What: Daniel Lanois, with Steve Nistor on drums, as part of the Niagara Wine Festival

When: Tomorrow, 9 p.m.

Opening acts: Oliver Black (6 p.m.), Neverending White Lights (7 p.m.), Danny Michel (8 p.m.)

Where: Montebello Park, St. Catharines

Tickets: $35 at the door or $30 advance at niagarawinefestival.com

Daniel Lanois will begin putting the finishing touches on the new U2 album next week, but first he's going to perform a special concert at the Niagara Wine Festival.

Lanois, the Hamilton-raised musician and studio genius who has coproduced most of U2's biggest hits since the mid-'80s, told The Spectator yesterday he plans on going to New York Tuesday to begin mixing U2's next CD, expected to be released next year.

Lanois has been working with coproducer Brian Eno on the U2 project for more than a year with recording sessions in Ireland, France and Morocco. The U2 album will also be the first to give Lanois, always a close collaborator with the band, songwriting credits.

"I feel great about it," Lanois said from his Toronto studio. "It's innovative, and the president of the company (Bono) is singing like a bird. I can only anticipate it's going to be one of their big ones."

Tomorrow night, Lanois will headline a concert at Montebello Park in downtown St. Catharines as part of the Niagara Wine Festival. Following his mixing sessions in New York, he'll continue touring in Canada and the United States, culminating Nov. 14 with his first concert at Toronto's historic Massey Hall.

Lanois, who built Hamilton's Grant Avenue Studio, has formed his own label, Red Floor Records (redfloorrecords.com), to distribute his music through downloads and mail order.

"I've always had a corner store of some kind, including that one on Grant Avenue," Lanois said. "Red Floor is just a continuation of Danny's corner store."

He's releasing a deluxe reissue of his first solo album, Acadie. The package includes a 32-page book of photos and inscriptions by Lanois, and six unreleased recordings from the Acadie sessions.

"I went into the library and found some very early mixes of some of the songs, and decided they were just as good, but very different, than the end ones," Lanois said.

Acadie's reissue on Red Floor will be followed by a series of six CDs of mostly instrumental work under the title Omni.

* The Niagara Wine Festival continues throughout the weekend. On Friday night the Beatles tribute band The Caverners perform, with Zaki Ibrahim and Hamilton's Tomi Swick taking the stage Saturday night, and The Philosopher Kings Sunday, all at 8:30 p.m.

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331