Author Archives : Dana

RICHIE KOTZEN RELEASES VIDEO FOR “END OF EARTH”, ANNOUNCES TOUR DATES

Richie Kotzen has released a video for the song, End Of Earth, his upcoming album, Salting Earth, which will be released on April 21st on Kotzen’s own Headroom-Inc label. Watch it below.

The album will feature the tune Grammy, which can be heard here. Kotzen describes the record as “one-man production” with added background vocals on the song, Make It Easy, provided by Julia Lage.

Kotzen said, “It’s really not deliberate when the record is finished and suddenly I’m the only performer on it. It actually comes out of my process of writing and documenting my ideas.

It started back in the late 80s when I had a makeshift studio in my parents’ barn. I grew up fairly isolated, and I soon realised in order to get this music out of my head and on to a format where I could listen to it, I’d have to figure out how to do it alone.”

Kotzen will head out on tour from April in support of Salting Earth and will play shows in the US, South America and Europe.

Salting Earth track listing:

1. End Of Earth
2. Thunder
3. Divine Power
4. I’ve Got You
5. My Rock
6. This Is Life
7. Make It Easy
8. Meds
9. Cannon Ball
10. Grammy

Richie Kotzen 2017 tour dates:

Apr 21: Agoura Hills Canyon Club, CA
Apr 22: Pasadena The Rose, CA
Apr 23: San Juan Capistrano Coach House, CA
Apr 26: San Diego Brick By Brick, CA
Apr 28: Las Vegas Vamp’d, NV
Apr 29: Scottsdale BLK Live, AZ

May 1: Denver Oriental Theatre, CO
May 3: Moline Rascal’s Live, IA
May 4: St Charles Arcada Theatre, IL
May 5: Westland The Token Lounge, MI
May 7: Whitesburg Appalshop Theater, KY
May 9: Pittsburgh Hard Rock Cafe, PA
May 11: New York B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, NY
May 13: Annapolis Rams Head On Stage, MD
May 14: New Hope Havana, PA
May 17: Bethlehem Musikfest Cafe, PA
May 18: Hopewell Beacon Theater, VA
May 21: Atlanta City Winery, GA
May 22: Nashville City Winery, TN
May 24: Dallas Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill, TX
May 25: Houston Dosey Doe, TX

Jul 5: Goiana Bolshoi Pub, Brazil
Jul 7: Belo Horizonte Music Hall, Brazil
Jul 8: Rio De Janeiro Imperator, Brazil
Jul 9: Campinas Grainne’s Pub, Brazil
Jul 12: Curitiba Opera De Arame, Brazil
Jul 13: Sao Paulo Carioca Club, Brazil

Aug 30: Aschaffenburg Colos-Saal, Germany
Aug 31: Zoetermeer De Boerderij, Netherlands

Sep 1: London Islington Assembly Hall, UK
Sep 2: Paris La Maroquinerie, France
Sep 4: Milan Circolo Magnolia Segrate, Italy
Sep 6: Marseille Jas’Rod, France
Sep 7: Barcelona Be Guitar My Friend, Spain
Sep 8: Madrid But, Spain
Sep 10: Augst Augusta Raurica, Switzerland
Sep 12: Bratislava MMC, Slovakia
Sep 13: Budapest A38, Hungary
Sep 14: Prague Rock Cafe, Czech Republic
Sep 16: Berlin Frannz Club, Germany
Sep 17: Isernhagen Blues Garage, Germany
Sep 18: Cologne Luxor, Germany
Sep 19: Esch Sur Alzette Rockhal, Luxembourg

additional source: Classic Rock via teamrock.com

RAVEN ANNOUNCE 2017 TOUR DATES

NWoBHM legends Raven announce the first live dates for 2017. The band is excited to go back on the road again:

Raven say, “Hi there…after a longer than expected break Raven are ready and raring to get out on the road again…a quick warm up in the USA will be following by a Euro tour with old friends Hirax opening and we shall also be hitting the European festival circuit hard in 2017 – and squeeze in a USA tour – and working on South America & some more exotic locales!!! LET’S ALL KICK SOME ASS!!!”

