November 3, 2024 • 52 mins
D&A Live - Season 3, Episode 45 "Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Chris Caffery". Hosted by Danny & Althea. Tonight's guest is artist Coppe Cantrell. D&A Live is aired live from Paradise Studios NY via the Strong Island Entertainment Network. www.strongisland.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I've did it and I'm out there and we all
DNA live baby.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Uh oh, here we go again, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
No, no, let me just start, because this is going
to be a fabulous show. I am so excited. I
just wanted to give a shout out to our sponsors,
y NVS, Maverick Global Distribution, natural Born Clothing Brand, the
Hype magazine, Villon, and Slapwood's thank you to all. With
that said, I really don't want to do any more
(00:41):
shout outs because I really am enthralled by our guests
that we're having. So I want to go to commercial
break and when we come back from Trans Siberian Orchestra.
Right here, we're going to have Chris Caffrey, mister lead vocals, guitarists, keyboard,
I mean front man. Okay, so just wait and you'll
(01:03):
see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We'll be right back and gentlemen will be.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
It has been here and we no care, no cadena.
We do this. It is bere I think about you
all the time, but it's been two years now since Salaso.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
You in no Salista.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
DNA in the house.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Make sure you check out the radio station at what
mister and misson.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Lets you go, and we're back. Ladies and gentlemen, Yes
we are back.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
But before I bring on Chris Caffrey, I want you
to show you the reason why I am very excited
to have them, Okay, so just roll that, okay, will you?
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Over twenty million fans have made Trans sight Burian Orchestra
their holiday tradition. Bring the whole family and make it
part of yours. The Lost Christmas Eve returning to the
stage for the first time in over ten years. Coming
to a city near you, go to tsotickets dot com
(02:38):
for show dates and tickets. Don't miss the ole new show,
soaring guitars, dasling laciers and enough Piro to keep you
warm all season.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Coming to a city near you.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Go to TSO tickets dot com for show dayton tickets.
The Lost Christmas Eve Live in concert.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Wow, you know, I just can't. I could replay that
over and over and over and over again, but I
can't because I want ahead. I want to get this
gentleman on the show, okay, So please welcome the frontman
for Trans Siberian, the lead vocal guitarist, bass guitar and
keyboard Chris caffer.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Welcome to DNA. My brother. Actually you mentioned I really
don't play. I do play bass and keyboards, but not
in the TSO show to do some vocals and and
I am the frontman of the band, which is something
I've done since the very first show we ever did.
And it's kind of funny because when that position came
to me, yeah, you got to the shows, and we
(04:01):
had seven shows brought to us. The very first year,
we weren't even sure we're going to be playing. We
were filming The Ghost of Christmas Eve DVD and a
radio station in Cleveland WNCX and a gentleman named Bill Lewis.
They came to Paul on the own TSO and asked
us if we would play live, and and Paul came
to us and said, what do you think? And everybody
(04:22):
decided to go ahead and try. So we never played before.
So we booked the first show and they released the
tickets that sold out. The second one was sold out,
the third one sold out, so there was three in Cleveland.
There was seven on the first tour. But the one
thing I don't think we really thought about when we
were rehearsing was like, wait a second, who's going to
talk to the audience. Oh, it was kind of like
(04:44):
I don't remember those Life serial commercials. It's like Mikey,
you know, he'll try anything with me. We were doing
the Ghost of Christmas Eve DVD. They had this one
intro to a song where there's a joy to the
world being sung by a young boy, and I guess
at that point in time, I was the youngest in
(05:06):
the band and they wanted me to dig. You're gonna
do it, I said, I am. We're in somewhere in
northern New Jersey. I ran to the bar across the street,
got a shot at Jack Dances or where I was
like Joe to the world. I never did anything like
that in front of it. So it was one of
these things that we got to the show and I
(05:26):
started talking and I just it's crazy. I am less
nervous in front of ten thousand or fifteen thousand people
than I am in front of a small group of
people on a room. And I don't know why that is.
I think that you don't necessarily focus on any one
and the only time you actually do get nervous is
if it's like your mother and because for some reason,
(05:50):
you know she'll stand up and say something, you know
much he's got to get noticed her. But and I
think that's why a lot of times when we give
guest tickets to guest tickets are never really and in
the front row, because that see that either can be
really good or really bad. You're either really excited to
perform for somebody you get really nervous. So I think
you're able to be more consistent if you just see
that you know that massive people, and then you just
(06:12):
kind of place the energy there. But yeah, I enjoy
that that part of it a lot. You know, I
get a chance to go up there and a lot
of times find things to hopefully I like to make
the people in the band laugh. So I said, there's
some inside jokes every once in a while that they'll
get and people will understand. But it's a fun it's
(06:32):
a very fun job.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
And speaking of that, you were talking about the sellout
tickets and stuff like that. I just found out that
you were numbered TSL was number ten in ticket sales.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, actually after last year, because we were number eleven
the year before that, But we moved aheads and number
ten in the last forty years worldwide of the ticket
sales by bands and the list is the great Yes
we did Yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Is that insane?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah it is? Yeah, No, it's it's uh, it's surreal
because I I don't even know, like I never look
at what we're doing it. I think the way that
other people do. I'm just really happy to be a
part of DSM. So when I see it, I don't
really inside my head, I don't consider myself any different
(07:25):
than I was on the very first day. But when
we look at the accomplishments and the amount of people
on record sales and things that we've done, it's like, wow,
does it It's really impressive. It's pretty cool, and it's
something that Paul had this vision a long time ago.
And you know, there's very few people that I've worked
with in my life that have actually seen things that
they wanted to make happen and make them happen, and
(07:46):
he was always able to do that. I remember while
we're recording the first record, he was talking to me
about something that was going in the shoot a video
and we hadn't even released the record yet, and he's
telling me, now, when tso headlines are we hadn't even
released the record yet. And then when we were out
and headlining arenas for the first time we got to
(08:09):
that level. I remember the very first year. It was
only about three years into the tours that we added
a couple arena shows, and he was coming up and go.
Now when we headline stadiums, and if you actually look
at the math when we play, because you have your
East Coast tour and your Western or if say one's
playing Dallas and one's playing in Newark, New Jersey, Dallas
(08:31):
could have twenty five thousand people between the two shows,
and so could Newark. So that's a stadium where the
people were doing in a single day. So it's like
we couldn't actually go outside in Cleveland in December, but
you know, we we have that amount of people showing up.
So it was just really awesome to be a part
(08:51):
of working with Paul. I'd actually started working with Paul
when I was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And now, like I bet you know, I know, I
just I read your bio and everything, and just like
your whole journey up until you know you were like
your first demo tape was at the age of what fourteen, right,
and then everything that you did up until here, it's
like everything that you've done, has fall into place, and
(09:17):
you are exactly where you need to be, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
It.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Like I said, it always rotates back around to Paul,
and I always think you need to be in the
right place at the right time. And when I tell
my story, it's kind of funny when people asked, well,
how did you do it, and I was like, well,
besides the fact that I was able to play, and
I you know, back at the time when I got
involved in my first sign bands, MTV had just come out,
(09:45):
so I had a pretty a pretty boy looked that was,
you know, so I was able to play metal, but
I was also like, you know, the pretty boy face
for the heavier bands. And I think that, like a
I said, being in the right place at the right time.
And I tell people the reason I was able to
(10:06):
get where I was and meet Paul was fake ID.
And I'm not trying to like say this is a
good and it wasn't even actually fake ID. It was
my work's ID to me. Going back in age, my
brother was nineteen when the drinking age in New York
was nineteen and I never even drank until I was
out of high school. So this isn't saying anything about drinking.
(10:27):
It was the fact that we wanted to go out
to rock clubs and places that you couldn't go. I
was seventeen, he was nineteen, So at nineteen you can
get into the clubs. They moved the age to twenty
one and they grandfathered the nineteen year olds in. And
there was no photo license. So I had his driver's license,
his social Security card, and a credit card, and I'd
(10:49):
go to these days and I'd probably look twelve at
that time, and I would go to the bouncers. They
look at me, and they's no photo so they just
let you in because I think the social Security card
in the and the credit card was really what. I
never got any question. My brother would enter like ten
minutes later with his actual photo license, and then the
guys would just see that. And there was a place
(11:10):
in New York City there was a building that they've
removed that there was a news square that went around it.
It was at forty second in Broadway, and on the
seventeenth floor there was a two floor Indian restaurant that
every Thursday night they had the place to be for
the rock and roll industry. You have the singers of
all the bands, whether it be The Stones or Whitesnaker
(11:32):
or whoever would be in town, would be up there.
And it was a jam. And there was a band
that was called Heaven that was on MTV at the time,
and they had done a cover of the song Knocking
on Heaven's Door. Now, Paul produced that record and that
was his idea for them to cover that song. And
the singer was there, and I had heard that their
(11:53):
guitar player had left the band. So, being the kaki
little seventeen year old kid that I was in this bar,
I walked up to him and told my guitar player
and I had a demo tape on me and I
handed him the tape. I'm flying. He was an Australian guy,
very funny, a guy named Alan Fryer, and he had
passed away. I forget exactly how long ago. He was
(12:15):
so funny. This guy just had that really like almost
like the English kind of sense of humor. But he
was Australian, so it was a little crazier. And he
actually called me from la and said I want you
to do this, and so it was pretty crazy. I mean,
(12:36):
like I said, I mean, obviously I was doing something
that was good enough. But at that period of time,
I went into the management office and I met Paul
and he was working with Libra Crebs was just like
the biggest rocket roll management company ever. So many people
had spawned that at that time they had. Paul was
management with ACDC, Depp bleberd Arosmith, Ted Nuge, and the
(12:57):
Scorpions they had cameo. It was just so many different things.
And I'd walk in there and there would be like
Joe Perry over here these days. It was just like
mind blowing as a little kid to see that. And
then there was Paul and he produced the Heaven record
and the singer in that band was kind of he
was I've worked with a lot of people that are
(13:19):
similar to him, but he just had a lot of
the funny personal problems that led everybody to go, maybe
it's more trouble than it's worth kind of situation with
dealing with the band and the Columbia Records deal they
had was being renewed, and I don't think it was
actually going to be renewed because some some certain things
(13:40):
that were going on business wise with them. And Paul
came up to me and he's like, you know, I'm
producing this band called Sabotage. They're on Atlantic Records. I
want you to come down to me. You know, I
went down a stew there recording this record Haul the
Mountain King, and you know, I had already done my
first demos with He liked my writing goes this band.
