Van Halen to Perform at New York's Cafe Wha? This Thursday

Band expected to debut new single sometime this month

Jeffrey Ufberg/WireImage

Journalists across New York have been invited to a Van Halen concert at the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village this Thursday.  Though nothing is official, word is the band are going to perform a 45-minute set. The group hasn't played in public since the end of their 2007/'08 reunion tour with original frontman David Lee Roth, though they have been rehearsing for their upcoming world tour at the Roxy in Los Angeles for the past few months. A new album is in the works, and a new image released by the band has the date 2.7.12 on it. A new video and single is expected to hit sometime this month. The tour goes on sale January 10th.
The 250-seat Cafe Wha? may seem like an unlikely place for Van Halen to launch their new tour, but the club has an important family connection to David Lee Roth. His uncle Manny Roth owned and operated the venue, providing a stage to then-up-and-coming acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Bill Cosby, Bob Dylan, Richard Pryor and many others.
While the Van Halen camp has been extremely quiet about the band's plans for 2012, they recently put up a giant billboard in Times Square and teaser footage showing the band rehearsing at the Roxy. They have also given the fansite VHLinks two exclusive videos of the band reminiscing about Eddie Van Halen's old Volvo and judging wet T-shirt contests back in the Seventies. The site also says that a "trusted source" tells them the band has been "busy booking rehearsal space and hotel rooms for the band and their crew for [this] week in NYC."
Check out the image of the band's Times Square billboard below.

Van Halen's newly revealed album artwork.