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Henry Rollins to sound off on new spoken-word outing

Armed only with a microphone, the always-opinionated Henry Rollins sets out next month for a string of spoken-word tour dates.

Rollins launches the run on Jan. 13 in the college town of Tempe, AZ, and is scheduled to work his way around the country through at least the end of February.

The outing follows the recent release of Rollins' "Nights Behind the Tree Line," a spoken-word album that he recorded in the studio rather than in front of a live audience.

In a statement posted on his website, Rollins explained that the idea to record the album stemmed from a recent appearance on BBC Radio in London, during which he read his piece "No Shore II," an homage to writer Thomas Wolfe.

"Afterwards, I got to thinking about reading a few things in the studio for release to change things up from the usual live spoken recordings I put out," he said. "So, ['Nights Behind the Tree Line' is] stuff I wrote, read aloud to brave and patient engineer Brian on the afternoons of September 16 & 23, 2003."

Rollins went on to say that $1 from each copy of "Nights Behind the Tree Line" sold will go to "Hollygrove Children's Services here in the doomed city of Los Angeles so these kids can grow big and strong and get the hell out of this town!"

In the midst of the upcoming spoken-word outing, Rollins releases "Live at Luna Park," a 76-minute DVD featuring footage culled from his nine-show residency at Los Angeles' Luna Park in 1999. The set is due out on Feb. 10.