Raven are that rare thing in music, true originals – cut these guys with a razor and they will bleed true heavy metal – a more intense live band does not exist on this planet!

The current album ExtermiNation was released in April 2015 as a digipak version (incl. 1 bonus track), 2LP gatefold green vinyl version, download and stream through SPV/Steamhammer. Watch videos for, Battle March/Tanks Treads and Destroy All Monsters, below.

Raven tour dates:

May:

18 Chicago,IL – Reggies
19 Clifton,NJ – Dingbatz
20 Halethorpe,MD – Fish Head Cantina

June:

3 Tyrolen, Sweden – Muskelrock
7 Roeselare, Belgium – De Verlichte Geest
8 Hamburg, Germany – Bambi Galore
9 Essen, Germany – Turock
10 Rotterdam, Netherlands – Baroeg
11 Tilburg, Netherlands – Little Devil
12 Osnabrück, Germany – Bastard Club
13 Dresden, Germany – Chemie Fabrik
14 Dornbirn, Austria – Schlachthaus
15 Firenze Italy – Circus Club
16 Milan, Italy – Blue Rose Club
17 Montbeliard, France – Aterlier des Moles

July:

15 Balingen, Germany – Bang Your Head Festival
27 Tolmin, Slovenia – Metal Days Festival
29 Brande/Hörnerkirchen, Germany – Headbangers Open Air

August:

10 Villein, Spain – Leyendas del Rock Festival
13 Kortijk, Belgium – Alcatraz Festival

October:

6 Ventura,CA – Frost & Fire Festival

December:

1-2 Sheffield, UK – O2 Academy (The X Mas Rocka NWoBHM)

OVERKILL POST CLIP FOR “SHINE ON”

Overkill have released an official video for the song, Shine On, from their new album, The Grinding Wheel, which was released on February 10th. Watch the clip below.

To listen to other songs from, The Grinding Wheel, click on the highlighted song titles:

Goddamn Trouble
Mean, Green, Killing Machine (lyric video)
Our Finest Hour (lyric video)

The Grinding Wheel track listing:

1. Mean, Green, Killing Machine
2. Goddamn Trouble
3. Our Finest Hour
4. Shine On
5. The Long Road
6. Let’s All Go To Hades
7. Come Heavy
8. Red White And Blue
9. The Wheel
10. The Grinding Wheel

NEW BOOK “SHREDDERS! THE ORAL HISTORY OF SPEED GUITAR (AND MORE)” OUT NOW, READ AN EXCERPT HERE

Author Greg Prato’s new book Shredders! The Oral History Of Speed Guitar (And More) recalls the guitar shredding phenomenon, and tells the story of the world’s fastest guitar players.

With a foreword by Rush’s Alex Lifeson and an afterword by former Scorpions guitarist Uli Jon Roth, it includes chapters on the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, Shrapnel Records, Stevie Ray Vaughan and many more.

In the excerpt below, courtesy of Classic Rock, KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick talks about the enormous impact of the great Eddie Van Halen:

“The first time I heard Eddie Van Halen, I was absolutely floored. I was also petrified. Here’s a guy who clearly understood very, very passionate lyrical lead playing. I didn’t know immediately that he was a fan of Eric Clapton—who is one of my biggest influences. But I guess that’s kind of why I responded to his playing, and it didn’t really matter if he was going to play very fast—which he could, and that was the intimidating part of his talent. And of course, some of the tricks—between the divebombs or the Floyd Rose whammy bar things and then all the finger tapping. So he really turbocharged the kind of rock lead guitar playing that I loved, and he made me have to ‘up my game.’

