One week away from tickets going on sale for the 2012 hardDrive Live Tour with Mark Tremonti. The Creed-Alter Bridge guitarist will launch his first ever solo tour with hardDrive and we are so stoked! As mentioned, Man the Mighty, a new band out of Chicago who are also on Mark’s Fret 12 Records label with an album due this fall called “I Am Icarus,” will be opening. Since you’re a loyal reader, you can know some of the dates we have confirmed: 9/21: Lancaster, PA @ Chameleon Club, 9/23: Chicago, IL @ HOB, 9/25: New Britain, CT @ Club INT, 9/28: Orlando, FL @ Beachem Theater, 10/3: Kansas City, MO @ The Beaumont, 10/5: Shreveport, LA @ The Riverside. Tix on sale next Friday, 8/17. More TBA. Can’t wait! Website and promos in the works! You are gonna have a chance to win a Mark Tremonti signature guitar in our national contest and your local station will have meet and greets and more! Don’t wanna give it all away yet, but more is coming! Stay tuned….. Godsmack isn’t the only band whose singer needed voice rest before this month’s Rockstar Energy Uproar Festival tour. Papa Roach got a scare last month when frontman Jacoby Shaddix developed some vocal issues that needed to be addressed before hitting the road with the Uproar lineup. Shaddix gave Loudwire an update on his condition, saying, “I think I’ll be all right. I’ve got a speech and vocal therapist at the current time to learn how to sing through this and work through this and take care of myself. Really it’s just a matter of having a little bit more discipline than I’m used to, you know, as far as vocal rest and warm ups and cool downs and all that kind of stuff.” Godsmack was forced to cancel a European tour because of singer Sully Erna needing to rest his voice. Shaddix, who was informed last month he had a node forming on his vocal cords, said of Erna, “I wish him well. I know it’s not fun dealing with it. But if you get hooked up with the right people and you start doing the right things, you’re going to be all right.”….Blabbermouth reports STONE SOUR is offering a snippet of the song “Gone Sovereign” from the band’s upcoming fourth album, “House of Gold & Bones – Part 1”, at HouseOfGoldAndBones.com in exchange for a “share” on Facebook or Twitter. (snippet here.) “House Of Gold And Bones” is a two-part concept effort that was recorded at Sound Farm Studios outside the band’s home base in Iowa. Singer Corey Taylor has played one of the songs that will be featured on the CD, “Taciturn”, acoustically at some of the recent festival appearances and fans seem to embrace the change (although this song is not indicative of what this album sounds like-editor’s note.) Taylor said, “That song translates so well acoustically. When I wrote ‘Taciturn’, I knew it was something that could go either way. It could be a full band piece or it could be something I could play on my own. If I was going to give the people a first taste of what ‘House Of Gold And Bones’ parts 1 and 2 are going to be, ‘Taciturn’ is a nice way to give them a cool picture of it even in a stripped-down sense. That song is essentially about trust. It’s about trying to find the courage to open up to the people you care about, love, and value, knowing that they’re going to be there to catch you when it all comes down. They’re going to be there for you when nobody else is. It’s about letting go of the anchors that hold you down in life, opening yourself up and saying, ‘If you’re there for me, I’ll be there for you. You’ve just got to give me a second’.” As previously reported, Skid Row‘s Rachel Bolan laid down the bass tracks for the new Stone Sour CD. He has described the material on the record as “fucking fierce.” Taylor recently told Revolver magazine about the forthcoming album, “Picture [Pink Floyd‘s] ‘The Wall’ crossed with Alice in Chains‘ ‘Dirt’ with some good heavy blasts in there. The heaviest song is a total ass-kicker that sounds as if Slayer and Anthrax had a baby. Then, there’s a darker bluesy dirge that has the vibe of Led Zeppelin‘s ‘In My Time Of Dying’. There’s even a little industrial vibe. It’s definitely going to blow people’s fucking minds.” He added he came up with a very ambitious concept for the disc. “The album is a morality play about a man who’s standing at the crossroads of his life trying to figure out what to do next,” he said. “He’s going, ‘Do I move foward and evolve? Do I become more responsible or do I run backwards and pilfer the basket of youth?’ Sometimes it’s romantic to live in the mistakes that you made when you were 20, and condemn yourself to perpetual adolescence.”Guitarist Josh Rand recently said the CD will be “another progression for the band,” adding. “Musically, we have always challenged one another to push things to our limits, and this record is no exception.” All I can say is, it is really good!….Pulse of Radio reports Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and ex-Guns N’ Roses. Velvet Revolver & Loaded bass player Duff McKagan have begun working with Walking Papers, a new Seattle band launched by former Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin and longtime Seattle musician Jeff Angell. McKagan plays bass on the band’s entire debut disc, while McCready contributes lead guitar solos. The record is due out in October and the first single, “Your Secret’s Safe With Me,” is streaming at the band’s Facebook page… Martin and McCready previously played together in Mad Season, alongside late Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley. The band is currently being reactivated with new vocals being recorded over tracks originally laid down for an abandoned second Mad Season album. McKagan was born and raised in Seattle and played in a punk band there called 10 Minute Warning before migrating to Los Angeles and joining Guns. McCready and the rest of Pearl Jam are also working on their 10th studio album, which should be out sometime in 2013….Have a great weekend! I’ll be back Monday!