(14:03):
He said, I'm going to be putting him on a
tour with Dio because he knew Wendy Dio around his wife.
And their sound is really big in the studio, and
I want you to play guitar with them as a
rhythm guitar player. Now, the band had John and Chris Alivid,
these two brothers, and the Chris the guitar player, was incredible,
and he really didn't want another guitar player because he
(14:25):
was from you know, the Van Halen where Van Halen
was the drummer and guitarist. He had his brother the singer,
and he was the guitarist, and they wanted to be
the four piece band. But they kind of humored Paul
and said yeah, because there will take him on the road.
And they're like, well, they humored him, I guess, and
said yes, we'll do this. And I learned all their
(14:47):
songs at that time. It was five records out. I
learned all their music and I was getting ready to
go on this. It was an arena tour in the States,
and two weeks before the tour Sabatar I was his
manager and Paul they called me up to say that
the band took another guitar player in Flora and I said, no,
they didn't my gig. I loved this band's music, so
(15:13):
I said, listen, I've worked too hard on this. I'll
spent three months telling everybody, no, I'm leaving. I said, listen,
let me leave. I said, So I'm going to do this.
I'm going to buy myself a plane ticket to Florida
and I'm gonna fly down there. If they hate me,
I'll eat the ticket and go home. If they liked me,
you pay for the ticket and I stay and do
the tour. So I go down and this band told
(15:34):
them they had this keyboard player guitar player that they
were going to take. They weren't going to take this
guy to play, kind of like they were humoring Paul. Yeah,
we got this guy, we got So they just did
that to avoid having to deal with me, who they
really didn't know they'd met. But so I went down there.
(15:55):
I showed up at the airport and there was nobody
there to get me. I took a cab like a
half hour away from the airport somewhere to a storage
facility place that the friend ofators knew that they rehearsed in.
And I walked in there and the guys were like, well,
(16:16):
they said, what do you want to play? I said anything?
What do you mean, I said to anything? Pick a song,
said I know one of your songs. So they picked
like a really obscure one that they didn't think I
was going to know, and we played and I could
just see the look on their eyes. Something was happening.
And it was me and Chris. He was far He
(16:38):
was far ahead of me at the time as a
lead player, but rhythm wise we came from the same
egg and when we played together, it sounded like it
was two of him. And we played that and another
song and they said, we're going to leave the room.
They walked out of the room, came back five minutes
later and said, I had the gig. Something that happened.
(17:01):
When that happened, and that was the start of it all,
And then I got into the band for the gut
or Ballet record, and that was very successful in America.
Now I had my brother who was a drummer in
my band, and he was very depressed about the fact
that I was out doing what it was that we
wanted to do, and back at that time, if you
(17:22):
had two bands, you were considered kind of like a
band whore. You know. It was one of these things
where you were in a band. And I made a
pretty foolish, like hol foolish, but maybe it wasn't. It
was just I made a decision to work with my brother,
and I guess I didn't really understand exactly how the
business worked and how much I was going to miss
(17:45):
being in Sabotage until I left it. And it was
only about a year and a half where I was gone.
But things didn't work out with me and my brother
creatively way apart. He went more towards something like wanting Whitesnak,
and I was like, I'm in the band I wanted
to be. Don Aliva had been out of Sabotage. After
the Streets record, me and John got together and we
(18:07):
started writing and we decided to do a project that
was called Doctor Butcher was a very heavy like the
heavier side of Sabotage kind of album. And then, unexpected
to us, John's brother was killed by a drunk driver
and that led to John going and working on a
record called Handful of Rain with Paul and with Sabotage. Now,
(18:31):
through all this Paul had produced every Sabotage record. He
did Gutter Ballet and then after Mountain King, and then
he did Streets, which was a rock opera, which was
the original concept of him wanting rock theater that whole
Streets song. So you know, Paul, he loved the Alivas
and he loved working and writing with John. So they
(18:53):
basically escaped in the real emotion of losing John's brother
and did Handful of Rain. And when that tour was over,
they came back to me that to say, will you
get back in the band for this record? Paul has
an idea about a story about the war in a
yugoslaviaicle did Winter did and I had rejoined Sabotage as
(19:14):
a member of that time and we did that album.
Now on that record was d D was on that album. Now,
when I was seventeen, Paul was telling me about this
instrumental version that he had of Carol the Bells and
he had had daughters of it, and he had worked
with Joan Jet and he was a you know, a
(19:38):
big part of helping her launch her career. And what
Joan had done is she recorded Little Drummer Boy and
that was their idea and they had her on rock
radio at Christmas time and then after New Year's they
released I Love Rock and Roll and she had the
relationship with the radio station, so that light bulb and
(19:58):
Paul's head from then stayed around for this. So with
us with Sabotage, we kind of locked into it. I
just luck. But the I think it was a guitar
player from Kansas or somebody went to this guy named
Mason Dixon who was a DJ in Florida at a
big rock station down in Tampa, and he said, you
(20:20):
got to listen to this song. So Mason played us
on Mixed ninety six down there and it was like
an adult contemporary station, a big adult contemporary rock station
down there, and this the song went number one on
their requested and Mason had told us like normally when
songs were number one most requested, maybe it was like
twenty to thirty people calling it for it he said,
(20:42):
there was like three four hundred people a day calling
for this. So Mason knew Scott Shannon in New York
City at PLJ, and he said, you got to see
what's going on with this song. So Scott did it
New York City and it happened right in the backyard
of Atlantic Records, you know. So Atlantic's listening to what
(21:03):
the Sabotage song was doing on you know, the WPLJ,
the biggest rock station in New York City. So everybody's like, wow,
there was a hit in this song. It was like
too late into the season for them to do anything
about it. So they all got together with Paul and said,
what can we do next year? And then Paul, who
would had the idea for Tso a long time ago,
(21:26):
it decided that it was time for him to launch
that whole concept of his rock theater, and he had
the Christmas Trilogy written and it was time to go
do that record because he told me he always wanted
to do a band that had like limitless creative possibilities,
where you have one guitar player and a singer, where
you can have an orchestra and ten vocalists, and so
(21:50):
the vision of TSO was in his head even when
we did sabotage videos for the for the Gut or
Ballet record for the songs out of Ballet, and when
the crowds are gone, he had had string people there,
you know, brought in that we're doing it. So it
just all it all came together and then we released
(22:11):
that song and boom. It just from there. It didn't
take very long. I mean, the song had that kind
of reaction everywhere, and it just built and built, and
then we went to do it live. And you know,
Paul had always had the the idea that there was
never enough lights. I remember when I played with Heaven
when I went to play this club when I was seventeen,
(22:33):
like I just turned eighteen and we were playing this
rock club in Queens called Lamour East.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Oh my god, I go to Lamore East. I live.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
He spent all of our money, had over half of
our money that we were getting paid that night on lights.
It was like and they had lights, but he's like, no, yeah,
you wonder and have more lights than the last. And
that's kind of where the whole thing with TSO and
you just love lights and production, and that's what's happened.
With two I am.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
You know why because I used to go to La
Boy's East when I was younger. I mean, you're talking
back in the late eighties, right.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
So who did you see there?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You know, I can't remember. I mean it was, come on,
it's very long time ago.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah, I think I just remembered a few because there
was some oh my god people that had went out.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The Queens Boulevard. It was right off for Queens Boulevard.
It closed down a long time ago, but we used
to go there all the time, and it didn't even
matter what rock band was playing. We just went.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
People don't understand exactly how different the scenes were back then.
I mean I used to play cover bands and cover
bands when I was sixteen, and there would be three
four hundred people at the local clubs on a Tuesday
or Thursday. I mean it was just a completely different scene.
So when you got to the weekend and you had
those places like Lemour East that could fit to thousand.
(24:01):
You know, if a band like Poison went there from
LA when they just got signed, there'd be people lined
up out the door to get in.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I mean I didn't even realize it was him. Well,
how would I know? It was him.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Did you ever see were you over there on a
New Year's Eve?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Maybe a handful of times.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
At band Heaven. I saw them on New Year's Eve there,
and that I knew Ray Gillen, who was a singer
that was produced Paul produced his band bad Lands. And
that's actually the first time I met Paul Heed. When
I said I met Paul at the office. Ray was
produced and managed by Paul, but so was Heaven, and
(24:40):
Paul was in that club and he came walking by
and I'm like, who is this guy? Because he had like,
you know, all the black pants and the white shirt
and a leather jacket, and it's like, well, he's got
to be somebody. But I didn't, you know, you didn't
know him because he wasn't in a band. So then
that was the time I had met him. And I
actually want the show I was talking about, Like I said,
I met Paul there, but I played the Moore East
(25:01):
with Heaven there, and actually when we played.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
That show, yeah, every time every time you say them
Moore East, I keep like getting these flashbacks.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Well, when I played Lamouri's with Heaven, we had skid
Row open for us and Sebastian wasn't even in the
band yet.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Oh wow, I'm trying to think who.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
And the funny thing about that is I knew the
skid Row guys and they were looking for a guitar player.
They lived up the drummer lived up by me in
New York State, and they called the drummer called me
up and asked me if I wanted to go audition
for him. And I turned down the audition because I
was working with Heaven. So I passed on going to
audition for skid Row because of that. So that was
(25:42):
kind of, you know, there was a very tight circle.
And then, you know, like I said back at that point,
I just had that kind of image. When I was
out of Sabotage for that one year, I was in
three different you know, I was in Sabotage and I
did this thing called Big Mouth that Atlantic had. It
was like a heavy metal rap band, and then Atlantic
put me in this band Dirty Looks that the president
(26:02):
of Atlantic wanted a certain producer to work with, but
the singer would not listen to Atlantic and it kind
of hurt things with that, and I didn't that singer
in that band. He put a cigarette out in my
arm while I was driving a rental car on that
one on one in California to see what it would do.
He was. He was bizarre, this guy, Henrik. He was
a really good story. He's just one of those people
(26:23):
that you run into that you're like, they do exist.
