With the October 29th release of their sophomore album Revolution Rise only a few weeks away, Kill Devil Hill are taking their new material on the road for a headlining club tour. The tour begins October 26th in Ramona, CA, and runs through the month of November with support from Century Media Records label mates Eyes Set To Kill and Girl On Fire, as well as Black Water Rising (see dates below).
Featuring Pantera and Down bassist Rex Brown, former Dio, Black Sabbath and Heaven And Hell drummer Vinny Appice, ex-Pissing Razors singer Dewey Bragg and acclaimed session/touring guitarist Mark Zavon, Kill Devil Hill combine a classic feel with fresh energy. The band recently offered fans their first taste of Revolution Rise with the release of Crown Of Thorns. Lisen to the song below.
Says Rex Brown of the album, “This new Kill Devil Hill record is definitely one of my favorite moments of my career – it’s got balls, great melodies, awesome guitar riffing and a low end that’ll set your ass on fire! The album far exceeds our wildest expectations and we can’t wait to take this music out on the road and share it with all of our friends and fans. Buckle your seat belts, we’re all in for one hell of a ride!”
Revolution Rise was produced by Kill Devil Hill and Jeff Pilson (Dokken, T&N, War & Peace). Different pre-order bundles are now on-sale exclusively through both CM Distro and at the Kill Devil Hill online store.
Exclusive Kill Devil Hill VIP packages including early admission to sound check and the show, a meet and greet with the band, a VIP laminate and t-shirt, and an autographed 8×10 are available for all shows by visiting www.killdevilhillmusic.com/vippackages.
Kill Devil Hill Tour Dates (with Eyes Set To Kill, Girl On Fire & Black Water Rising):
October:
26: Ramona, CA – Ramona Mainstage * / **
27: Fullerton, CA – Slidebar **
28: Chico, CA – Lost On Main **
29: West Hollywood, CA – Roxy Theatre **
31: Tucson, AZ – The Rock **
November:
1: Tempe, AZ – Club Red * / **
2: Las Vegas, NV – LVCS
3: Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue
5: Seattle, WA – El Corazon
6: Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theater
7: Walnut Creek, CA – Red House Live
10: Flagstaff, AZ – Orpheum Theatre
11: Gallup, NM – Gallup Community Center
13: Austin, TX – Dirty Dog
14: Houston, TX – Scout Bar
17: Oklahoma City, OK – The Chameleon Room ***
19: Minneapolis, MN – Skyway Theater ***
20: Appleton, WI – Luna Lounge ***
21: Battle Creek, MI – Planet Rock ***
22: Mentor On The Lake, OH – Tequila Jaxx
23: Steger, IL – Another Hole In The Wall
* no Eyes Set To Kill
** no Girl On Fire
*** no Black Water Rising
Classic Rock is streaming a new song from Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock called Where The Wild Winds Blow. Listen to it below.
Where The Wild Winds Blow comes from the forthcoming album Bridge The Gap, which will be released on December 2nd, featuring his current band Temple Of Rock which includes vocalist Doogie White, guitarist/keyboardist Wayne Findlay, bassist Francis Buchholz and drummer Herman Rarebell. This is the first time Schenker and his fellow ex-Scorpions bandmates Buchholz and Rarebell have appeared on the same album since 1979′s Lovedrive.
Bridge The Gap is described as “an album of 13 hard-hitting, adrenalin-fuelled melodic rock’n’roll songs that showcase Shenker’s distinctive and explosive guitar playing”.
Scots singer White, who co-wrote the record, says, “Michael and I had talked about recording an album after the tour of 2012. We never spoke about it again until January 2013, when he sent me seven ideas he’d been working on. I’d never really written with him before so I didn’t know how flexible he would be, writing-wise. So I recorded some vocal tracks as ideas, and when Michael heard them we were off and running. Within two weeks we were in the studio.”
Schenker himself adds, “I wanted to combine the old with the new; that’s why the album’s called Bridge The Gap. I always have some new, fresh sparks to share when I record a new album. I am inspired from within – it’s infinite like a kaleidoscope.”
But he says the title has an additional meaning, “Everything that’s currently going on in this world shows that people are desperate for change. We need to bridge the gap of poverty. There are too many innocent people getting killed in terrorist attacks. We need to leave all of this chaos behind us. We have to be strong. We have to continue moving forward, working together in a balanced way.”
