Release Date: 03-12-2010
Genre: Hard Rock
This CD represents an honour, taking part in an event that continues to remain in people’s hearts. Melodic rock and AOR music is alive and well thanks to folks like Kieran Dargan and Bruce Mee.
Two guys who took over the infamous UK festival, Gods Of AOR, and formed it into their own labour of love, appropriately titled the Firefest Festival. I was happy to sign on when asked early on to take part in it. Unfortunately this date clashed with my commitments touring with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in the US for their annual Winter Tour, as the FF date was smack in the middle of rehearsals. For me, this meant a week of 12 hour rehearsals in the US, leaving on a Friday to land in London on a Saturday morning, bee-line it up to Nottingham for 4 hours in traffic, meet with the band for 30 minutes, as they were wrapping up the ONLY rehearsal we had prior to the show (the last time we had played together was nearly a year prior!), straight to the venue and onstage within the next hour! It was a stressful run to get there, but once onstage, the warmth of the crowd, the energy of so many friends and colleagues backstage and my fearless band, we stormed through our 70 minute set like gangbusters!
The best part of mixing this was hearing the nucleus of what would be become the set list for the Beautiful Mess tour in 2009, a blueprint of sorts for the new band/line-up that also serves as the last time I performed live with the original JSS Band line up. So here it is in all its glory, a little extra something for you all to help me remember this wonderful night of music and memories.
Jeff Scott Soto
JSS
Jeff Scott Soto – vocals
Howie Simon – guitar and vocals
Gary Schutt – bass and vocals
David Dzialak – drums and vocals