But I had left dirty looks and then you leave.
Brothers came back to me avatar. So I was literally
in in multiple bands in Atlantic in one year. I
was like their house guitar player. At that point in time,
they were like, we'll just put Chris in. He'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yes, do you have a book out?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I should?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
You should?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I really should? I think that everybody I talked to
he says that because once I go through the stories,
there's so many of them that it's actually bookworthy. But
I mean, and there's maybe some things in there that
I wouldn't want to be in a book, So maybe
I might want to wait till like I'm about you know,
however old, I'll live same an now fifteen and I
(27:11):
got a year left. I'll put it out then. You know,
I don't want my mother to read it.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Not that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
You don't need to read that.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
No, No, that's crazy. Because I was thinking about that,
because I'm like, this guy has stories. I know, because
like guys like him in the industry that are true
and genuine that have actually gone through all the nitty
gritty stuff before they get to that beautiful place. Right.
It's it's You're just phenomenal. And I love you, Chris,
(27:43):
I really do.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
I really do. Definitely, everything that I've done has stories.
Like I could go into every band and everything, and
I say, that's why I do interviews and sometimes I
speak for about a half hour and one question is
I I'm you're warning me about writing things down. So
this is kind of I guess, my way of having
(28:06):
my own diaries by doing it. And when I post
like old throwback photos, I'll put really long paragraphs and
stories underneath it, and it's a way for me to
log what had happened too and put it out there.
So I think a lot of things are kind of
cataloged on my Instagrams and facebooks. If people look back
through the photos.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
You know what I'm gonna have to do with him.
I know what I'm gonna have to do with Chris Cafrain.
This is part one of a series. Okay, check this out.
This is an idea. This is how ideas come about. Okay,
I'm just saying this is part one. Okay, Now, like
maybe a few months down the line or whatever, we
get a part two and he comes back on the
(28:47):
show and he gives us another story. Okay, and then
it's kind of like an audio visual book.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
You know, so as he's traveling, right, and he's doing
the country because I know you guys going to be
I mean, all over the place until December thirtieth, right, yeap,
as you're going by, we click in on him, right,
and we get a talk like for about fifteen twenty minutes,
and he gives us an idea of what's going on
and everything, and he gives us a path of what's
(29:17):
what he's been doing. Right, and that's it. Okay, goodbye
Chris Goruct And then you know, and then a couple
of months go by. It's like a docu series.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I tell you run that by night Castle and make
sure everybody's okay. I don't do it. I learned it
throughout my careerent that the most important thing I can
do now is just make sure anything I do I
ask for permission before I do it. It's like it's like,
and then if I mess it up, then it was like,
well I messed up after I had permission and I
(29:47):
didn't mean to do it that, but I just found
that that I like to avoid as much drama.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Listen. I was the same way. You can ask Adam.
I probably hounded him enough time before this interview, okay,
because I right, don't I do I do. I go
by protocol.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And I think they've grown to a point now that
they realized that I have. I guess maybe the words
growing up. I don't know if I'll ever actually grow up,
but I think they I think they're willing to trust
me now, you know. I think twenty years ago they
might have been like me, we should we don't know
(30:30):
how this could be an interview at noon, and I
might have just got back at eleven from not being
out the night before. It's like, maybe it's best if
we wait. And then now we're like, I think we
could trust them.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Well, let me tell you you've been You've been a treat.
I mean, this is I mean, this has been phenomenal.
I mean I was like, Okay, you know, we'll see,
we'll see, we'll see. But because you don't know every time,
what the guest is going to give you, and when
you first came in so we can get a video
and soundcheck. It was all over for me. It was
(31:03):
all over because I was like, we needed, we need
like two hours with him. We can't. We can't, we
can't half hours, We can't. He was right too.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Somebody in Christmas lights in their room. I decorate every
hotel room I go to.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
It kind of depends on how long we're there, how
much I put in the room. And I have a
road case in the arena that goes in with when
I talk to the audience to do the charity checks.
I used to do it when I was introducing in
the band, but I don't have enough time to get
the shirts on. I have jerseys from all the sports
teams and work from all of them. I have Christmas
(31:40):
decorations and things so when we finally get to Christmas,
because I'll buy things as the tour is going on,
I take out all the boxes and bring it to
my room and it takes me like three four hours
to decorate my room at Christmas. And it'll literally I'll
get those little sticky hooks and I'll put them around
the whole entire ceiling of my home. It'll you'll look
like you're in this giant queue of Christmas lights. And
(32:01):
it's just funny because I love Christmas. When I was
a kid, I have every Hallmark little Eskimo ornament they
had for the last forty years. So it's like, I
love Christmas. It's it's a really it's a special time
a year. And that's what, you know what Paul would
always say, It's like, you know the magic that happens
that time a year where it always seems like, no
(32:22):
matter what, people find a way to be kind or
more kind at that time of the year. It just
brings something out. And for me, that's why it's always,
I think, very natural for me to be who I
am on that stage that time of year, because it's like,
you know, I have absolutely no problem being Santa Claus.
It's like it's you know, it's like I go up there,
(32:43):
as I always say, it's like I'm the David ver
author of the winter season. It's like I enjoy that
because for me, it's just fits, it fits my personality.
I remember when I was sixteen, I think I went
to my friends, my best friend down the road. We
moved out of town, but I went back to his
(33:04):
Christmas parties on Christmas Eve and I managed to figure
out a way to attach the pole from an artificial
Christmas tree to me. I duct taped it around me,
and I stuck the Christmas tree things off of me,
and I had lights on, and then the top of
(33:26):
the tree was on my head, built it into a hat,
and I had an extension cord at this party with
this like fifty foot extension court, so I could walk
around and I went to the party as a Christmas tree.
At that point, people were just like, it's not really
that normal, but it's like kind of the irony of
(33:47):
you know, where it was that I, you know, wound
up in what time of the year, and what would
we do with lights and everything like that, So it
was just kind of natural for me to be to
be lit. I can't talk.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I don't even go for no, but all I got
to say is that, like I think we're trans Siberian
Orchestra in the holiday season to me is like the
equivalent of every little girl and boy waiting for the
Christmas Special with the rockets.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, exactly, you know, trying to even with the cartoons,
you didn't know exactly when they were going to come on.
You just knew they were going to happen. It's kind
of like, sorry, you don't know exactly what day of
the week we're going to show up. You just know
that when you get to the winter season and you're
in November December, the TSO is going to be in
your town or at least within hopefully within forty five
(34:39):
miles or where you live or close enough to drive.
And yeah, it's really awesome. And the thing that gets
me every single year, I'll do the charity thing before
the show, because we give a dollar from every ticket
sold to a different local charity. And we set up
with the radio stations and we went over the twenty
million dollar mark.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeah. And I'll go up there and I'll ask the
audiences how many of you have seen TSO before? Usually
half of them haven't, so it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
I had seen the show.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I've never seen it, yeah, so yes. But my thing is,
it's just like it's so incredible that we're still getting
the new one. But you have people back and they
bring back maybe their uncles or their aunts. But on
the other side of the thing too, the people that
maybe they would tell us I hadn't spoken to my
(35:34):
dad in ten years, and I called him up and
brought him in the show and now we talk every day.
So it's uniting people too. And a lot of those
things that happened in the stories about you know, ornaments
about somebody not being there on Christmas or not they
have passed away, or whether they or not, they just
haven't been an your life. So it's like that that
way of uniting people and that that you know, that
(35:55):
single act of kindness. I think that that's kind of
we're like one giant act to kind of go open
to what we do and just try to make people escape,
you know, life for that time, for the for the
two and a half hours that you're in and watching
Cso it's just like we hope that everybody just you know,
was able to get inside our little bubble and enjoy
(36:18):
that time and realize how special that we know, being
able to do this for everybody is because we don't
do that without them. And that's the one thing that Paul,
you know, was really wanted to focus everything on, was
was the fans, you know, and us doing what we did.
That's why every every show we'd ever done up until COVID,
(36:38):
we used to allow any fans that wanted to stay
in the arena to come and meet the ban and
we never charged anybody for anything. And you know, of
course that the twenty twenty was was was a big
change in everybody's life and that in that situation. But
Paul just always wanted to be able to give back.
And that's I think why our show got larger every year,
(36:59):
because he wanted to, you know, out do us so
that we're coming back could see something bigger.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
And it's just better and different all the time. It's
never like the same show. It's always something different, and
I think that's what people appreciate and they gravitate too,
you know, because I was every video that I was
watching and it always gave me the chills, right, and
it always gives you the chills because it's just I
(37:27):
don't know how to even explain it. It's just a
different feeling each performance.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
It's the ingenuity, it's the dream, it's the imagination that
these guys have, and I really applaud.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So much talent in one building you can see it,
you know, and the live when you see the Lies
show and you just see something just spectacular. It just
blows you out of water because it's like, dude, it's
just like a lot.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Of concerts you go to.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
It's just you know, not trying to diss any artist,
but it's blam when you go see you guys then
is going in going here?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I'm like, WHOA Our lighting designer, Brian Hartley, He's I
consider him to be the greatest in the business. And
the funny thing about him was when I did the
Sabotage tour with Doo back in eighty seven eighty eight,
he was Sabotage as light man Paul and hired him then.
So I've been working with Brian as long as I have. Paul.
(38:26):
He was my very first professional light man, and I
remember when we were playing with Doo. Doo had a
guy named Dave Lights doing his lights and he was
Iron Maiden used used to work for Maiden and he
always had these really cool light shows with Maiden, and
I just remember seeing Brian and Dave Lights. They would
they would stay up every once in a while day
would travel on our bus and they'd be up all
(38:48):
night long designing these light shows and arena shows, and Brian,
you know, was still on a kind of entry level
getting into the business bigger and bigger because he was
pro but you know, building himself to that level. And
now it's just like he did designs for other bands,
he does for this and you know he's on our
tour every night doing o our lights. But he's he's
a big part of what was able. You know, when
(39:08):
Paul had ideas, he'd give him to Brian, and Brian
would take his. And then now that Paul's passed, I mean,
Brian just you know, he takes it the bull bite
of horns and and and just he he does so
many cool things. And I used to email or text
Brian and say, I don't want to see what's what
you may have planned. And now I don't like to
see it till now because the show's being put together
(39:29):
in the arena and I like to look at it
when it's done because I don't want to. I don't
want to spoil the surprise. And it's you know, it's
bigger than and better every single year, you know, and
our our production teams are amazing every every angle of it.
