Chen Lei, Neil Zaza, Michael Angelo Batio
So after the Firehouse tour, I had a few days off at home and I was back at it again in Asia for the Guitar Stars tour.
This tour saw the pairing of Michael Angelo Batio and me touring throughout China, Thailand, and Taiwan. Actually, the tour had a few names. In China, it was called CG3 (a take on the G3 guitar tour we all know and love) and in Taiwan it was called Guitar Stars. By any name this tour was a smashing success.
I have known Michael now for a few years and every time that we have talked I thought he was a really cool dude. Truth be told, I have been a huge fan of his over the years starting with me trying to comprehend half the impossibly technical stuff he was doing on his first Star Licks instructional video back in the day.
Also, I’ve always talked with friends that I loved how MAB was very defined in his approach, image and style with the guitar. Think shred? You know that you are going to think MAB. While some artists dabble in various styles and directions, I’ve always appreciate the laser sharp focus and direction that Michael has had over the years. You just KNOW what you are going to get at one of his concerts/clinics or on his CDs.
I love how some artists really define a genre themselves and anything after them is somehow derivative of them and their efforts (think Van Halen and tapping or Yngwie and the whole Neo Classical movement). While I won’t debate the timeline of shred guitar in this blog, needless to say you wouldn’t have to look far to discover that most all roads of this style of playing leads to a handful of players and one man in particular: Michael.
So in all of this, I was really excited to hit the road with him and tour Asia. In each country we were to pick up the hotrod shredder to fill out the bottom of the bill.
The tour started in China for three dates (Daqing, Harpin, and Beijing). From the very first show the crowds were absolutely insane. People shouldn’t be getting this kind of reaction from playing instrumental guitar music. I’m serious!
The crazy crowd in Taipei
(On a side note, people always ask me why I don’t and why I haven’t toured the US in many years. While the fans in the US are great, it is a whole other kind of energy that prevails in most of these overseas concerts I do. Where I may get an enthusiastic response in the US, there is certainly a contingent of audience members that strike the stereotypical “folded arms/show me what you can do/I’m better than you/I’m unimpressed/you suck” stance. While this never, ever bothers me (in fact, it actually provokes me sometimes), I’ll take the Beatlemania, tune recognition, deep fan love and ultimate crowd surfing any day that Asia provides without fail. I’ll address more of this in a later post at some point, but at this time I am looking at doing some dates in the good ole US of A.)
But I digress…
The thing Michael and I realized very quickly is that this was a fantastic bill to be touring. The reason being is that we really approach two totally different sides of guitar playing. Obviously, MAB is the shred with some melody included and I cover the melodic aspect with some chops thrown in. While that is a vast oversimplification of our two styles, needless to say, both of our groups of fans loved it. My fans would come out to the show and love what MAB was doing and then his fans got a dose of what I am all about. It was a “marriage”, so to speak, made in guitar heaven.
After China we hit Bangkok, Thailand and finally Taipei, Taiwan. Each as crazy (or more) than the last.
All the gigs were sold out and the energy level and enthusiasm were off the hook. It was insane how hot the venues were that we played. Walking on stage was always like walking into the mouth of an oven…and humid to boot. I wondered why at the beginning, but then it became clear that with no official fire marshall around as we have here in the US, these places were overpacked to unsafe levels over capacity. I thought on a few occasions that if a fire would happen to break out, we’re all dead as there were people hanging from the rafters in some of these places. Luckily, all ended great.
We’ve talked about taking this thing on the road again and, in fact, we are looking at that at this moment whether it be Asia, Europe or the US. Wherever it is I know that Michael and I will do this again.
