcia said. After much hand-wringing and grumbling from bookers who’d scheduled the band to play, Garcia canceled the tour.

Cramming into a rusty, creaky van and playing dive bars and house parties is a summer ritual for many young musicians and ambitious independent bands trying to get exposure, make a living and maybe build a solid future in music.

But like everything else that requires lengthy time on the road, filling up at $4 a gallon or more is taking a toll.

On the grass-roots level, cost has always been a concern for touring bands. But the nearly $2,500 in gas Garcia and his two bandmates would have had to pay just to make it to Vancouver, Canada, and back was too much to overcome.

“There’s no way we can sustain a blow that big,” he said, adding that the band is lucky to break even on a tour even when gas prices are more moderate.

If they’re not canceling their tours, small acts are banding together, stuffing themselves into smaller vehicles or cutting short their tours.

“We do have two bands, The Revisions and The Estranged, out on tour together right now who have decided to share a van to save on gas costs,” said Dirtnap’s Ken Cheppaikode, in an e-mail.

Cheppaikode said that after putting seven band members and their equipment into a van, they didn’t have room for a roadie.

San Francisco’s LoveLikeFire, a young band that counts on touring to make money and increase its fan base, now tries to get to the East Coast more often because the cities are closer to each other than out west.

“We often ask ourselves, is it worth driving so far when gas is almost $5 a gallon?” said Ann Yu, the band’s singer. “We spend at least 150 bucks in gas to (get to) a show, when there is no guarantee that you’ll make any of it back.

“It does screw up a lot of bands on the West Coast, ‘cause … there are very few cities to play in under seven-hour stretches, which can be costly,” Yu said.

The tough choices being made at the bottom of the music industry food chain are just one more hit to the business already reeling from declining album sales because of digital music.

Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar, a trade publication covering the concert business, said the cost of fuel is affecting all levels, but the “people being most affected are new bands touring on the subsistence level. They don’t have the popularity to charge higher ticket prices because of higher fuel costs.”

Weathering soaring prices for more famous bands sometimes means just cutting back. “Like big acts using eight trucks instead of 12 this time around,” Bongiovanni said.

Larger bands can also ask clubs for guaranteed money to play, meaning even if no one comes to the show, they’ll still get paid. And with the higher gas prices, they’re asking for more, said Romona Downey, who books bands at the Bottom of the Hill club in San Francisco, which is popular with midlevel touring bands.

Dirtnap’s Cheppaikode said the independent bands on his label don’t always have the leverage to ask for guaranteed money and therefore they swallow the extra costs. They also tend to play at very small venues that may not be able to offer guarantees.

“I always tell our bands to make sure they have lots of (merchandise) to sell on each tour,” he said.

Still, the groups have to get there to sell their goods. So for the little guy, there’s often no choice but to keep truckin’ and gas prices just become another hurdle on an already difficult road to stardom.

“What else can you do?” Yu said. “It’s just the battle scars of trying to get your music out there. And for every band that doesn’t or can’t do it, there are other ones that can and will.”

Related Links:

www.dirtnaprecs.com

www.somethingfiercemusic.com

lovelikefire.com

www.cafedunord.com

www.bottomofthehill.com

According to Star Pulse Entertainment, Supergrass will be launching a summer tour alongside the Foo Fighters in support of their latest album “Diamond Hoo Ha.” The Britpop act released its sixth studio album on June 10 off their new record label Astralwerks. For tour information, see Supergrass.com.

By JAKE COYLE/The Associated Press

MANCHESTER, Tenn. - Bonnaroo began in earnest Friday with the rarest of double bills: Chris Rock followed by Metallica.

Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett introduced Rock, and the comedian in turn introduced who he called “the baddest … band in the world.” Both acts were unlikely fare for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which began in 2002 as primarily a jam band event.

But in recent years, Bonnaroo has broadened itself and brought more diverse fans to its 700-acre countryside site south of Nashville. Among the tens of thousands of festival-goers, Rock, Metallica and many other performers were very conscious of their entry into a tie-dyed world they seldom traffic in.