And I think that's an advantage we have too. We
get technology moves along with us, you know, so they'll
(39:50):
they'll wander into to Adam, Kenny and and and Elliott
and and I'm sure that they put they put the
budgets up and and you know, you want to work,
but when you see these things, I remember all this
one year there was he had this big only one
of them, but he had this big spotlight that was
going down from the middle of the top of the stage.
(40:10):
And he looks at me, he says, you call me boss,
and boss, what do you think is I think we
need more of those lights? One of them? At that time,
I said, yeah, probably do because because I could see
there being four more and these lights were gigantic and
it took a whole additional semi light and it happened,
and I could only imagine being a fly on the wall.
(40:33):
And he wandered into into Elliott, into the management's office
at Elliott and Adam and them and said, we're going
to add another truck of four lights. But you know,
that's the whole thing. It was. It was bigger, it
was better, and TS always wanted to try to out
do Tso I think that's what Paul was like. We
got to do better than we did last year. But
first somehow it always see, it always happens, you know,
(40:55):
and I think like that technology happens with that we
had the snow globe with.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I know you, I love it.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
That's when I said last year at TSO Gone Global.
Cool every year that we're able to see the newest
technology of every lights and in the videos and in
the way that the animation works. So it's it's it's
always fun. I just tell everybody, I've got the greatest
playground in the world. You do.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Let me just say one thing. I just want to
know when you're in the commercial right and there's the
five guys, the five of you in the front right
on which one is you?
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Well, I don't know what all depends on which video
it is because sometimes we move around in different spots
and then sometimes, like I said, you have the East
coast and the West coast bend, so I usually somehow
in those lines, I usually wind up on the left,
even though I stay on stage right most of the show,
and it's kind of where we rotate around.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, because you know how many times I had to
play that video trying to figure out which one you
were Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
There's lots off from ones. Like I said, you just
it depends on the song too and where it is,
so it's near the end. But I have two when
when and we had just we just had a loss
in the Tso family this week. His art is on
(42:19):
our records, but.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
It's I know, and your guitars do.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
My five guitars are the only ones that have this guy.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
God rest his soul. Greg Hildebrank ahead, you can tell
him well.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Greg is a legend. I mean his artwork. I I
when Paul first told me about it, I was like,
you're kidding me, because everybody knew his art from the
Wars and you knew what he had done. But he
was such a kind person. And Gene and they would
those two comes to the shows and you would see
them there and their their faces and their smiles. And
(42:55):
Greg would walk around with his camera and you always
had this camera, the big zoom lens, and he would
saying of us and it he you know, besides being
able to be one of those people that could see
you yeah and paint you, he was able to take
the pictures and I think that probably helped him get,
you know, visions for what he did with art being
able to work things. He's capturing the pictures because you know,
(43:19):
if you see things, you don't always capture and a
head of person. Now we have nine thousand photos on
our on our cell phones. But you know in the past,
when you I would leave tours and I'd have like
a plastic bag full of camera rolls, you know, the
first time you went to Paris or something like that,
and of course you'd go and you'd pay to develop
him in a roll of twenty four had like five
(43:40):
pictures that were good. Sure, because that was the joy
of the photo companies. It's like, because you needed photos
and you never had a complete role of good ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
No, but I did see about him and I was like, oh,
you know because that he did and it just.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Loved his work and I was so blessed to be
able to have that work placed onto my guitars, right, yeah,
I have a guitar. We had special guests with TSO
and I had a white lest fall that I started first.
One of the first guests was Joan Jet. But we
(44:19):
didn't know we were going to make having special guests
be something Paul was going to want to do every
year and stance Paul had passed. We never we weren't
doing that again because that was his, his people he knew,
and his placement of that together. But we had Ian
Hunter come out to Cleveland and we did Cleveland Rocks
(44:39):
and I had my less Paul and I gave him
a sharpie and he signed it and then it just
kept going. So Steven Tyler's on it, and He's on it,
and Leslie West is on it, and Robin Xander from
Cheap Trick. And then when Joan came to play with
us on New Year's Eve of twenty fourteen to fifteen,
(45:01):
I said, Joan, you never signed this guitar, but she
played the Garden with us the very first time we played,
so she signed it and Paul was standing next to
me and I said, Paul, you gotta sign this guitar
for me, And that actually happened to be the last
day I saw Paul. But on the back of that guitar,
I forget exactly where we were. It was probably one
of the shows that Tyler or Roger Dalty did where
(45:23):
I saw Greg there and we all said Greg Lake
from Emerson. Lincoln Palmer was around a lot too, and
he had passaid, Well, he's on the guitar. But I said, Greg,
I'm having you know, musician people sign the front of
this book. Can you sign the back of Greg's signatures
on the back of that guitar? Yeah, him, and I
(45:43):
believe Tony Marussa, the manager from the Cardinals, is a
really big Tso fan, and he took us to the
stadium to watch batting practice and when we did our
spring tour, so I was I was really excited to
meet him and he would come to the show as
he was a huge fan. So I had him sign.
I think he was at one of those shows with
the with the special guests, and I had him sign
(46:04):
that guitar and it's there. But yeah, I knew Greg
had gone into the hospital a few times, but I
didn't know, you know. So I was told by by
everybody here that we lost him. And it's definitely we've
had a lot. I mean, our bass player Dave and
our band, and he was he gott in his life,
taken in a tour bus accident that had happened. Then
(46:27):
you know, it's just we had our one keyboard player
from the West Coast band Vitally. He had passed early
this year's a lot of you know, you you used
the energy amongst your friends and tsos and family to
pull through this. And because we are such a large family,
go on a road with hundreds of people, and there's
been you know, hundreds of members of the of the band,
(46:48):
you know, I think we see a little bit more
than most people do it all of that, so you
just find your ways to gather around it, you know.
And I stand up there like as we're doing Lost
Christmas Eve this year her James Lewis, who was on
the East Coast tour. He was the original singer of
Christmas Nights in Blue when he had passed on it says,
(47:08):
you just have your memories of these people, you know.
And and the Three Kings song was was Darryl Petford,
the singer that did the you know, music Box Blues
and he was my roommate when this started. Because we
and and Darryl was somebody to pass. So I think
that's like I said, when we would do songs like
Ornament on stage, you just conduct that energy. And there's
(47:32):
lots of times when I'm up there and I just
start crying, and it's just because I'm thinking of Paul
or I'm thinking of these people, Darryl or or Dave
and things we did on stage and places we've been,
and you know, it's definitely something that I think it
helps to give you strength, you know, and knowing that that, Uh,
(47:54):
first of all, I was blessed to be able to
work with these people and have them as part of
my life. So to be able to keep Paul's legacy
alive and to bring those along with it, you know,
Greg's art and the singers that did the records and
the people that performed the videos and stuff like that.
I think it's just all part of keeping that, you know,
that whole magic and legacy alive.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Let me just tell you you you really got to
write that book. I'm telling you you got. I know,
you know you're worried about your mom reading it or whatever,
but you know what, you got to write that book.
I just want you to know that tso is. I
am a big fan of Tso. It doesn't mean any
tickets in front, okay, because I'll be fine backstage anyway.
With that said, with that said, listen, you got to
(48:38):
throw it in. You got to listen to girls work, okay.
So I just wanted to say, because I really appreciate
you coming on the show. I mean I could sit
here for hours with you. You don't know. I mean
you are just full of life stories and I mean
it's just it's so nice and hot, warming, and I
look forward to you being on our second Doctor series.
(49:00):
Whenever you want, we'll get that. We'll get that cleared
up with Newcastle, I mean not Castle, sorry about that.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Sunday it's a football day, so Newcastle comes.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I'm rolling here. But again again, I really appreciate you
coming on. And of course if anybody wants out there,
you got to go see TSL babe. It's t s
O tickets dot com find your ticket to day. You
can't get the tickets I do because I'm going to
be backstage, so the you know, if anything, thank you again, Chris,
I really appreciate it. We got to do another series.
(49:34):
You got to tell him you get the same thing. Listen.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
It's phenomenal, honestly to meet you and everything that you
have done. And it's hilarious because every time I hear
that song, I.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Just say one thing at first, because when I had said,
you know, we're gonna have trains Siberian orchestra. He's like
what and I said, he said.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Oh yeah, it's like you showed that commercial before. And
we'll be out here and I'll turn on a television
in the morning and you'll flip on the channel and
it will be the first thing you'll see. You'll walk
into the mall, you'll hear, and you'll walk into all
the stories.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
So it's well, you go, that's what you do. Now
you'll still hear the songs, and it's a homecoming. I'm
telling you every time, you know these guys the you
know the fact when I read that, you guys surpassed
The Grateful Dead, which by the way, that number one
song was named Althea. But you pass them up, okay,
(50:31):
number ten and you know their first number one hit
was Alfeia. But I'm just going to keep pushing that along.
But all I'm saying is this is the reason why
they have the ticket sales they do because the show
is phenomenal, The people are phenomenal, the instruments, everything that
you guys do is phenomenal. So I applaud you time
(50:52):
and time again. Thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Thank you so much, and we'll see you real soon.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
You know, I'll just you know, schedule the time and
everything will keep up and uh.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Just be safe and happy this holiday. Super But I
don't speak to you before.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Thanks, don't worry about it. We're gonna get okay good.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Then I'm looking forward to it. We uh, we start
playing live next week, and I just I know that
when I when I get onto the stage for the
first time, and if you've ended the rehearsal stages of things,
it's kind of like it it just goes to a
different you go into a different modes to where you
kind of just go into you live on the bus
(51:33):
for a couple of months, and it just changes. And
I loved every part of the process. But I really
enjoy when we finished the first shows and we have
to day in Green Bay and you get on the
bus and the bus starts moving, and it's like for
me then it's like you're on tour. Yeah, who does
that bus starts moving? You're on tour. And that's where
(51:55):
I look forward to it. I look forward to seeing
everybody on the road and thank you again. This was
a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
No, just remember d NA Live every Sunday, eight pm.
