As a few of you might know, I got the chance to see DT last night in Milwaukee, and got the chance to chat with everyone except James since he didn't come out for this particular aftershow (much to my wife's disappointment). Not gonna try to write down every detail of our conversations since I can't remember them, but some of the things of interest that stuck out in my mind.
I asked JP about the redesign of his JP signature guitars, and he mentioned that actually he had been thinking of coming up with a new design to "shake things up" for a few years, since his guitars have been pretty much the same body with small/gradual changes over the years. When I asked why the upper horn is so big, he said that actually the end of the horn is in the same position on his previous guitars, and that it's only the deeper cut-away that makes the horn look much longer. Had they shortened that horn, it would have affected the weight balance of the guitar.
I asked JR about if there will be any setlist changes for the upcoming legs of the tour and he told me that as long as they're going to play in areas that they have not already played, that the setlist will remain the same as it has. So if/when they announce dates for Asia, Australia and/or South America, I'd expect the setlist will be the same as it is now. So I think it's safe to assume that the shows they'll be playing this summer in Europe will have a different setlist. We also talked about the big gap between the end of the American leg and the second European leg, and if there will be any other shows added in between, and it doesn't appear that there will be. Apparently with some of their kids graduating and other things, the guys have opted to take that time off.
MM was his usual hyper self. It was cool that he recognized me, since it's been almost 2 years since I last saw DT and I don't know him like the rest of the band. Funny enough, he wanted to know how I know the guys, where we met previously, why I was seeing them in Milwaukee, etc., but I appreciated the fact that he took the time to try to understand why he's seen me several times at aftershows. I asked him about the problems he appeared to be experiencing towards the end of TSF (it was quite visible he wasn't happy and couldn't hear something/anything in his in-ear monitors - not sure if it was instrumentation in general, the click track or what) but all he would say was that it was stuff. Perhaps starting off with that question set him a bit on edge since he seemed to be a bit snippy with me when I asked how the tour was going. Can't remember the exact words but something to the effect of "how do you think it's going? It's been hard! Do you wanna play all those songs?!" which surprised me a bit. Nonetheless, he was gracious enough to sign a couple things and take a pic with me and my wife. Later, just before the aftershow ended, I approached him to apologize in case I offended him and he said that wasn't the case, but that he wanted to be completely up-front and honest about how hard it was to play the whole set, instead of just saying that everything was fine. The one thing I regret forgetting to ask was about having the 2 extra bass drums on his kit, since he had mentioned previously that he was gonna get rid of them - ah well, hopefully someone else can ask him.
Finally we got to speak with JM and we chatted about a number of things (family, etc.) that aren't worth mentioning, but at some point the conversation turned towards upcoming tour legs and he commented that DT will probably be hitting South America in the fall, perhaps around August or September, altho nothing is set in stone.
So just a few tidbits that I thought some of you might be interested in knowing.
Topic: A few things of interest I learned from speaking with the guys April 6th (Read 7014 times)