Once again sporting the moniker he wore as frontman of The Pixies [ tickets ], singer/songwriter Black Francis [ tickets ]--a.k.a. Frank Black [ tickets ]--will launch a brief fall tour behind his new studio album.

Francis will kick off the West Coast outing, which features multiple night stands in several cities, Oct. 1 in Portland, OR. The tour moves up and down the coast through the first half of the month, eventually hitting nine cities along the way. Dates are shown below.

The singer is touring behind his 13th solo album since debuting as a solo artist with his self-titled 1993 album, which appeared a year after the original breakup of the Pixies. "Bluefinger," which hits stores tomorrow (9/11), was recorded last fall in Portland, OR, and features the same band that Francis is employing on the road this fall: vocalist (and Francis' wife) Violet Clark, bassist Dan Schmid and drummer Jason Carter.

"I privately went back to the old stage name, if that even makes any sense, almost as a joke," said Francis in a press statement, explaining the switch back to his original persona. "I couldn't get the Pixies back into a studio, but I would transform into my alter ego of yesteryear."

Aside from playing dozens of gigs with the reunited Pixies over the last three years, Francis has toured extensively for more than a decade with several backing units, the longest lasting being The Catholics, with whom he recorded five albums in the late '90s and early years of this decade, the last of which was the 2002 combo of "Black Letter Days" and "Devil's Workshop."