We might have Chris on next week who knows. I
don't know. He may even call me I don't know,
but just stay tuned.
Speaker 5 (52:10):
Love you, Chris, Peace out everybody.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
H
I've did it and I'm out there and we all
DNA live baby.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Uh oh, here we go again, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
No, no, let me just start, because this is going
to be a fabulous show. I am so excited. I
just wanted to give a shout out to our sponsors,
y NVS, Maverick Global Distribution, natural Born Clothing Brand, the
Hype magazine, Villon, and Slapwood's thank you to all. With
that said, I really don't want to do any more
(00:41):
shout outs because I really am enthralled by our guests
that we're having. So I want to go to commercial
break and when we come back from Trans Siberian Orchestra.
Right here, we're going to have Chris Caffrey, mister lead vocals, guitarists, keyboard,
I mean front man. Okay, so just wait and you'll
(01:03):
see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We'll be right back and gentlemen will be.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
It has been here and we no care, no cadena.
We do this. It is bere I think about you
all the time, but it's been two years now since Salaso.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
You in no Salista.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
DNA in the house.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Make sure you check out the radio station at what
mister and misson.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Lets you go, and we're back. Ladies and gentlemen, Yes
we are back.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
But before I bring on Chris Caffrey, I want you
to show you the reason why I am very excited
to have them, Okay, so just roll that, okay, will you?
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Over twenty million fans have made Trans sight Burian Orchestra
their holiday tradition. Bring the whole family and make it
part of yours. The Lost Christmas Eve returning to the
stage for the first time in over ten years. Coming
to a city near you, go to tsotickets dot com
(02:38):
for show dates and tickets. Don't miss the ole new show,
soaring guitars, dasling laciers and enough Piro to keep you
warm all season.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Coming to a city near you.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Go to TSO tickets dot com for show dayton tickets.
The Lost Christmas Eve Live in concert.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Wow, you know, I just can't. I could replay that
over and over and over and over again, but I
can't because I want ahead. I want to get this
gentleman on the show, okay, So please welcome the frontman
for Trans Siberian, the lead vocal guitarist, bass guitar and
keyboard Chris caffer.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Welcome to DNA. My brother. Actually you mentioned I really
don't play. I do play bass and keyboards, but not
in the TSO show to do some vocals and and
I am the frontman of the band, which is something
I've done since the very first show we ever did.
And it's kind of funny because when that position came
to me, yeah, you got to the shows, and we
(04:01):
had seven shows brought to us. The very first year,
we weren't even sure we're going to be playing. We
were filming The Ghost of Christmas Eve DVD and a
radio station in Cleveland WNCX and a gentleman named Bill Lewis.
They came to Paul on the own TSO and asked
us if we would play live, and and Paul came
to us and said, what do you think? And everybody
(04:22):
decided to go ahead and try. So we never played before.
So we booked the first show and they released the
tickets that sold out. The second one was sold out,
the third one sold out, so there was three in Cleveland.
There was seven on the first tour. But the one
thing I don't think we really thought about when we
were rehearsing was like, wait a second, who's going to
talk to the audience. Oh, it was kind of like
(04:44):
I don't remember those Life serial commercials. It's like Mikey,
you know, he'll try anything with me. We were doing
the Ghost of Christmas Eve DVD. They had this one
intro to a song where there's a joy to the
world being sung by a young boy, and I guess
at that point in time, I was the youngest in
(05:06):
the band and they wanted me to dig. You're gonna
do it, I said, I am. We're in somewhere in
northern New Jersey. I ran to the bar across the street,
got a shot at Jack Dances or where I was
like Joe to the world. I never did anything like
that in front of it. So it was one of
these things that we got to the show and I
(05:26):
started talking and I just it's crazy. I am less
nervous in front of ten thousand or fifteen thousand people
than I am in front of a small group of
people on a room. And I don't know why that is.
I think that you don't necessarily focus on any one
and the only time you actually do get nervous is
if it's like your mother and because for some reason,
(05:50):
you know she'll stand up and say something, you know
much he's got to get noticed her. But and I
think that's why a lot of times when we give
guest tickets to guest tickets are never really and in
the front row, because that see that either can be
really good or really bad. You're either really excited to
perform for somebody you get really nervous. So I think
you're able to be more consistent if you just see
that you know that massive people, and then you just
(06:12):
kind of place the energy there. But yeah, I enjoy
that that part of it a lot. You know, I
get a chance to go up there and a lot
of times find things to hopefully I like to make
the people in the band laugh. So I said, there's
some inside jokes every once in a while that they'll
get and people will understand. But it's a fun it's
(06:32):
a very fun job.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
And speaking of that, you were talking about the sellout
tickets and stuff like that. I just found out that
you were numbered TSL was number ten in ticket sales.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, actually after last year, because we were number eleven
the year before that, But we moved aheads and number
ten in the last forty years worldwide of the ticket
sales by bands and the list is the great Yes
we did Yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Is that insane?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah it is? Yeah, No, it's it's uh, it's surreal
because I I don't even know, like I never look
at what we're doing it. I think the way that
other people do. I'm just really happy to be a
part of DSM. So when I see it, I don't
really inside my head, I don't consider myself any different
(07:25):
than I was on the very first day. But when
we look at the accomplishments and the amount of people
on record sales and things that we've done, it's like, wow,
does it It's really impressive. It's pretty cool, and it's
something that Paul had this vision a long time ago.
And you know, there's very few people that I've worked
with in my life that have actually seen things that
they wanted to make happen and make them happen, and
(07:46):
he was always able to do that. I remember while
we're recording the first record, he was talking to me
about something that was going in the shoot a video
and we hadn't even released the record yet, and he's
telling me, now, when tso headlines are we hadn't even
released the record yet. And then when we were out
and headlining arenas for the first time we got to
(08:09):
that level. I remember the very first year. It was
only about three years into the tours that we added
a couple arena shows, and he was coming up and go.
Now when we headline stadiums, and if you actually look
at the math when we play, because you have your
East Coast tour and your Western or if say one's
playing Dallas and one's playing in Newark, New Jersey, Dallas
(08:31):
could have twenty five thousand people between the two shows,
and so could Newark. So that's a stadium where the
people were doing in a single day. So it's like
we couldn't actually go outside in Cleveland in December, but
you know, we we have that amount of people showing up.
So it was just really awesome to be a part
(08:51):
of working with Paul. I'd actually started working with Paul
when I was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And now, like I bet you know, I know, I
just I read your bio and everything, and just like
your whole journey up until you know you were like
your first demo tape was at the age of what fourteen, right,
and then everything that you did up until here, it's
like everything that you've done, has fall into place, and
(09:17):
you are exactly where you need to be, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
It.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Like I said, it always rotates back around to Paul,
and I always think you need to be in the
right place at the right time. And when I tell
my story, it's kind of funny when people asked, well,
how did you do it, and I was like, well,
besides the fact that I was able to play, and
I you know, back at the time when I got
involved in my first sign bands, MTV had just come out,
(09:45):
so I had a pretty a pretty boy looked that was,
you know, so I was able to play metal, but
I was also like, you know, the pretty boy face
for the heavier bands. And I think that, like a
I said, being in the right place at the right time.
And I tell people the reason I was able to
(10:06):
get where I was and meet Paul was fake ID.
And I'm not trying to like say this is a
good and it wasn't even actually fake ID. It was
my work's ID to me. Going back in age, my
brother was nineteen when the drinking age in New York
was nineteen and I never even drank until I was
out of high school. So this isn't saying anything about drinking.
(10:27):
It was the fact that we wanted to go out
to rock clubs and places that you couldn't go. I
was seventeen, he was nineteen, So at nineteen you can
get into the clubs. They moved the age to twenty
one and they grandfathered the nineteen year olds in. And
there was no photo license. So I had his driver's license,
his social Security card, and a credit card, and I'd
(10:49):
go to these days and I'd probably look twelve at
that time, and I would go to the bouncers. They
look at me, and they's no photo so they just
let you in because I think the social Security card
in the and the credit card was really what. I
never got any question. My brother would enter like ten
minutes later with his actual photo license, and then the
guys would just see that. And there was a place
(11:10):
in New York City there was a building that they've
removed that there was a news square that went around it.
It was at forty second in Broadway, and on the
seventeenth floor there was a two floor Indian restaurant that
every Thursday night they had the place to be for
the rock and roll industry. You have the singers of
all the bands, whether it be The Stones or Whitesnaker
(11:32):
or whoever would be in town, would be up there.
And it was a jam. And there was a band
that was called Heaven that was on MTV at the time,
and they had done a cover of the song Knocking
on Heaven's Door. Now, Paul produced that record and that
was his idea for them to cover that song. And
the singer was there, and I had heard that their
(11:53):
guitar player had left the band. So, being the kaki
little seventeen year old kid that I was in this bar,
I walked up to him and told my guitar player
and I had a demo tape on me and I
handed him the tape. I'm flying. He was an Australian guy,
very funny, a guy named Alan Fryer, and he had
passed away. I forget exactly how long ago. He was
(12:15):
so funny. This guy just had that really like almost
like the English kind of sense of humor. But he
was Australian, so it was a little crazier. And he
actually called me from la and said I want you
to do this, and so it was pretty crazy. I mean,
(12:36):
like I said, I mean, obviously I was doing something
that was good enough. But at that period of time,
I went into the management office and I met Paul
and he was working with Libra Crebs was just like
the biggest rocket roll management company ever. So many people
had spawned that at that time they had. Paul was
management with ACDC, Depp bleberd Arosmith, Ted Nuge, and the
(12:57):
Scorpions they had cameo. It was just so many different things.
And I'd walk in there and there would be like
Joe Perry over here these days. It was just like
mind blowing as a little kid to see that. And
then there was Paul and he produced the Heaven record
and the singer in that band was kind of he
was I've worked with a lot of people that are
(13:19):
similar to him, but he just had a lot of
the funny personal problems that led everybody to go, maybe
it's more trouble than it's worth kind of situation with
dealing with the band and the Columbia Records deal they
had was being renewed, and I don't think it was
actually going to be renewed because some some certain things
(13:40):
that were going on business wise with them. And Paul
came up to me and he's like, you know, I'm
producing this band called Sabotage. They're on Atlantic Records. I
want you to come down to me. You know, I
went down a stew there recording this record Haul the
Mountain King, and you know, I had already done my
first demos with He liked my writing goes this band.
