Just got to my little cabin upstate where I’m spending the rest of the week. Last night, I was at the Albany stop of the Shinedown, Breaking Benjamin and Sevendust tour. It was so much fun seeing all my friends in both bands, their crews, etc. Also ran into Maria Brink from In This Moment who was there hanging out with her Mom! She is on break and home with family in the Albany area! UPSTATE GIRLS! Also hung out with our Albany hardDrive affiliate, Steve Richards of Q103 and our friend Lea from Atlantic Records! Good times!
Sevendust’s Lajon Witherspoon told me his first son (third child) will be born Dec 17th or around there. He is so stoked! So good to see him! And so good to share a slice of pizza! LOL I interviewed Morgan Rose and we talked about upcoming plans, the next single and more.
One thing I asked all the bands about was how they are feeling about upcoming tours in Europe. Everyone had the same response. They know there are dangers, but they also know the cities, promoters and their crews will do their best to insure their stops are not vulnerable to terrorist attacks. They are strong in their conviction that the Paris attacks were something they hope will never happen again.
All the bands knew the Paris attack victim, Nick Alexander. Every single band had worked with him as their merch guy when they’ve toured overseas, who said he was called “Handsome Nick” and even one of the tour managers was once a roommate with Nick. Everyone felt it was such a terrible loss of such a great and caring person. Sad indeed.
Ben Burnley of Breaking Benjamin told me his people are working on a tour for the band to perform in Europe for the very first time. Given Ben does not take planes, he is looking into taking a ship across the Atlantic. I was the first person to tell him it looks like “Failure” could end up being the most played song in Active Rock radio for 2015. It really surprised him and needless to say, he was THRILLED at the prospect.
Since Brent Smith was suffering from some laryngitis, I sat down with Shinedown’s Eric Bass. We had a chuckle over the irony of the fact he plays a bass and his last name is spelled the same way (although his last name is pronounced like the fish.) He also spoke fondly of Nick Alexander and how the band has no fear about playing in Europe and is looking forward to being on the European Carnival of Madness Tour with headliner Black Stone Cherry and Halestorm.
The tour itself was great with a nearly sold-out Times Union Center in downtown Albany. Shinedown had huge flames and pyro (why do those explosions always go off when I am nearby??? Glad I had earplugs!) The set was great with Brent in the crowd at times. Hopefully you got to see this run. Be listening for these interviews on upcoming hardDrive and hardDrive XL shows with host Lou Brutus!
Onto the rest of today’s news:
Speaking of Ben, he was a little miffed at EA and Sony of the new Star Wars: Battlefront video game. The company sent him a game (he is a huge video game freak, has his own video game room on tour with two huge consoles playing Halo 4.) Burnley was approached by Sony and Electronic Arts to give his stamp of approval to the new Star Wars: Battlefront video game for Xbox. A confirmed hardcore gamer, Burnley says that the companies offered to pay him for endorsing the game. A number of musicians in various metal and hard rock bands have been promoting certain video games via their social media accounts lately. Video game publishers have been paying and/or giving the musicians free copies of the software in exchange for promotion — a fairly common practice, although one that just lately has extended to video games.
But the plan backfired after Burnley actually played the game and was apparently displeased, posting a photo of the broken disc on his Instagram account and writing, “They wanted to pay me to post that I like this piece of s**t game . . . They can shove it up their a** this game sucks I’d rather watch the god awful prequels then play this piece of s**t one more second (thanks) for ruining Star Wars EA.” Doh!!
Scott Stapp did a Funny Or Die film review of the movie “Creed.” Watch it here. And HBO is teasing us! As we know, the Game Of Thrones series is returning in April, and the cable channel is revealing a trump card according to Wired’s Twitter….He IS ALIVE!
Happy 51st to Godsmack’s Tony Rombola!