[laughs]

You know, we try and have our act together, and the, the reason is just what you touched on.

I mean, we've got a lot to work on in terms of syncing that, the music and everything with the video and with the li- the laser light show, with the pyro, um, with the, the lifts.

I mean, all that requires time.

Um, and it's, you know, it, it's a, an incredible thing to be a part of that.

Rehearsal process is almost as cool as the tour, because, you know, we're all about putting together the best show we can.

So show number one looks like we've been on the road for months already.

Let's try that."

[laughs]

And we're out in the crowd playing directly in front of you, and it snows indoors.

And last year we added in that whole thing with, like, drones flying around the performers and taking shapes over the, around the performers and whatnot.

I mean, yeah, the kids love that stuff.

And then you've got this story on the front half, uh, obviously accompanied by music, and it kinda puts the older audiences in the holiday spirit.

Then you got rock fans like myself who are like, "Well, this is just a great rock show." So there...

It's really funny how somebody, you know, will always find something different that was their favorite part, you know?

Oh, yeah

So I'm going to ask you again, you got any little tips that you can give me about the, you know, the surprise things that you have set up for this concert, because it is your 30 year anniversary.

What can the fans expect to see? That's what I want to know.

I mean, musically, people can expect some surprises.

Okay.

And we've got some really cool arrangements of songs that we haven't done before.

Now, in terms of the production itself, the hilarious part is I just don't know yet because we haven't gotten together to do the actual production rehearsal.

So even the musicians, you know, we still have our moment of going, like, I can't wait to see what they have put together for the stage this year.

And if they're spending their money, taking time to see you, you're going to give them, like you said, the show that they walk away going, man, we ripped them off.

that made us who we

are today.

Now, the second half of the show is a little bit more of just like your standard concert, except TSO is anything but standard.

We've got an absolutely incredible production to look at.

We've got a video wall, the width of the arena, amazing pyrotechnic show, a laser light show second to none, moving hydraulic lifts that the performers play on going up to the upper deck.

out over the audience, not only in the front of the arena, but the back at times will run down off of the stage and play directly in front of you.

It snows indoors.

Mm-hmm.

Is it hard to concentrate with all that going on?

You know, so much of it happens behind us.

And so we're, as musicians, focused on interacting with the audience and obviously playing our instruments, playing the right notes, et cetera, executing the parts.

So it's funny, you know, our drummer will video the shows and we'll watch them back.

Sometimes, you know, we're a little ways into the tour.

I'll say, hey, let's watch a show back and see how things are being perceived from the audience.

he'll record them from the house.

Was it intimidating when you first joined TSO?

Were you signed to anything in the beginning? No.

No, I mean, I had, you know, my first band, really complete band, wasn't really until I was 15.

And we did a lot of shows by the time I was 15 through 17, 18 years old, then focused on some other local musicians where we did more recording.

Went to G.I.T. Really wasn't in anything out there.

I was just kind of like we had gone to G.I.T.

It was really into recording my own stuff at the time, back when the dinosaurs were roaming the earth.

This was on my four track cassette machine with a drum machine and everything.

and uh revolution saints uh are you guys recording again or uh

I discovered with these Joel Hoekstra's 13 albums, you are a phenomenal songwriter and a great hook writer.

Oh, thanks, man.

I mean, that was kind of my intent.

So I had done, as I mentioned, I did a couple of the instrumental records, Undefined and The Moon is Falling, and that was kind of when I was going down more of the road of making records with Virgil Donati on drums and Rick Fiorabracci on bass and playing the baked potato and whatnot and then all of a sudden things started taking off in this rock world for me and I was getting all these new fans that were interested in what I was doing and they were going back and listening to those records and going, what the hell is this? They wanted like nothing to do with it, right? They were like, you know, you should really consider releasing like a rock solo album and You know, it really wasn't too appealing to me at that point to think about like, what do I like about rock? Do I like listening to like four minutes of some guy shredding or do I like listening like the rock that I love or grew up that inspired me, which definitely was what made me want to play guitar or like cool rock songs with a cool guitar solo in it.

So that's more or less what I tried to go for.

And to make them personal statements, more or less grabbed all the writing and just said, I'm going to write the lyrics, the vocal melodies, the riffs.

So this is going to be very much my baby.

Did you ever record some of the material together in a studio or are you doing the remote recording?