(14:03):
He said, I'm going to be putting him on a
tour with Dio because he knew Wendy Dio around his wife.
And their sound is really big in the studio, and
I want you to play guitar with them as a
rhythm guitar player. Now, the band had John and Chris Alivid,
these two brothers, and the Chris the guitar player, was incredible,
and he really didn't want another guitar player because he
(14:25):
was from you know, the Van Halen where Van Halen
was the drummer and guitarist. He had his brother the singer,
and he was the guitarist, and they wanted to be
the four piece band. But they kind of humored Paul
and said yeah, because there will take him on the road.
And they're like, well, they humored him, I guess, and
said yes, we'll do this. And I learned all their
(14:47):
songs at that time. It was five records out. I
learned all their music and I was getting ready to
go on this. It was an arena tour in the States,
and two weeks before the tour Sabatar I was his
manager and Paul they called me up to say that
the band took another guitar player in Flora and I said, no,
they didn't my gig. I loved this band's music, so
(15:13):
I said, listen, I've worked too hard on this. I'll
spent three months telling everybody, no, I'm leaving. I said, listen,
let me leave. I said, So I'm going to do this.
I'm going to buy myself a plane ticket to Florida
and I'm gonna fly down there. If they hate me,
I'll eat the ticket and go home. If they liked me,
you pay for the ticket and I stay and do
the tour. So I go down and this band told
(15:34):
them they had this keyboard player guitar player that they
were going to take. They weren't going to take this
guy to play, kind of like they were humoring Paul. Yeah,
we got this guy, we got So they just did
that to avoid having to deal with me, who they
really didn't know they'd met. But so I went down there.
(15:55):
I showed up at the airport and there was nobody
there to get me. I took a cab like a
half hour away from the airport somewhere to a storage
facility place that the friend ofators knew that they rehearsed in.
And I walked in there and the guys were like, well,
(16:16):
they said, what do you want to play? I said anything?
What do you mean, I said to anything? Pick a song,
said I know one of your songs. So they picked
like a really obscure one that they didn't think I
was going to know, and we played and I could
just see the look on their eyes. Something was happening.
And it was me and Chris. He was far He
(16:38):
was far ahead of me at the time as a
lead player, but rhythm wise we came from the same
egg and when we played together, it sounded like it
was two of him. And we played that and another
song and they said, we're going to leave the room.
They walked out of the room, came back five minutes
later and said, I had the gig. Something that happened.
(17:01):
When that happened, and that was the start of it all,
And then I got into the band for the gut
or Ballet record, and that was very successful in America.
Now I had my brother who was a drummer in
my band, and he was very depressed about the fact
that I was out doing what it was that we
wanted to do, and back at that time, if you
(17:22):
had two bands, you were considered kind of like a
band whore. You know. It was one of these things
where you were in a band. And I made a
pretty foolish, like hol foolish, but maybe it wasn't. It
was just I made a decision to work with my brother,
and I guess I didn't really understand exactly how the
business worked and how much I was going to miss
(17:45):
being in Sabotage until I left it. And it was
only about a year and a half where I was gone.
But things didn't work out with me and my brother
creatively way apart. He went more towards something like wanting Whitesnak,
and I was like, I'm in the band I wanted
to be. Don Aliva had been out of Sabotage. After
the Streets record, me and John got together and we
(18:07):
started writing and we decided to do a project that
was called Doctor Butcher was a very heavy like the
heavier side of Sabotage kind of album. And then, unexpected
to us, John's brother was killed by a drunk driver
and that led to John going and working on a
record called Handful of Rain with Paul and with Sabotage. Now,
(18:31):
through all this Paul had produced every Sabotage record. He
did Gutter Ballet and then after Mountain King, and then
he did Streets, which was a rock opera, which was
the original concept of him wanting rock theater that whole
Streets song. So you know, Paul, he loved the Alivas
and he loved working and writing with John. So they
(18:53):
basically escaped in the real emotion of losing John's brother
and did Handful of Rain. And when that tour was over,
they came back to me that to say, will you
get back in the band for this record? Paul has
an idea about a story about the war in a
yugoslaviaicle did Winter did and I had rejoined Sabotage as
(19:14):
a member of that time and we did that album.
Now on that record was d D was on that album. Now,
when I was seventeen, Paul was telling me about this
instrumental version that he had of Carol the Bells and
he had had daughters of it, and he had worked
with Joan Jet and he was a you know, a
(19:38):
big part of helping her launch her career. And what
Joan had done is she recorded Little Drummer Boy and
that was their idea and they had her on rock
radio at Christmas time and then after New Year's they
released I Love Rock and Roll and she had the
relationship with the radio station, so that light bulb and
(19:58):
Paul's head from then stayed around for this. So with
us with Sabotage, we kind of locked into it. I
just luck. But the I think it was a guitar
player from Kansas or somebody went to this guy named
Mason Dixon who was a DJ in Florida at a
big rock station down in Tampa, and he said, you
(20:20):
got to listen to this song. So Mason played us
on Mixed ninety six down there and it was like
an adult contemporary station, a big adult contemporary rock station
down there, and this the song went number one on
their requested and Mason had told us like normally when
songs were number one most requested, maybe it was like
twenty to thirty people calling it for it he said,
(20:42):
there was like three four hundred people a day calling
for this. So Mason knew Scott Shannon in New York
City at PLJ, and he said, you got to see
what's going on with this song. So Scott did it
New York City and it happened right in the backyard
of Atlantic Records, you know. So Atlantic's listening to what
(21:03):
the Sabotage song was doing on you know, the WPLJ,
the biggest rock station in New York City. So everybody's like, wow,
there was a hit in this song. It was like
too late into the season for them to do anything
about it. So they all got together with Paul and said,
what can we do next year? And then Paul, who
would had the idea for Tso a long time ago,
(21:26):
it decided that it was time for him to launch
that whole concept of his rock theater, and he had
the Christmas Trilogy written and it was time to go
do that record because he told me he always wanted
to do a band that had like limitless creative possibilities,
where you have one guitar player and a singer, where
you can have an orchestra and ten vocalists, and so
(21:50):
the vision of TSO was in his head even when
we did sabotage videos for the for the Gut or
Ballet record for the songs out of Ballet, and when
the crowds are gone, he had had string people there,
you know, brought in that we're doing it. So it
just all it all came together and then we released
(22:11):
that song and boom. It just from there. It didn't
take very long. I mean, the song had that kind
of reaction everywhere, and it just built and built, and
then we went to do it live. And you know,
Paul had always had the the idea that there was
never enough lights. I remember when I played with Heaven
when I went to play this club when I was seventeen,
(22:33):
like I just turned eighteen and we were playing this
rock club in Queens called Lamour East.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Oh my god, I go to Lamore East. I live.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
He spent all of our money, had over half of
our money that we were getting paid that night on lights.
It was like and they had lights, but he's like, no, yeah,
you wonder and have more lights than the last. And
that's kind of where the whole thing with TSO and
you just love lights and production, and that's what's happened.
With two I am.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
You know why because I used to go to La
Boy's East when I was younger. I mean, you're talking
back in the late eighties, right.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
So who did you see there?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You know, I can't remember. I mean it was, come on,
it's very long time ago.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah, I think I just remembered a few because there
was some oh my god people that had went out.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The Queens Boulevard. It was right off for Queens Boulevard.
It closed down a long time ago, but we used
to go there all the time, and it didn't even
matter what rock band was playing. We just went.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
People don't understand exactly how different the scenes were back then.
I mean I used to play cover bands and cover
bands when I was sixteen, and there would be three
four hundred people at the local clubs on a Tuesday
or Thursday. I mean it was just a completely different scene.
So when you got to the weekend and you had
those places like Lemour East that could fit to thousand.
(24:01):
You know, if a band like Poison went there from
LA when they just got signed, there'd be people lined
up out the door to get in.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I mean I didn't even realize it was him. Well,
how would I know? It was him.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Did you ever see were you over there on a
New Year's Eve?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Maybe a handful of times.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
At band Heaven. I saw them on New Year's Eve there,
and that I knew Ray Gillen, who was a singer
that was produced Paul produced his band bad Lands. And
that's actually the first time I met Paul Heed. When
I said I met Paul at the office. Ray was
produced and managed by Paul, but so was Heaven, and
(24:40):
Paul was in that club and he came walking by
and I'm like, who is this guy? Because he had like,
you know, all the black pants and the white shirt
and a leather jacket, and it's like, well, he's got
to be somebody. But I didn't, you know, you didn't
know him because he wasn't in a band. So then
that was the time I had met him. And I
actually want the show I was talking about, Like I said,
I met Paul there, but I played the Moore East
(25:01):
with Heaven there, and actually when we played.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
That show, yeah, every time every time you say them
Moore East, I keep like getting these flashbacks.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Well, when I played Lamouri's with Heaven, we had skid
Row open for us and Sebastian wasn't even in the
band yet.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Oh wow, I'm trying to think who.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
And the funny thing about that is I knew the
skid Row guys and they were looking for a guitar player.
They lived up the drummer lived up by me in
New York State, and they called the drummer called me
up and asked me if I wanted to go audition
for him. And I turned down the audition because I
was working with Heaven. So I passed on going to
audition for skid Row because of that. So that was
(25:42):
kind of, you know, there was a very tight circle.
And then, you know, like I said back at that point,
I just had that kind of image. When I was
out of Sabotage for that one year, I was in
three different you know, I was in Sabotage and I
did this thing called Big Mouth that Atlantic had. It
was like a heavy metal rap band, and then Atlantic
put me in this band Dirty Looks that the president
(26:02):
of Atlantic wanted a certain producer to work with, but
the singer would not listen to Atlantic and it kind
of hurt things with that, and I didn't that singer
in that band. He put a cigarette out in my
arm while I was driving a rental car on that
one on one in California to see what it would do.
He was. He was bizarre, this guy, Henrik. He was
a really good story. He's just one of those people
(26:23):
that you run into that you're like, they do exist.
But I had left dirty looks and then you leave.
