Queensryche/S.U.N.- Tipitina’s, New Orleans, Louisiana, 6/23/13

You know a concert is going to be good when the music coming from the sound-check has fans huddling with their ears pressed against the glass, soaking up every note as if their rock & roll life depended on it, then walking away with a look of pure astonishment. Several went back over to friends, marveling at the man on the drums and wondering who he was. Another told his wife that Geoff Tate’s vocals were not of this world.

The band itself has been pulled and pushed over the past year. Geoff Tate exited amidst nasty insults and rat-a-tat-tat sound-bites that kept band members fussing and fighting over everything; from who gets to carry the name Queensryche to who was the real bad guy. There are now two versions on the concert trail and the one playing in New Orleans was Tate’s. When he first announced that a new Queensryche CD was in the works, with legendary bass player Rudy Sarzo and RATT drummer Bobby Blotzer, a cheer was let out amongst Tate’s legion of fans. His 2012 solo release, Kings & Thieves, took Tate on a powerful journey through the world today. “I wanted it to be emotionally raw,” Tate explained to me last year during an interview. “I try to write what I know. I come from that kind of attitude and so songs are typically written about what I live through, the experience that I have, my general outlook on things.” He could very well be talking about the new Queensryche album, Frequency Unknown, or the big, blatant FU that is power-fisted on the cover.

With Blotzer bowing out and former AC/DC drummer Simon Wright coming aboard along with keyboard player Randy Gane and guitarists Robert Sarzo and Kelly Gray, Tate has taken to the road once again, this time to celebrate the band’s monumental album, Operation: Mindcrime, on it’s 25^th anniversary. “When that album came out, it was universally criticized,” Tate explained last fall. “People didn’t get it and it didn’t sell any records.” It wasn’t until MTV bombarded the channel with it’s storyline videos that “all of a sudden it went gold within in a week.”

With monster drummer Brian Tichy sitting in for Wright during the June shows, the intensity of the performances of these odic tunes was upped a notch. His pure ferocity was almost humanly unimaginable, and it is what has made him regularly sought-after by musicians recording or touring. He is the drummer of the moment and with his Bonham worship tattooed on his arm like a red badge of courage, he has brought back to the modern world what it has been missing since Bonzo passed away in 1980. No one can touch Tichy right now and if he continues on this golden calf pathway, he will have solidified his place in musical history for this generation.

Tichy, along with the incredible Sass Jordan, created Something Unto Nothing (S.U.N.) last year, releasing their self-titled debut to some great reviews for their hardcore center and bluesy outer layers. Songs like “Burned” and “Nomad,” which they performed in New Orleans during an acoustic stomp opening set, vibrated with no-holds-barred vocals and drums (bass player Michael Devin was also a major ingredient to the band’s sound, although he was not with them on this outing with Queensryche as they performed as a duo). “You can really hear the joy and the fun that we’re having,” Jordan told me in our interview earlier this year about not only the CD but being a part of the band as well. “There’s an urgency and a rawness about it and I think that might have something to do with the fact that I don’t live here and we’re always in a rush to get it done,” the native Canadian continued. “It demands that we put our best foot forward immediately. We don’t have time to mess around.”

Their five-song opening set, which concluded with a foot-stomping cover of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed,” a song Tichy called “One of the best songs ever written,” was more like the word acoustic being pumped with steroids. The only thing acoustic about this set was Tichy’s Washburn guitar. Sitting in front of a bass drum that he worked with his feet and strumming the guitar while Jordan let loose some sirens-going-off husky serenades to rock & roll, kick-your-butt girl style, slapping a tambourine on her hip, arm raised in an act of victory and defiance.

Jordan would return during the Queensryche set, most memorably wrapping around Tate in a serpentine coil as they dueted on “Suite Sister Mary.” Tichy would reign over the drums the entire time, soloing with his fists following the title track, leading into “Speak” and “Spreading The Disease.”

Tate, all intense cobra, prancing the stage like a caged tiger, emitted the Operation: Mindcrime evil bastard character to the hilt, like a smoldering Pacino at the end of The Godfather bolting from his throne by a rabies-infected needle prick. Tate was commanding in his performance, voice as crisp and vibrant as it ever was (“The voice is a muscle and you got to keep it worked out,” was how Tate explained his vocal longevity. “And I try to lead a very healthy lifestyle.”). Even by the end of the twenty-two song set, when he was going hellbent for the rafters on “Empire,” his voice never once faltered.

