Over at Tony Martin’s Official Website, he had a tour report. This is what he had to say about his short tour having finished..
I’M BACK!!!!!!!!!
What a tour!!!!! I gotta tell you this band is really cool!!! I know some seasoned musicians that would have CRUMBLED under the pressure!!!! But everyone pulled to-gether and we came through it scathed but intact!!
I am so impressed with the few thousand people that came out to see us!! You guys rock! And we wanna thank you for the great reception we had. Not all the venues were full but those that came were really great to play, and we tried to meet as many of them after as we could. To those we met, thanks for your support and kind words, it means a lot.
We had endless problems to deal with, from wrong equipment to the front wheel coming off the bus!!!
Promoters that didn’t turn up with the money and not paying us to impossible journeys that made performing close to impossible.
We have made MANY friends on this short trip, and discovered much about our possibilities and limitations. The industry is very different to that we knew but it’s still wide open in some areas that will be good for us.
I wanna pay tribute to guys in the band, Danny Needham, Great drummer, very visual and a hard worker, he has the ability to sit at almost ANY kit and make it work! I’ve never seen a drummer do this!! No ego, great laugh, cool guy. Jamie mallender, Bass guitar, another cool guy, we have a very reliable determined player here, I was amazed also at his ability to work with impossible equipment!! One show had him with a bass rig that stopped working and STILL he threw shapes and made it LOOK like the equipment was working, and never complained!!! Jo Harford, my son, he’s quite shy mostly but he’s really come out of his shell and performs Iommi’s stuff perfectly, It’s a joy to work with him and I’m very proud of him, Fabio Cerrone, Very talented and individual player. Again he worked with some impossible equipment and was able to make a great performance. A real gentleman on stage, giving up his better equipment to Joe so that Joe could work easier. Geoff Nicholls, our experience, he has been fantastic in keeping spirits up and it’s an honour to have him in my band. All of these guys are worth every credit I could find. Thank you for hanging in there and making it possible.
I now know it’s perfectly possible to make this work. I was unsure what to expect before but now… It’s all there for us to do. The record company are right behind us too, so I’d like to thank them.
The songs?…….. It’s all there … this time we tried Sabbath stuff….. That works real well, we got solo stuff that will come next, we got archive stuff…. it’s all possible a huge catalogue of great songs to draw from. And a band capable of achieving it all. right now the show lasts nearly 2 hours! I can see it possible to make 3 hours out of it!!!
I’m really pleased with the band and our possibilities are really exciting. This is the beginning and now I’m completely confident.
Thanks again to those who supported us.
TM
The guy who sent in the pictures from yesterday’s report also had posted a concert review I linked to yesterday. I sent that review to Tony himself to check out, and Tony replied with this in regards to the concert review..
Had a look at the review and I’m shocked!!!
If you take this personal review to heart I imagine you would be put off from seeing the show, I hope not, It’s written from a voyeur point of view with no information of the background and little acnowledgement of the majority crowd reaction that was really amazing and very encouraging!
All the requests I’ve ever had and favourite tracks that’ve been asked for, have been the Sabbath years that never got played!!!!
Just goes to show my original idea of changing direction could have been better! But then the album is in Sabbath style and everyone seems to like that so then it would seem that people want me to write like Sabbath but not play like Sabbath!
Hmmm!!!! guess I can’t win.
I would just say that this is just the beginning and the overwhelmning opinion has been to start where I left off and work towards the new Tony Martin direction.
Also I am very proud of those Sabbath years and was always disapointed that I didn’t get to play them more.
The sound was shit because they refused to include my sound engineer in the trip to Russia. We had our own engineer on the rest of the tour and it was much better. The sound created was by an in house engineer that we met just a few hours before that was one of the reasons that the show was later.
Also the agent that initiated the tour didn’t send all the information about equipment so we had a struggle with certain things.
The decision to play one scream track was deliberate because we are coming back to Russia possibly in January to continue the story and by then we hope the album will be more available.
I also wanted Geoff to get credit for the work hea has done in the past and coupled with that was my small tribute to the rest of the Sabbath years. I sang Children of the sea for more years in Sabbath than Ronnie did!!! It’s a great song and I’m happy to promote it.
Dio and Ozzy have had their solo careers for many years, I haven’t done that and so I have to start SOMEWHERE!!!!!
If you just don’t like the fact that I was there, I can’t help that. There are some people that still think I should even be trying, can’t help that either, It’s nice to know I piss em off so much!!!
It’s great to have Geoff on board, it’s also a pleasure to have my son on board, the other guys are relatively unknown but I needed people I trust in the band and I have that now.
I have to say the overall reaction to the shows has been really encouraging.
Don’t give up on us just yet!!
TM
When I sent that review to Tony, I wasn’t expecting him to write that much, let alone write anything back, so that’s cool. If the Tony Martin band happens to come near where you’re playing, make it a point to go see it; especially with the set list that I’ve seen going around for it. At least in the Turin Italy gig on November 25th it was:
The Lawmaker
I Witness
The Eternal Idol
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
Valhalla
Children of the Sea
When Death Calls
Dying For Love
Scream
The Shining
Headless Cross
Paranoid
War Pigs
That’s a lot of Martin era Sabbath, the likes of which we’ll probably never see Sabbath themselves do ever again, so if you like these songs, and want them to survive, Tony needs your support. Buy Scream, go see him in concert.
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