Certain editions of Bridge The Gap will include bonus track Faith, with vocals by Don Dokken.
Bridge The Gap track list:
1. Neptune Rising
2. Where The Wild Winds Blow
3. Horizons
4. Lord Of The Lost And Lonely
5. Rock N’Roll Symphony
6. To Live For The King
7. Land Of Thunder
8. Temple Of The Holy
9. Shine On
10. Bridges We Have Burned
11. Because You Lied
12. Black Moon Rising
13. Dance For The Piper
Mark Taylor of MetalTalk.net recently spoke with former Ozzy Osbourne members Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake in London, England. Watch the interview below.
Bob Daisley is currently selling his autobiography For Facts Sake at his official website.
To read more about this release, please click here.
Iconic rock vocalist Sebastian Bach is currently hard at work in the studio under the direction of producer Bob Marlette (Rob Zombie, Black Sabbath, Shinedown etc) to record the anticipated follow up album to the acclaimed Kicking & Screaming. The new effort will be released through Frontiers Records and is tentatively scheduled for spring 2014.
Of his forthcoming new album, Sebastian Bach commented, “I am happy to say we have completed the drums and most of the bass guitar for the new record. It is a pleasure to write songs with Duff, Steve, Bob, and Devin. The album will be mastered by Tom Baker who has mastered my last three albums. This CD will be balls out in-your-face high-energy rock ‘n roll which just so happens to be my favorite style of music. I look forward to releasing the record & playing these songs live for you all in 2014!”
Sebastian managed to involve in the writing and recording some very special friends and guest stars, including none other than: Duff McKagan (Velvet Revolver, Guns n’Roses), and not one but two top class guitar players: John 5 (Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie) and Steve Stevens (Billy Idol). Rounding up the lineup on the album are Devin Bronson on guitars and Bobby Jarzombek on drums. Duff and Sebastian have previously collaborated on Duff’s solo album Believe In Me.
In the meantime Sebastian has made available a new live video clip of Big Guns taken from the recent Live DVD/CD package ABachalypse Now released last March on Frontiers. This is the 3rd video from ABachalypse Now and can be viewed below.
ABachalypse Now can now be found in DVD/CD/LP. The LP is in a 180 gram Coloured Double Vinyl Gatefold Sleeve Format . The DVD/CD set includes Bach’s recent explosive performances from the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles (originally broadcasted on AXS TV in North America), Hellfest in France, Graspop in Belgium and more.
Greg Prato of Song Facts spoke with former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. Portions of the interview appear below.
Songfacts: What are you currently up to musically?
Gilby Clarke: Well, musically, I’m touring a lot right now. I have two projects I’m currently doing. One is, I have a solo band that’s just my name, I go out and do live dates. It’s songs from solo records I’ve done, a little bit of Guns N’ Roses, Slash’s Snakepit… any kind of music I’ve always liked to play.
And then I have another band called Kings of Chaos, and that’s with myself, Matt Sorum and Duff [McKagan] from G n’ R, with Steve Stevens, Joe Elliott, Glenn Hughes, Ed Roland – it’s like an all-star cast of musicians. We go out and do shows and basically play the greatest hits. Whoever’s in the band, we play songs from their catalog. So that’s basically what has been keeping me busy over the last year.
Songfacts: I was looking at some of the albums that you’ve played on throughout the years, and I noticed that you collaborated on Slash’s first solo album [the 1995 Slash’s Snakepit release It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere], on a song called Dime Store Rock.
Gilby: Absolutely. Yep.
Songfacts: And you also wrote I think several other tracks on that album.
Gilby: Yeah. On that record, that period was when we were writing songs for what we were hoping was going to be the new Guns N’ Roses record. It just didn’t turn out that way, so it became the Slash’s Snakepit record. I was getting riffs ready for another Guns N’ Roses record; just compiling riffs. I played Slash the main riff of Dime Store Rock and he liked it, so we collaborated – that was Matt and Eric Dover on that track. So it was just a matter of hearing a cool riff that we got together and saying, “Hey, this is what I’m going to play, what do you want to add to it?” And that’s how that kind of progressed into the song that it came to be.