The Sarzo brothers have been a stunning addition to Queensryche. Rudy is a legend, having played with Ozzy Osbourne, Quiet Riot, Dio and Whitesnake, his bass ruminations the concrete that can hold any foundation down to it’s roots. He has the stage presence of a star without the typically accompanying arrogance. Chants of “Rudy” were numerous throughout the show and Tate paid homage when introducing him, “I am so lucky.” Robert, also quite lively, throwing up the horns, playing a lovely, haunting “Electric Requiem” harmony alongside Gray, and pulling out the bow to give it the underworld nuance it needed to drive into “Breaking The Silence.” Robert is probably best known as the founding guitarist of Hurricane, which also launched the career of current Foreigner vocalist Kelly Hansen.

Playing only one song from Frequency Unknown, “Cold” during the encore, the timeframe was left open for a complete run-through of Operation: Mindcrime, ending with an excellent crescendo of “Eyes Of A Stranger” before the band returned for “Silent Lucidity,” “Best I Can,” I’m American,” “Jet City Woman,” and the aforementioned “Cold” and “Empire.” Highlights, by far, were “The Mission,” “Suite Sister Mary,” “Jet City Woman,” “I Don’t Believe In Love” and the mouth-dropping Tichy drum solo.

There were a few times when the crowd seemed to be a little too laid back for Tate’s appetite, despite doing his best to pull some rebel yells out of them, playfully saying, “It’s Sunday night. You got to get up early and go to work in the morning.” But for the most part, the majority of the fans WERE fans and were giving the band all their love and hedonistic devotion. “We live for this shit,” Tate happily announced before taking a final bow with his band.

Prior to the start of the show, we sat down with Brian Tichy on the bus and talked with him about music, John Bonham and what makes him a monster of a drummer.

Why do you love John Bonham so much?

Great first question. For all the reasons that just about all drummers do… his groove first. He’s got a great groove, a unique groove. He tunes his drums amazingly, so there’s many different John Bonham sounds on most all the records. People think it’s always a big, loud, bombastic drum sound but some of them aren’t. It’s just great tuned drums and they are also recorded amazingly, which you have to attribute to the engineers involved and Jimmy Page. Probably, mostly Jimmy because he was leading the show. And then you have his great licks, you have his great intros, his great fills. He sets you up and he makes you wait for something and you don’t know what is going to happen. And then he puts it in and you go, “That was awesome. Thank you for putting that in there.” And he’s also got a great nic-name, Bonzo. So it all adds up. And he’s got a logo, the three circles. Put it on the front of the kick drum and, hey, you’re a star. I have a ton of drummers I love but he’s the guy that I never stopped listening to. So I’d say that’s why, in my mind, he’s the best. He did something that made me never want to stop listening.

When you were a kid and you were playing along and trying to learn his songs, what did you find was the most difficult thing to learn that he did, either in a song or overall?

There’s a few things that are tricky and stuff like that but the hardest to me was a song on Physical Graffiti, I think. I had the 8-track at the time and it was like Track Two on Side Three, “Down By The Seaside.” It’s a slow shuffle and there’s a lot of tricky Bonham stuff going on. But that song in particular is just a straight shuffle but it’s slow. And to try and play to that is really difficult. It was like the test when I’d be playing to Zeppelin and I’d get to that song and I’d go, “Ok, here is the test, can I keep it together to keep the shuffle slow and groovy?” It’s not a hard beat or anything, it’s just the tempo of the shuffle is a real unique kind of shuffle the way he does it.

There is “Fool In The Rain,” which is a real classic in the vein of a Bernard Purdie shuffle. I can go on forever about all the cool tricky things he’s got but I’d say that the hardest was “Down By The Seaside.” Then there’re just parts: the long arrangement of “Achilles Last Stand” or “In My Time Of Dying.” There’s some really great stuff on the live “Dazed & Confused” from The Song Remains The Same. There’s stuff where he uses like left hand lead, there’s stuff where he does syncopation. It comes from an R&B funk thing that maybe a lot of rock drummers never got into as much. But he’s got this natural funky syncopated style. So couple that with his bombastic, solid, four/four stuff, like a “Kashmir” and, I don’t know, to me, he’s like a funk drummer but he knows how to keep it real simple. I could go on forever about it.

Why did you and Sass decide to do an acoustic opening set?