Brothers came back to me avatar. So I was literally
in in multiple bands in Atlantic in one year. I
was like their house guitar player. At that point in time,
they were like, we'll just put Chris in. He'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yes, do you have a book out?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I should?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
You should?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I really should? I think that everybody I talked to
he says that because once I go through the stories,
there's so many of them that it's actually bookworthy. But
I mean, and there's maybe some things in there that
I wouldn't want to be in a book, So maybe
I might want to wait till like I'm about you know,
however old, I'll live same an now fifteen and I
(27:11):
got a year left. I'll put it out then. You know,
I don't want my mother to read it.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Not that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
You don't need to read that.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
No, No, that's crazy. Because I was thinking about that,
because I'm like, this guy has stories. I know, because
like guys like him in the industry that are true
and genuine that have actually gone through all the nitty
gritty stuff before they get to that beautiful place. Right.
It's it's You're just phenomenal. And I love you, Chris,
(27:43):
I really do.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
I really do. Definitely, everything that I've done has stories.
Like I could go into every band and everything, and
I say, that's why I do interviews and sometimes I
speak for about a half hour and one question is
I I'm you're warning me about writing things down. So
this is kind of I guess, my way of having
(28:06):
my own diaries by doing it. And when I post
like old throwback photos, I'll put really long paragraphs and
stories underneath it, and it's a way for me to
log what had happened too and put it out there.
So I think a lot of things are kind of
cataloged on my Instagrams and facebooks. If people look back
through the photos.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
You know what I'm gonna have to do with him.
I know what I'm gonna have to do with Chris Cafrain.
This is part one of a series. Okay, check this out.
This is an idea. This is how ideas come about. Okay,
I'm just saying this is part one. Okay, Now, like
maybe a few months down the line or whatever, we
get a part two and he comes back on the
(28:47):
show and he gives us another story. Okay, and then
it's kind of like an audio visual book.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
You know, so as he's traveling, right, and he's doing
the country because I know you guys going to be
I mean, all over the place until December thirtieth, right, yeap,
as you're going by, we click in on him, right,
and we get a talk like for about fifteen twenty minutes,
and he gives us an idea of what's going on
and everything, and he gives us a path of what's
(29:17):
what he's been doing. Right, and that's it. Okay, goodbye
Chris Goruct And then you know, and then a couple
of months go by. It's like a docu series.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I tell you run that by night Castle and make
sure everybody's okay. I don't do it. I learned it
throughout my careerent that the most important thing I can
do now is just make sure anything I do I
ask for permission before I do it. It's like it's like,
and then if I mess it up, then it was like,
well I messed up after I had permission and I
(29:47):
didn't mean to do it that, but I just found
that that I like to avoid as much drama.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Listen. I was the same way. You can ask Adam.
I probably hounded him enough time before this interview, okay,
because I right, don't I do I do. I go
by protocol.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And I think they've grown to a point now that
they realized that I have. I guess maybe the words
growing up. I don't know if I'll ever actually grow up,
but I think they I think they're willing to trust
me now, you know. I think twenty years ago they
might have been like me, we should we don't know
(30:30):
how this could be an interview at noon, and I
might have just got back at eleven from not being
out the night before. It's like, maybe it's best if
we wait. And then now we're like, I think we
could trust them.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Well, let me tell you you've been You've been a treat.
I mean, this is I mean, this has been phenomenal.
I mean I was like, Okay, you know, we'll see,
we'll see, we'll see. But because you don't know every time,
what the guest is going to give you, and when
you first came in so we can get a video
and soundcheck. It was all over for me. It was
(31:03):
all over because I was like, we needed, we need
like two hours with him. We can't. We can't, we
can't half hours, We can't. He was right too.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Somebody in Christmas lights in their room. I decorate every
hotel room I go to.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
It kind of depends on how long we're there, how
much I put in the room. And I have a
road case in the arena that goes in with when
I talk to the audience to do the charity checks.
I used to do it when I was introducing in
the band, but I don't have enough time to get
the shirts on. I have jerseys from all the sports
teams and work from all of them. I have Christmas
(31:40):
decorations and things so when we finally get to Christmas,
because I'll buy things as the tour is going on,
I take out all the boxes and bring it to
my room and it takes me like three four hours
to decorate my room at Christmas. And it'll literally I'll
get those little sticky hooks and I'll put them around
the whole entire ceiling of my home. It'll you'll look
like you're in this giant queue of Christmas lights. And
(32:01):
it's just funny because I love Christmas. When I was
a kid, I have every Hallmark little Eskimo ornament they
had for the last forty years. So it's like, I
love Christmas. It's it's a really it's a special time
a year. And that's what, you know what Paul would
always say, It's like, you know the magic that happens
that time a year where it always seems like, no
(32:22):
matter what, people find a way to be kind or
more kind at that time of the year. It just
brings something out. And for me, that's why it's always,
I think, very natural for me to be who I
am on that stage that time of year, because it's like,
you know, I have absolutely no problem being Santa Claus.
It's like it's you know, it's like I go up there,
(32:43):
as I always say, it's like I'm the David ver
author of the winter season. It's like I enjoy that
because for me, it's just fits, it fits my personality.
I remember when I was sixteen, I think I went
to my friends, my best friend down the road. We
moved out of town, but I went back to his
(33:04):
Christmas parties on Christmas Eve and I managed to figure
out a way to attach the pole from an artificial
Christmas tree to me. I duct taped it around me,
and I stuck the Christmas tree things off of me,
and I had lights on, and then the top of
(33:26):
the tree was on my head, built it into a hat,
and I had an extension cord at this party with
this like fifty foot extension court, so I could walk
around and I went to the party as a Christmas tree.
At that point, people were just like, it's not really
that normal, but it's like kind of the irony of
(33:47):
you know, where it was that I, you know, wound
up in what time of the year, and what would
we do with lights and everything like that, So it
was just kind of natural for me to be to
be lit. I can't talk.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I don't even go for no, but all I got
to say is that, like I think we're trans Siberian
Orchestra in the holiday season to me is like the
equivalent of every little girl and boy waiting for the
Christmas Special with the rockets.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, exactly, you know, trying to even with the cartoons,
you didn't know exactly when they were going to come on.
You just knew they were going to happen. It's kind
of like, sorry, you don't know exactly what day of
the week we're going to show up. You just know
that when you get to the winter season and you're
in November December, the TSO is going to be in
your town or at least within hopefully within forty five
(34:39):
miles or where you live or close enough to drive.
And yeah, it's really awesome. And the thing that gets
me every single year, I'll do the charity thing before
the show, because we give a dollar from every ticket
sold to a different local charity. And we set up
with the radio stations and we went over the twenty
million dollar mark.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeah. And I'll go up there and I'll ask the
audiences how many of you have seen TSO before? Usually
half of them haven't, so it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
I had seen the show.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I've never seen it, yeah, so yes. But my thing is,
it's just like it's so incredible that we're still getting
the new one. But you have people back and they
bring back maybe their uncles or their aunts. But on
the other side of the thing too, the people that
maybe they would tell us I hadn't spoken to my
(35:34):
dad in ten years, and I called him up and
brought him in the show and now we talk every day.
So it's uniting people too. And a lot of those
things that happened in the stories about you know, ornaments
about somebody not being there on Christmas or not they
have passed away, or whether they or not, they just
haven't been an your life. So it's like that that
way of uniting people and that that you know, that
(35:55):
single act of kindness. I think that that's kind of
we're like one giant act to kind of go open
to what we do and just try to make people escape,
you know, life for that time, for the for the
two and a half hours that you're in and watching
Cso it's just like we hope that everybody just you know,
was able to get inside our little bubble and enjoy
(36:18):
that time and realize how special that we know, being
able to do this for everybody is because we don't
do that without them. And that's the one thing that Paul,
you know, was really wanted to focus everything on, was
was the fans, you know, and us doing what we did.
That's why every every show we'd ever done up until COVID,
(36:38):
we used to allow any fans that wanted to stay
in the arena to come and meet the ban and
we never charged anybody for anything. And you know, of
course that the twenty twenty was was was a big
change in everybody's life and that in that situation. But
Paul just always wanted to be able to give back.
And that's I think why our show got larger every year,
(36:59):
because he wanted to, you know, out do us so
that we're coming back could see something bigger.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
And it's just better and different all the time. It's
never like the same show. It's always something different, and
I think that's what people appreciate and they gravitate too,
you know, because I was every video that I was
watching and it always gave me the chills, right, and
it always gives you the chills because it's just I
(37:27):
don't know how to even explain it. It's just a
different feeling each performance.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
It's the ingenuity, it's the dream, it's the imagination that
these guys have, and I really applaud.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So much talent in one building you can see it,
you know, and the live when you see the Lies
show and you just see something just spectacular. It just
blows you out of water because it's like, dude, it's
just like a lot.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Of concerts you go to.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
It's just you know, not trying to diss any artist,
but it's blam when you go see you guys then
is going in going here?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I'm like, WHOA Our lighting designer, Brian Hartley, He's I
consider him to be the greatest in the business. And
the funny thing about him was when I did the
Sabotage tour with Doo back in eighty seven eighty eight,
he was Sabotage as light man Paul and hired him then.
So I've been working with Brian as long as I have. Paul.
(38:26):
He was my very first professional light man, and I
remember when we were playing with Doo. Doo had a
guy named Dave Lights doing his lights and he was
Iron Maiden used used to work for Maiden and he
always had these really cool light shows with Maiden, and
I just remember seeing Brian and Dave Lights. They would
they would stay up every once in a while day
would travel on our bus and they'd be up all
(38:48):
night long designing these light shows and arena shows, and Brian,
you know, was still on a kind of entry level
getting into the business bigger and bigger because he was
pro but you know, building himself to that level. And
now it's just like he did designs for other bands,
he does for this and you know he's on our
tour every night doing o our lights. But he's he's
a big part of what was able. You know, when
(39:08):
Paul had ideas, he'd give him to Brian, and Brian
would take his. And then now that Paul's passed, I mean,
Brian just you know, he takes it the bull bite
of horns and and and just he he does so
many cool things. And I used to email or text
Brian and say, I don't want to see what's what
you may have planned. And now I don't like to
see it till now because the show's being put together
(39:29):
in the arena and I like to look at it
when it's done because I don't want to. I don't
want to spoil the surprise. And it's you know, it's
bigger than and better every single year, you know, and
our our production teams are amazing every every angle of it.