And Eric Dover, too, was a fantastic person to collaborate with, because Eric always thinks outside of the box. That’s what I love about songwriting: people bringing something to the table that you can’t think of. They’re sitting on the outside looking in and going, “Oh, that needs to make a left turn here, and key change.” And even with that song, there’s a pre-chorus where it actually just stays on one note. Slash fought me on that. He’s going, “No, we’ve got to change that.” I go, “No, no, no. Just stay on the one note, just stay, just stay, just stay.” And that actually worked, I thought.
Songfacts: Who are some of your favorite songwriters?
Gilby: My favorite songwriters are some of the classics. I’m a big John Lennon fan. I mean, to me that’s the ultimate goal. John Lennon could take the simplest thought and make it mean so much. He could take some thought that you had a million times and you don’t think twice about, and just make you cry when you hear it. So John Lennon is a big influence for me.
Jagger/Richards. Every record there are always two or three songs that I just think are fantastic. So I’m definitely in that kind of classic rock fold with songwriting.
Songfacts: Fans who were clamoring for a Guns N’ Roses album in the mid to-late ’90s, they could listen to Pawnshop Guitars and also the first Slash album, and get that experience.
Gilby: You’re right. I mean, as far as my perception and Slash’s perception. [Laughing] Those two records were as close to the direction we were going. But, Greg, I also always said, “Look, there are things out there where people have said, you know, Axl didn’t like my songwriting ability.” But I could always say, “Look, dude, this is just my version of the song.” You put Slash and Axl and Duff and all those people into those songs and they can go to a whole ‘nother level. That’s just my contribution.
Songfacts: What are some memories of the recording of The Spaghetti Incident? album?
Gilby: The Spaghetti Incident?, some of it was recorded while we were on the road, so they booked a studio and sometimes we’d go into the studio not even knowing what song we were recording until we were on our way. When we recorded Since I Don’t Have You, I didn’t know we were recording that song until I got to the studio. We jammed that song a couple of times at soundchecks, and I was like, “Well, if we’re going to do it slow like that, my contribution is acoustic guitar.” I’m all the acoustics on it, because I liked what Slash was doing and I didn’t want to get in his way putting an electric guitar just for the sake of putting a rhythm guitar on it. I wanted to complement it. That’s why a song like that I played acoustic: because I didn’t want to mess around with that melody.
A lot of the stuff also was recorded when they were doing the Illusion records, which I had no part of. They recorded some of them before I got there.
A lot of people think I erased Izzy’s parts. That’s actually not true. Izzy didn’t play on a lot of them, so I got to just put my parts on songs that were recorded. So it was a little bit of both. It was a little bit working with Mike Clink [The Spaghetti Incident? co-producer], just myself and him, and then some of it was the whole band in there recording together.
Which, by the way, was very easy. At that point we had been playing live for a long time and we were definitely clicking. One of the things about a band is knowing your part, knowing what you do. Everybody had their gig in that band: Slash was lead, I played rhythm, Duff and Matt knew what to do. We knew how it would work with each other, so it actually was fairly easy to record with those guys. There were never click tracks – Matt was always on time. It was a lot easier than one would think.
Songfacts: And with those covers, did you have a hand in picking out any of those songs or were they selected prior to you coming aboard?
Gilby: Well, yeah. I actually did. I suggested a T. Rex song. When we were first doing it, it was supposed to be like a punk rock covers record. That was what I was told. But then it just kind of became a covers record, and I did suggest T. Rex. Back then I was wearing a T. Rex T-shirt, like, every single day. Matt used to joke, “Okay, we got it, we got it. You’ve worn the shirt every day.”
I didn’t pick the song that we did, I just suggested doing a T. Rex song. I wanted to do 20th Century Boy or Children of the Revolution or something. I don’t know who came up with the song that we did [Buick Mackane]. And I did make the comment about the Nazareth tune [Hair of the Dog], because I always thought Axl sounded like the singer of Nazareth. Not even knowing that the band actually played that song way before I got in the band. It was a unanimous choice to do the Nazareth tune.
Songfacts: What do you remember about G n’ R’s recording of Sympathy for the Devil? I remember hearing somewhere that band members said they could sense that that was the ending for the band. Did you have a sense that that was either the ending or the beginning of the end for the band right there?
Gilby: I might say yes and no on that. I wasn’t that involved with the Sympathy for the Devil recording – they did that while I was on the road touring for my solo record.
I knew that that was the ending because nobody told me about it. Officially I was in the band at that time, and they did that song without me. That was one of the last straws for me, because nobody had said anything to me and they recorded a song by one of my favorite bands. It was pretty clear I’m a big Stones fan, and they recorded the song without me. So I knew that was it.