A couple reasons. The main one is because we can; the second one is because of the way it worked out. I am doing drums for the month of June and Sass came in a couple of weeks before me doing some shows. But it was like, alright, we’re already on the tour bus as members of Queensryche, we’re in the band. So if it’s just the two of us, we’re on the bus and all traveling together, you don’t need to have another band. And we had already done this. We had tried it in February in LA. It’s hard enough to keep a band together but let’s say it’s like a one-off or something. What if we just did it, because we were also talking about doing like a regular tour. Like what if just the two of us went and did a regular tour. If I just had a guitar and you were singing, we’d do some like acoustic versions. But what if I actually had a bass drum, I could stomp along. And Sass was like, “I really don’t feel like doing an acoustic thing. Like, here’s our pretty little acoustic songs.” We wanted to keep it a little bit more energized. And I was like, “Well, just take a bass drum in there and that makes it a total acoustic stomp set,” which is what it is. The bass drum and the hi-hat that’s got the tambourine on it and you’ve got boom, chat, boom, chat. But when we started rehearsing, it was quick. Like, oh yeah, this is pretty obvious it’s going to be good. But not every song is played the same. It’s not like you’re just playing the guitar part from the record and she’s singing the song. We sort of reinvented them quickly. It was like, well, this riff doesn’t make sense on a 12-string. So I changed it. It’s close enough and it makes sense in a stomp way. It’s kind of fun and it’s different. People after the show say nice things about it. They react favorably and we’re always like, thanks, it’s great but we wish we could be the full band giving it to you. But it’s fine. We may even record an EP of this stuff, just because.

But it’s all been cool and it’s great for us to have this opportunity and it worked out great for everybody. We’re kind of like the built-in opening band and stuff. We hope that there will be a way to bring the full band out. This is cool but in a perfect world, we’d sell some CDs and get to a point where we could do our own show and in the middle of it maybe Sass and I could come out and do like two or three songs like this. Maybe just two (laughs). It would be awesome if people knew it and were waiting for it. Like, “Cool, they’re doing that song.” It would be awesome if they knew any of the songs (laughs) but what I’m saying is that it would be nice if they knew it was coming. But whatever it takes at this point, you know, to just make it work, to move it forward. It’s like our manager said, “You could do this or not. If you don’t do it, you can’t get the full band out, then you don’t do anything as S.U.N. If you do this, you are promoting S.U.N.” So it’s a no-brainer to promote S.U.N.

Do you consider yourself a monster drummer?

Only when I dress up in green paint and yell as loud as I can and scare people (laughs)

But everybody calls you a monster, including me.

I think when they say that, they just mean somebody that, you play with energy and you’re consistent, and I think that’s what everybody wants in a drummer. You know, if you just go, “Oh, I got sleep so I’m going to play harder and I’m going to play things better,” it’s always got to be like that. It doesn’t matter. But then at the same time, monster and all that, you’re like hitting things too hard because I always kind of hit too hard. At sound-check I was playing at a comfortable medium and I was like, this is great, cause if I had to go to a solo then I’d have my chops. But then I play too hard and I try to go into my solo, then my solo has to be harder to keep up with the level of volume that I’ve already started in the show and then I get fatigued and I just make up stupid junk. This is not how Neil Peart is. He doesn’t think like this. He’s smart about it. That’s why he’s Neil Peart and I’m not. He plays at one level all night and he knows his ups and downs. I come out swinging too hard. You know what it’s like? It’s like Tyson, he’ll know he’s going to get a guy. But Tyson will come out and if you can get past two or three rounds with Mike Tyson, you have a good chance, as a Holyfield did, to go the distance. Holyfield is amazing but Tyson is so used to getting in there and whap-whap-whap-bam, knockout, right. But if you can get past that, weather that storm …

What makes a drum solo a great drum solo?

Ask Neil Peart (laughs). Listen to Neil Peart, listen to Tommy Aldridge and listen to John Bonham. Those are the best. Terry Bozzio has a badass solo.

But what do you do to keep people from walking off to go get drinks?

I don’t know. I usually bring like dancing poodles and I’ve been working on this thing where I have these two huge like 20,000 gallon tanks and the dolphins, one in each tank, and they jump over me and I feed them with a sharpened stick. I feed them sardines in the air while I’m doing like a double bass solo. They jump and I feed them. Usually that keeps people from going to get a beer (laughs)

What about the knives you played with on the Whitesnake tour?