And I think that's an advantage we have too. We
get technology moves along with us, you know, so they'll
(39:50):
they'll wander into to Adam, Kenny and and and Elliott
and and I'm sure that they put they put the
budgets up and and you know, you want to work,
but when you see these things, I remember all this
one year there was he had this big only one
of them, but he had this big spotlight that was
going down from the middle of the top of the stage.
(40:10):
And he looks at me, he says, you call me boss,
and boss, what do you think is I think we
need more of those lights? One of them? At that time,
I said, yeah, probably do because because I could see
there being four more and these lights were gigantic and
it took a whole additional semi light and it happened,
and I could only imagine being a fly on the wall.
(40:33):
And he wandered into into Elliott, into the management's office
at Elliott and Adam and them and said, we're going
to add another truck of four lights. But you know,
that's the whole thing. It was. It was bigger, it
was better, and TS always wanted to try to out
do Tso I think that's what Paul was like. We
got to do better than we did last year. But
first somehow it always see, it always happens, you know,
(40:55):
and I think like that technology happens with that we
had the snow globe with.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I know you, I love it.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
That's when I said last year at TSO Gone Global.
Cool every year that we're able to see the newest
technology of every lights and in the videos and in
the way that the animation works. So it's it's it's
always fun. I just tell everybody, I've got the greatest
playground in the world. You do.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Let me just say one thing. I just want to
know when you're in the commercial right and there's the
five guys, the five of you in the front right
on which one is you?
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Well, I don't know what all depends on which video
it is because sometimes we move around in different spots
and then sometimes, like I said, you have the East
coast and the West coast bend, so I usually somehow
in those lines, I usually wind up on the left,
even though I stay on stage right most of the show,
and it's kind of where we rotate around.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, because you know how many times I had to
play that video trying to figure out which one you
were Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
There's lots off from ones. Like I said, you just
it depends on the song too and where it is,
so it's near the end. But I have two when
when and we had just we just had a loss
in the Tso family this week. His art is on
(42:19):
our records, but.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
It's I know, and your guitars do.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
My five guitars are the only ones that have this guy.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
God rest his soul. Greg Hildebrank ahead, you can tell
him well.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Greg is a legend. I mean his artwork. I I
when Paul first told me about it, I was like,
you're kidding me, because everybody knew his art from the
Wars and you knew what he had done. But he
was such a kind person. And Gene and they would
those two comes to the shows and you would see
them there and their their faces and their smiles. And
(42:55):
Greg would walk around with his camera and you always
had this camera, the big zoom lens, and he would
saying of us and it he you know, besides being
able to be one of those people that could see
you yeah and paint you, he was able to take
the pictures and I think that probably helped him get,
you know, visions for what he did with art being
able to work things. He's capturing the pictures because you know,
(43:19):
if you see things, you don't always capture and a
head of person. Now we have nine thousand photos on
our on our cell phones. But you know in the past,
when you I would leave tours and I'd have like
a plastic bag full of camera rolls, you know, the
first time you went to Paris or something like that,
and of course you'd go and you'd pay to develop
him in a roll of twenty four had like five
(43:40):
pictures that were good. Sure, because that was the joy
of the photo companies. It's like, because you needed photos
and you never had a complete role of good ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
No, but I did see about him and I was like, oh,
you know because that he did and it just.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Loved his work and I was so blessed to be
able to have that work placed onto my guitars, right, yeah,
I have a guitar. We had special guests with TSO
and I had a white lest fall that I started first.
One of the first guests was Joan Jet. But we
(44:19):
didn't know we were going to make having special guests
be something Paul was going to want to do every
year and stance Paul had passed. We never we weren't
doing that again because that was his, his people he knew,
and his placement of that together. But we had Ian
Hunter come out to Cleveland and we did Cleveland Rocks
(44:39):
and I had my less Paul and I gave him
a sharpie and he signed it and then it just
kept going. So Steven Tyler's on it, and He's on it,
and Leslie West is on it, and Robin Xander from
Cheap Trick. And then when Joan came to play with
us on New Year's Eve of twenty fourteen to fifteen,
(45:01):
I said, Joan, you never signed this guitar, but she
played the Garden with us the very first time we played,
so she signed it and Paul was standing next to
me and I said, Paul, you gotta sign this guitar
for me, And that actually happened to be the last
day I saw Paul. But on the back of that guitar,
I forget exactly where we were. It was probably one
of the shows that Tyler or Roger Dalty did where
(45:23):
I saw Greg there and we all said Greg Lake
from Emerson. Lincoln Palmer was around a lot too, and
he had passaid, Well, he's on the guitar. But I said, Greg,
I'm having you know, musician people sign the front of
this book. Can you sign the back of Greg's signatures
on the back of that guitar? Yeah, him, and I
(45:43):
believe Tony Marussa, the manager from the Cardinals, is a
really big Tso fan, and he took us to the
stadium to watch batting practice and when we did our
spring tour, so I was I was really excited to
meet him and he would come to the show as
he was a huge fan. So I had him sign.
I think he was at one of those shows with
the with the special guests, and I had him sign
(46:04):
that guitar and it's there. But yeah, I knew Greg
had gone into the hospital a few times, but I
didn't know, you know. So I was told by by
everybody here that we lost him. And it's definitely we've
had a lot. I mean, our bass player Dave and
our band, and he was he gott in his life,
taken in a tour bus accident that had happened. Then
(46:27):
you know, it's just we had our one keyboard player
from the West Coast band Vitally. He had passed early
this year's a lot of you know, you you used
the energy amongst your friends and tsos and family to
pull through this. And because we are such a large family,
go on a road with hundreds of people, and there's
been you know, hundreds of members of the of the band,
(46:48):
you know, I think we see a little bit more
than most people do it all of that, so you
just find your ways to gather around it, you know.
And I stand up there like as we're doing Lost
Christmas Eve this year her James Lewis, who was on
the East Coast tour. He was the original singer of
Christmas Nights in Blue when he had passed on it says,
(47:08):
you just have your memories of these people, you know.
And and the Three Kings song was was Darryl Petford,
the singer that did the you know, music Box Blues
and he was my roommate when this started. Because we
and and Darryl was somebody to pass. So I think
that's like I said, when we would do songs like
Ornament on stage, you just conduct that energy. And there's
(47:32):
lots of times when I'm up there and I just
start crying, and it's just because I'm thinking of Paul
or I'm thinking of these people, Darryl or or Dave
and things we did on stage and places we've been,
and you know, it's definitely something that I think it
helps to give you strength, you know, and knowing that that, Uh,
(47:54):
first of all, I was blessed to be able to
work with these people and have them as part of
my life. So to be able to keep Paul's legacy
alive and to bring those along with it, you know,
Greg's art and the singers that did the records and
the people that performed the videos and stuff like that.
I think it's just all part of keeping that, you know,
that whole magic and legacy alive.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Let me just tell you you you really got to
write that book. I'm telling you you got. I know,
you know you're worried about your mom reading it or whatever,
but you know what, you got to write that book.
I just want you to know that tso is. I
am a big fan of Tso. It doesn't mean any
tickets in front, okay, because I'll be fine backstage anyway.
With that said, with that said, listen, you got to
(48:38):
throw it in. You got to listen to girls work, okay.
So I just wanted to say, because I really appreciate
you coming on the show. I mean I could sit
here for hours with you. You don't know. I mean
you are just full of life stories and I mean
it's just it's so nice and hot, warming, and I
look forward to you being on our second Doctor series.
(49:00):
Whenever you want, we'll get that. We'll get that cleared
up with Newcastle, I mean not Castle, sorry about that.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Sunday it's a football day, so Newcastle comes.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I'm rolling here. But again again, I really appreciate you
coming on. And of course if anybody wants out there,
you got to go see TSL babe. It's t s
O tickets dot com find your ticket to day. You
can't get the tickets I do because I'm going to
be backstage, so the you know, if anything, thank you again, Chris,
I really appreciate it. We got to do another series.
(49:34):
You got to tell him you get the same thing. Listen.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
It's phenomenal, honestly to meet you and everything that you
have done. And it's hilarious because every time I hear
that song, I.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Just say one thing at first, because when I had said,
you know, we're gonna have trains Siberian orchestra. He's like
what and I said, he said.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Oh yeah, it's like you showed that commercial before. And
we'll be out here and I'll turn on a television
in the morning and you'll flip on the channel and
it will be the first thing you'll see. You'll walk
into the mall, you'll hear, and you'll walk into all
the stories.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
So it's well, you go, that's what you do. Now
you'll still hear the songs, and it's a homecoming. I'm
telling you every time, you know these guys the you
know the fact when I read that, you guys surpassed
The Grateful Dead, which by the way, that number one
song was named Althea. But you pass them up, okay,
(50:31):
number ten and you know their first number one hit
was Alfeia. But I'm just going to keep pushing that along.
But all I'm saying is this is the reason why
they have the ticket sales they do because the show
is phenomenal, The people are phenomenal, the instruments, everything that
you guys do is phenomenal. So I applaud you time
(50:52):
and time again. Thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Thank you so much, and we'll see you real soon.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
You know, I'll just you know, schedule the time and
everything will keep up and uh.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Just be safe and happy this holiday. Super But I
don't speak to you before.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Thanks, don't worry about it. We're gonna get okay good.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Then I'm looking forward to it. We uh, we start
playing live next week, and I just I know that
when I when I get onto the stage for the
first time, and if you've ended the rehearsal stages of things,
it's kind of like it it just goes to a
different you go into a different modes to where you
kind of just go into you live on the bus
(51:33):
for a couple of months, and it just changes. And
I loved every part of the process. But I really
enjoy when we finished the first shows and we have
to day in Green Bay and you get on the
bus and the bus starts moving, and it's like for
me then it's like you're on tour. Yeah, who does
that bus starts moving? You're on tour. And that's where
(51:55):
I look forward to it. I look forward to seeing
everybody on the road and thank you again. This was
a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
No, just remember d NA Live every Sunday, eight pm.
We might have Chris on next week who knows. I
don't know. He may even call me I don't know,
but just stay tuned.
Speaker 5 (52:10):
Love you, Chris, Peace out everybody.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
H
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