My official end was actually at the last show of the last tour. Axl was jokingly saying “Bye” to everybody, but he was really saying “Bye” to everybody. He even came up to me and said, “Hey, enjoy your last show.” At that point I thought he was being funny, but he wasn’t being funny. He knows what he’s doing. He’s a smart guy. So I knew it was the end at the last show.
Songfacts: Okay. And lastly, what are your thoughts on the Chinese Democracy album?
Gilby: I think it’s a very good record. I don’t think it’s a great record. Here’s what I think is very good about it: I still think that there’s a lot of creativity on it. I think there’s some really good songwriting. I think Axl delivered some incredible vocal performances. There’s great lyrics, there’s great performances.
What I missed about that being called a Guns N’ Roses record is the identity. You hear Slash play guitar, it doesn’t matter if he was playing a Stratocaster and a Vox, you can tell that’s Slash. And that’s what I miss on this record is that consistent identity with Axl, that guitar, that one guitar that really complements him. There’s some great guitar playing on the record, it’s just a little hard to concentrate on it. It’s almost like a pinball machine: there’s just so much going on. You can’t say it’s bad, because it’s all very good, it’s just there’s a lot going on on that record, and it’s kind of hard to concentrate.
Ruben Mosqueda of the Oregon Music News caught up with guitarist Richie Kotzen (The Winery Dogs, Solo Artist, Mr. Big, Poison). Portions of the interview appear below.
OMN: Were you a little apprehensive about signing on for another band situation when you’re been a solo artist for a while now?
RK: No at all. I’m not giving anything up—I’m still going to make solo records, tour around the world and do what I’ve always done. Whether I was in The Winery Dogs or another band it wouldn’t matter. One thing that is important to note is that the timing for this was perfect for me. I had just finished the album cycle for my last record 24 Hours I did a lot of touring behind that album. I wound up doing three runs across Europe for that album then I headed to South America. There was a lot going on. I was just about to get to work on the follow up record when I got the call from Mike. I liked what this was about and so we decided to form this band—under no circumstances am I giving anything up.
OMN: This record has huge lead vocals and background vocals. You just obviously gelled extremely well as musicians but this is a heavy vocal record. Was that done by design or was that how things turned out?
RK: I think that has to do with my approach to writing music. I write from the perspective of the singer. If I didn’t sing I think I’d be thinking in other terms—all the music that I’ve written in the many years that I been doing this have been written around the vocal then the drums. That’s not to say that I don’t write a song from the guitar side but at the end of the day those things are interchangeable. I’ll give you an example for instance the song I’m No Angel which has a signature guitar riff—you take the riff away and you just play the chorus it’s still the same song. The riff wouldn’t be there but you’d still identify the song. In the end it comes down to the melody and the vocal.
OMN: I love the fact that the emphasis isn’t on ‘shredding’ on this record. I know that would have been easily possible but too obvious.
RK: That’s the interesting this about this band. Personally I have zero interest in making a ‘shredding’ record. I exhausted that avenue in my first year of recording. After I recorded my first record I said to myself “Okay there’s absolutely no reason to continue on in this direction. It was cool, but became uninteresting really quick. I think what really makes this band so unique is that we didn’t abandon anything which we built our foundation on.
You have a record where I’m singing and doing what I love. You take a song like Regret which is more r&b based–I love that. Then there’s a song like Not Hopeless where you can hear Billy and I shredding along together—the crazy stuff which we’re known for. It’s everything in moderation. If someone is always screaming at you after awhile you just won’t listen to them. I think you have to have those dynamics in music.
OMN: There’s an array of influences on this record; jazz, hard rock, r&b, blues and progressive among others. The Winery Dogs’ audience could be very eclectic as well.
RK: Yeah, one of the things that I like to point out is that no one’s identity has been lost in this record. If you listen to this record and you know what Billy Sheehan does you’ll listen to the record and say “That’s Billy Sheehan on bass.” There things on this record that are outside of the realm of what Billy would normally do and the same thing goes for Mike and I. I think that’s very interesting to note. I think if it would have been anything other than that I don’t think any of us would have done it. At the end of the day this was a collaboration that worked for us on many levels.
 to record the anticipated follow up ... )
. Portions of the interview appear below. OMN: Were you a little ... )
