Hey guys! I just got back! It was pretty damn awesome! Very welcoming and intimate atmosphere.
First of all, let me just say holy crap, I knew that Midland was a small town, but talk about being out in the boonies! Thank heavens we live in the age of portable GPS.
Anywho, so, overall, it was pretty much stuff that most DT fans would know, he talked about his upbringing, the career, the albums, the throat incident, stuff like that. If you've read the book, you'll pretty much know everything he said.
Except one little inconsistency. According to his recollection, DT ended up discovering him by accident when someone passed along a live bootleg of Winter Rose to them. He didn't mention sending his photo, CD and stuff like that, although maybe that's what he was talking about.
So yeah, unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to record it, but there were a couple of things he said that I haven't heard before and found quite interesting:
One, they were talking about his vocal stamina, and when he gets to the best condition of the night, and he said that whenever the setlists are put together, he sits down with whoever puts them together and basically says, "These are the songs I could do at the beginning of the night, these are the songs I could do in the middle, and these are the songs I could do at the end," to make the best use of where he's at. I found this to be very interesting. I didn't realize that they actually put that into consideration, although I can't say for sure how long this has been going on.
Another awesome thing is regarding the new album. It seems as though this album will be going in some particular direction. Could even be another concept album. Basically, when asked about what the future holds he said that DT is going into the studio in February to write the new album, and then he said, "I can't say more than that. I know what album we're recording, but I can't say." So there's already a direction, it seems.
And yeah, the awesome guy that he is, he came out after the show to meet people, so I gave him a CD compilation of the vocal stems from Awake, as a souvenir, and got an awesome picture with him. Great experience!
If there's anything else you guys wanna know. Whether he talked about this or that, shoot!