TOUR NEWS
Well everyone, we’re back and we can report our tour with Gamma Ray
went great! We spent thirty days on a bus with Edguy rolling through
Europe and no homicides to report. Edguy should call themselves
Swellguy, because they really were. We got along great with them.
Gamma Ray treated us very well also, even if they did consistently out
drink us every night, but there were no hard feelings!
Kai Hansen from Gamma Ray had some throat problems early on in the
tour. This led them to cancel one night in Nuernberg, so Edguy headlined
and Steel Prophet opened. To our surprise the place was packed
anyway, and the crowd gave both bands an excellent reception! The next
night in Salzburg, Austria the lead singer of Freedom Call (sorry I can’t
remember his name) was brought in to handle most of the vocal duties,
with Steel Prophet’s and Edguy’s singer doing a couple songs to help Kai
out. Kai then had a day off, and was well enough to sing in Biella, Italy
for the next show. Our singer Rick sang the Helloween song “Future
World” most of the remaining nights of the tour anyway, just to provide
some relief for Kai.
The crowds were great everywhere, and sold out or close to it every
night except two nights with only about three hundred people each. This
was pretty good considering we mostly played to about one thousand
people a night, and the venues ranged in size from capacities of five
hundred to two thousand!
For the last four dates of the tour the Roland Grapow Band (Helloween’s
guitarist) came on to replace Edguy. His band consisted of Mike Vescera
(ex-Loudness, Yngwie, Obsession), Ferdy the keyboardist of Rough Silk,
Mike Terrana (ex-Yngwie, Tony MacAlpine, etc.), and Jens the bassist of
Grave Digger. A very talented band indeed.
The last night of the tour was a lot of fun in Bergara, Spain. Our set
started out normal enough, until our third song “New Life”. In the quiet
acoustic type passage Gamma’s crew let off a flash pot that surprised
the hell out of us. Next Kai Hansen came walking across the stage with
his duffle bag as if we weren’t even playing! After that the Gamma Ray
alien came out on stage with us (I roughed him up!). Finally, Dirk
Schlacter, Gamma Ray’s bassist came out with the flaming torch he uses
to breathe fire in their show. He looked very menacingly at Rick, our
singer, and Rick thought he was going to breathe fire on him, thus turning
him into a human charcoal briquette! Instead, when he spit the fluid, he
bypassed the torch resulting in him soaking Rick’s face with what was
water instead of lighter fluid! We couldn’t help cracking up!
When Gamma Ray was up we had the last laughs. We brought out our
Steel Prophet banner when Kai was trying to get some audience
participation going on “Somewhere Out in Space”. This effectively
covered him up and hid him from the audience! Our last and best trick
was saved for their (we thought) last song. As they started the harmony
guitar solo to “Future World” three of us ran out with boxes of breakfast
cereal and each one of us poured the entire contents of each box over a
Gamma Ray’s head! Looks great on video! The funny part is that cereal
is very slippery, so the boys couldn’t even move for the rest of that song,
and then unknown to us they had one more song to go on top of that!
Well, that’s about it. We have a couple more shows in Europe this year,
one in Balingen at the Heavy Oder Was?! “Bang Your Head” festival, and
then the Wacken Open Air. See you there!
OTHER NEWS!!!
In addition to our three cd's on the Art of Music label, and debut on
Nuclear Blast we are also on two Iron Maiden tribute cd's entitled "A Call
to Irons" Volume One and Two. We're on "Overload" a tribute to
Metallica doing "Fade to Black". Next on the tribute front is a Black
Sabbath tribute featuring "Neon Knights". This version of "Neon Knights
will also be on Century Media's Dio Tribute entitled "Holy Dio". Following
this is a Judas Priest tribute featuring "Dreamer Deceiver", and an
Accept tribute in which we play "Fast as a Shark". The Helloween tribute
featuring our version of "Ride the Sky" has been scrapped, but the tune
has seen the light of day along with our version of "The Apparition" by
Fates Warning on a special digi-pack edition of "Dark Hallucinations" our
debut cd for Nuclear Blast. All the tribute stuff was engineered, produced
and mixed with Joey Vera the great Armored Saint/Fates Warning bass
player.
Pat Magrath is no longer playing with Steel Prophet. Kevin Cafferty will
be with us for our upcoming festival shows and our next CD!
Here is a list of the "Dark Hallucinations" tour dates, there may be a
couple more to come!
STEEL PROPHET
(Gamma Ray/Edguy)
15.04. D Bochum - Zeche
16.04. D Offenbauch - Hafenbahn
17.04. D Bad Salzungen - Kalle Werk
18.04. D Freiberg - Tivoli
19.04. Day Off
20.04. D Nürnberg - Hirsch
21.04. A Salzburg - Rockhaus
22.04. Day Off
23.04. I Biella - Babylonia
24.04. I Rom - Palacisalfa
25.04. I Bologna - Tempo
26.04. I Mailand - Rainbow
27.04. CH Pratteln - Z7
28.04. D Ludwigsburg - Rockfabrik
29.04. Day Off
30.04. D Osnabrück - Works
01.05. D Marktneukirchen - Schützenhaus
02.05. D Hamburg - Markthalle
03.05. D Solingen - Getaway
04.05. NL Hardenberg - Podeum
06.05. E Aviles - Quattro
08.05. E Barcelona - Zeleste
09.05. E Bergara - Jam
19.06. D Balingen - Heavy, oder was?! Festival
07.08. D Wacken Open Air