But I was really, really freaked out when I heard it, because it was so good, and yet so different and unique to me. Certainly, by the time I got the opportunity to work with KISS [in 1984], and especially, I remember the conversation when Paul Stanley said, ‘We’re sending Mark St. John home. You’re the new lead guitarist.’ Which I kind of felt was headed in that direction, after about eight weeks on the road with them. He said, ‘I want you to be competitive with all the guitar players, and do all the things that are popular now with guitar.’ Which is great. It was a good thing from the time that I heard Eddie and from the time I actually had the opportunity to work with KISS, I did bravely move into that territory…

…Once I got over the fear and I started to embrace some of the stuff, and I was actually really influenced by the trickery that I would do with KISS, when I had a solo on Crazy Nights [at the beginning of the song No No No] and I’m doing a whole little hammer-on piece. And no, it wasn’t Eruption, but it had elements of Eddie’s fancy guitar playing, that took lead playing to another level. I’m still a huge fan, and everything I said about the Eric Clapton connection, I was kind of aware of, but recently in one of the guitar magazines, they shared some audio of Eddie being interviewed and playing note-for-note Crossroads. And it was unbelievable to hear it, because you could still hear that fiery kind of guitar player Eddie is, but he’s still playing it ‘Eddie-style’ but he had all the phrasing of Clapton and all the vibrato down, and that’s why he’s still at the top of the game.

He was one of the guys that all the lead guitar and approach that I want to use came from—guys like Clapton, Beck, and Hendrix. I always need to mention those guys, because they were such a big influence for me growing up. And of course, there’s Leslie West, and the solo that Paul Kossoff does in All Right Now—these are all things that are so important for lead guitar playing. But when it came to going further in time, Eddie Van Halen was the one to take it to the next level, and turbo-charged it.

For me, the Sammy Hagar version of Van Halen really gave the band an opportunity to stretch out in ways I don’t think they ever could have done with David Lee Roth. I’m actually a fan of both versions of the band, but where I’ll hear many people just want to know about the David Lee Roth era, I don’t agree with that. In fact, in some ways, I think some of the stuff they accomplished with Sammy gave more facets of styles of music and let them explore more musical territory. I don’t think Eddie’s playing changed, it just put him now in another landscape, that was even bigger and broader. But again, I don’t want to take away from what they did initially, because his guitar was huge, the songs were amazing—I still get off on hearing Panama.

But when I think of some of the material that I love from the Hagar version of Van Halen, you had a singer who could really reach high notes—and powerfully. Sammy is just an incredible singer…But I thought that the songwriting was able then to be more mature. It wasn’t always tongue-in-cheek, even though they’d have fun with the songs. The element of keyboards—which I had no problem with, even though some people may have thought it was crazy—obviously, they experimented with Jump already, but I think they developed incorporating that in their sound much more so during the Sammy Hagar time.

But Eddie’s guitar was huge, the playing was great, the songwriting was terrific, there’s so many amazing songs. I thought they sounded incredible. There was no downside. Some bands, you change the singer, the whole dynamic gets ruined. And here, it became a whole other animal, that was pretty incredible. I remember seeing them live—going with Eric Carr to see them—and backstage after the show, they’re sitting there eating lobster and steak. [Laughs] They were always very cool with us. I have a lot of respect for those guys.”

Shredders! The Oral History Of Speed Guitar (And More) is available now from all good bookstores and online retailers.

additional source: teamrock.com

LISTEN TO EDDIE’S INTERVIEW WITH KISS’ PRODUCER BOB EZRIN HERE

Legendary rock producer Bob Ezrin calls in to Volume’s Trunk Nation w/Eddie Trunk to talk about his work on KISS’s studio breakthrough Destroyer, on the album’s 41st anniversary. Listen to the interview below.

LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO OF PUNKY MEADOWS AND FRANK DIMINO PERFORMING “TOWER” POSTED ONLINE

Punky Meadows and Frank DiMino of Angel came together for the first time in over 30 years to perform Tower at the Backstage Bar and Billiards in Las Vegas, on March 8th, 2017.

Just finished playing Backstage Bar and Billiards in Vegas and Frank Dimino came to the show jumped up on stage and we played the Tower,” says Punky. “It felt just like it did in Angel. The band kicked ass and Frank felt it and sang his ass off. We didn’t miss a beat and the fans went crazy!! We blew the roof off the house. It was really awesome to jam with Frank again!!” Watch below.

Remaining Punky Meadows tour dates include:

April 21st at The Chance (Poughkeepsie) and April 29th at BB Kings (New York City).