In a bit in his set about Prozac and other medications, Rock chastised the crowd, who he said was likely on “performance-enhancing drugs.”

“You all should be ashamed of yourselves for taking antidepressants to see a comedian,” joked Rock. “I am an antidepressant!”

Metallica also touted its cheerfulness.

“Do you feel good?” lead singer James Hetfield asked the crowd. “Metallica is here to make you feel better.”

Performing on the main stage Friday night, Rock jumped right into his material, much of which he’s performed during recent touring. Looking on backstage were many of the other comedians performing at the festival, as well as Jack White, whose band the Raconteurs took the main stage earlier in the day.

Rock worked the giant crowd without missing a beat in his timing, hitting on the election, Anna Nicole Smith and high gas prices despite the war in Iraq, (”If I invade IHOP, pancakes are going to be cheaper in my house,” he said).

Metallica had a more difficult time winning over the crowd, which was head-banging but apparently not moshing. Hetfield repeatedly urged the audience to sing along. He asked, “We do have a few Metallica friends here, yes?”

Hetfield occasionally informed the crowd the titles of the songs they were playing and which album they were from. “That was ‘No Remorse’ from ‘Kill ‘Em All,”‘ he said, an annotation that would have normally been completely superfluous for the band.

But Metallica is an exceptionally hard working band - they could be heard practicing backstage in a trailer shortly before their set. Eventually, they won the crowd over with their tenacity, as well as classics like “Sad But True” and “Enter Sandman,” the latter of which was accompanied by pyrotechnics.

Like a jam band, Metallica has a fiercely devoted following and Hetfield alluded to this Bonnaroo-ness of Metallica: “We support live music … and that’s why we’re here.”

The notorious Tennessee heat that has in the past made Bonnaroo a chore was thus far bearable (after midnight, My Morning Jacket pulled out a cover of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime”). But by then, the rain that had threatened through much of the day finally fell.

One of Friday’s big questions was whether M.I.A., the British electronic dancehall rapper, would show. She recently canceled her upcoming European tour due to exhaustion from touring, but still performed an energetic set at Bonnaroo. She repeatedly called it her “last show.”

“This is my last show, and I’m glad I’m spending it with all my hippies,” she announced.

Usually sold-out with an attendance of 80,000, this year’s Bonnaroo hadn’t yet reached capacity, but was overrun with tens of thousands of fans who came from far and wide to camp through the weekend.

“So is everyone having a nice communal experience?” Vampire Weekend lead singer Ezra Koenig asked the crowd. He later added, with perhaps some sarcasm: “You guys, I’m sure, have a full weekend in store of discovering yourselves and others.”

The New York-based indie band Vampire Weekend was part of the relatively thin Thursday night slate that also included several comedians, a tradition of Bonnaroo. Janeane Garofalo and Zach Galifianakis were among those performing in the circus-style comedy tent.

“They asked me if I wanted to perform at Bonnaroo and I said, ‘Will there be a circus tent?”‘ joked Galifianakis. His comedy often intersects with music; he plays piano during much of his act and he’s starred in music videos for Fiona Apple and Kanye West, who’s performing late Saturday night at Bonnaroo.

Garofalo said the challenges for a comedian in such an environment can be many.

“Nothing is better for comedy than doing it during the day, having this kind of noise behind you and doing it in a circus tent,” she joked.

Also to play Friday were the Raconteurs, Willie Nelson, My Morning Jacket and the Swell Season and the duo of Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard and Czech pianist Marketa Irglova - the stars of the film “Once.”

Hansard said he’s still adjusting to being the co-winner - along with Irglova - of the Academy Award for best original song (”Falling Slowly” from “Once”).

“It’s a new personality to try on or a new set of clothes to try on,” said Hansard, who was less famous as the lead singer of the Frames. “Everything you’ve been is basically over. … Sometimes it feels more comfortable having potential rather than having accreditation.”

Related links:

www.bonnaroo.com