I wish I could take credit for that and I can’t. I give cred to, first, David Coverdale and second, Zoltan Chaney. David looks at me and goes, “Tichmeister, when we go to Japan, you have to use chopsticks during your drum solo.” And I’m like, “That’s awesome.” I loved it, it made sense. And when you hold sticks or pencils or utensils real tight, when you hold them tight and you go on the side of a table or a desk, you can get a flanger effect and it’s really cool sounding. So the chopsticks lend themselves that. Then I texted Zoltan Chaney, who is like the most visual drummer in the world, and I go, “Zoltan, I’m using chopsticks in my drum solo in Japan,” and he goes, “Ha ha, that’s cool. Why don’t you go all the way and use Ginsu knives?” And I went, “Why don’t I?” So that’s what happened. There is this live DVD out called Made In Japan [Whitesnake] and that was the first time I ever tried it. There was no practice. You hold the knife and you go do a little spin with it, spin-spin-spin, and then, ok, there’s my spin and off you go. That was it. Then a week or two later of the tour, David goes, “Tichmeister, I’m starting to miss the chopsticks and the Ginsu knives. Let’s put them back in.” (laughs) So we put them back in, which was great. That’s always cool. He wants to make a show a show.

What was the first band that blew you away?

KISS, they were the first band and Peter Criss was my first drum idol. It was just KISS. I’m talking like, seven years old, eight years old, third grade, something like that. I started buying KISS records and playing drums. So it was a few years of KISS before there was any Zeppelin, Aerosmith, stuff like that. It was all KISS.

You’ve played with a lot of people but you played with Kenny Wayne Shepherd on his album The Place You’re In. That’s a whole different ballgame than some of these bands that you play with. What was it like playing with him?

He was totally cool and his record was more of a rock record so it really wasn’t so far removed from other stuff. You go in the studio, you’re working with the producer, who was Marti Frederiksen, and Marti co-wrote the stuff with Kenny. But it was mostly rock stuff, you know. It wasn’t like all of a sudden I was doing a blues thing. But I’d done a bunch of blues gigs in college with some great blues players that were at college when I was at a music college. So I’ve put some time into stuff like that.

What else do you have to learn as a guitar player?

It’s endless, for both the guitar and drums. I think I have sort of like a natural gift on drums, meaning if I sat down I could play things, like I could do it. I was like, if I could do it, everybody can. It’s easy so you push yourself to go further. But guitar, it’s more of a struggle if I actually had time to practice. As an adult you don’t have as much time. Unless you have like some plan and you put your money in the bank and you’re doing great and you go, ok, the next six months I’m going to do it. Like Tomas Haake of Meshuggah, one of my favorite metal bands. He’s one of my favorite drummers. Two records ago there was this record called obZen and the first single was called “Bleed” and the bass drum pattern was (making the drum sound) but I read that it took him six months to get that track together for that record. It took him six other months to get the rest of the record together. And he’s a real exceptional drummer, real unique, with an awesome groove and inventive stuff. But I’m just saying, he took six months to get one thing together for one song. But that put him on the map. It’s such an amazing drum track, it was worth it. That’s his stamp. But you have to always practice. I would love to get better on guitar.

Since you worship at the altar of Bonham, what is the most incredible performance on a record that you have heard him do?

I have a lot of bootlegs but I don’t have all of them. A buddy of mine has like everything, like the number one Zeppelin collector that even Page and Plant go to when they are looking for a certain thing. He gave me like his Best Of a couple of years ago and listening to all these “Moby Dick’s” on there. It’s not just “Moby Dick.” There’re some nights where Bonham is on fire and it’s a different way. It’s like he’s almost overplaying but in a tasty way. Not just overplay, overplay. So I’d say, there is no one performance. That’s like asking Bonham himself, or Hendrix or Page, “What night was the best you’ve ever played?” and I’m sure they’d go, “Oh man, there’s some parts of that night that was the best and there’s some parts of that night.” I don’t know.

Have you ever cornered his son Jason to get some inside stories?

I’ve talked to Jason a little bit years ago. He enjoys talking about his dad, which is great. But I didn’t really know him so much at the time. He started talking but I didn’t want to like bother him too much. I’m sure he has tons of stories but the stories about, you know, watching your dad do licks, I don’t know how much of that he’s got because he was a kid. I don’t think he was at every show on tour and stuff. I don’t know who would have knowledge of that except for maybe Carmine Appice because Carmine did tour with them and there was a mutual inspiration, influence, admiration going on with both those guys. Like, learning from each other. I think Carmine would be the guy to go to.

What are you going to do for the rest of the year?

I finish up filling in with Queensryche June 29. S.U.N. keeps looking for some more tours and I have some studio stuff and I have some different things, but no big major project going on right now.

Photos by Leslie Michele Derrough