On Saturday, December 14th, SAVATAGE frontman/founder JON OLIVA concluded his Storytellers east coast solo tour at the State Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida. Fan-filmed video from the gig is available below:
The show was filmed for a future DVD release. Oliva is planning on taking his Storytellers tour to the west coast in 2014.
More than thirty years after the start of his career with Savatage, and successive projects/bands like TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA and Jon Oliva’s Pain, now legendary songwriter and performer Jon Oliva released his first ever solo album, titled Raise The Curtain. The album was released simply under the banner OLIVA and you can expect a mixture of Jon Oliva’s early influences and the material he wrote and recorded throughout his whole artistic career.
BW&BK’s new interview with Oliva about his solo album, Raise The Curtain can be found at this location.
Check out the first taste of the album, written by Jon Oliva and his late brother/Savatage guitarist Criss Oliva, via the ‘Father Time’ lyric video below:
“I lost a lot of close friends, I lost my brother.. I lost houses, cars… It’s tough when you look back at your bank account and you should have a couple million dollars and you spent most of it on cocaine.”
Legendary singer Jon Oliva of JON OLIVA’S PAIN/SAVATAGE and TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA fame talked in-depth about his past, present and future on Noize In The Attic – Where Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You on 88.7FM WNHU New Haven CT (Noizeintheattic.com) The free podcast is available at this location (the interview starts at the 29 minute mark).
Mike of BrooklynRocks recently conducted an interview with JON OLIVA’S PAIN and SAVATAGE mastermind Jon Oliva. You can now listen to the chat below.
Having released albums with SAVATAGE first and JON OLIVA’S PAIN later, this first Oliva solo album was about to become different: “Raise The Curtain” combines Jon‘s early music influences of ’70s prog rock with the sound he cultivated with SAVATAGE and JON OLIVA’S PAIN. The result is a high-class, thrilling musical journey, something all lovers from rock to metal shouldn’t miss.
“Raise The Curtain” was released on June 21 in Europe and July 2 in North America via AFM Records. The 11-song CD, which contains ideas collected over the course of the last four or five years, was tracked this past winter at Morrisound Studios in Tampa, Florida with producer Tom Morris, with Jon handling laying down nearly all the instrument tracks and vocals himself as well as playing drums on three songs.
“Raise The Curtain” was released simply under the banner OLIVA and fans can expect a mixture of Jon‘s early influences and the material he wrote and recorded throughout his whole career.
“Raise The Curtain” track listing:
01. Raise The Curtain
02. Soul Chaser
03. Ten Years
04. Father Time
05. I Know
06. Big Brother
07. Armageddon
08. Soldier
09. Stalker
10. The Witch
11. Can’t Get Away
12. The Truth (bonus track)
“Raise The Curtain” was made available as a CD digipak (first pressing) and two-LP vinyl (gatefold, limited to 800 copies worldwide).
Matt Coe of DeadRhetoric.com recently conducted an interview with JON OLIVA’S PAIN and SAVATAGE mastermind Jon Oliva. A few excerpts from the chat follow below:
DeadRhetoric.com: “Raise The Curtain” is the first solo album in your career. Can you inform the readers why now is the right time to release a solo record and what type of guidelines did you put on the songwriting that maybe differentiate this release from your work in SAVATAGE or JON OLIVA’S PAIN?
Jon Oliva: The idea actually came to do the solo record when guitarist Matt LaPorte passed away. A friend of mine, Dan Fasciano, who you see on the record, co-wrote a lot of the material with me. I was working with TSO (TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA) in the afternoons and Dan and I would hang out in the mornings and we just started writing material. I had a few riffs of [late SAVATAGE guitarist and Jon‘s brother] Criss‘s [Oliva] left that I wanted to do something with and it wasn’t really planned that way. Losing Matt, I didn’t want to deal with the whole band situation at that time — I needed something to keep me busy. It’s kind of like what happened when Criss died and I did “Handful Of Rain”; it was kind of living the same movie again. He had some great stuff, I had some great stuff, and if there was ever a time to do a solo record, now was the time to do it. I’m in between what I want to do about replacing Matt for sure, plus the music I had of Criss‘s was the earliest stuff we ever wrote, and it was pre-heavy metal, so it didn’t lend itself to a JON OLIVA’S PAIN thing. They were very old school, so I thought I could do whatever I want with this solo record and not have to follow any particular guidelines. And that’s how the whole idea started, then we put material together and it went on from there.
DeadRhetoric.com: When thinking about Criss‘s riffs/solos, is there any one in particular that stands out? Or how about, his most underrated piece?
Oliva: I think Criss‘ greatest riff is in “Hall Of The Mountain King”, the riff that comes in after the opera part. That and “Power Of The Night” are two of his best pieces. Criss was a great riff guy; he was more of a riff guy than a pure songwriter. He didn’t really understand vocals; he would write a great part and then tell me I had to come up with something that I could sing to it. He would give me these cassettes, and give me riffs from that — he would have a half of a song, a chorus part… Paul [O’Neill] or myself would finish it off. I also think on the “Streets” album, the song “Can You Hear Me Now” was one of the songs Criss wrote most of the music for. The weirdness of that, I played the drums and bass on that and Criss did the guitars.
DeadRhetoric.com: Do you find it troubling that you have a tough time bringing in crowds in America, but in Europe, you play to packed houses?
Oliva: It’s because things are different here in America; we are lazy. People don’t want to go… It’s hard to play a show on a Tuesday night and people have to get up and go to work early the next morning, and you don’t go on stage until 11:30-12 o’clock at night and you pay money to get in, money to drink. I think it’s more that than anything… In the early ’90s, it is where things started to go down. you didn’t get the big turnouts. When the drinking age changed from 18 to 21 in all the states, that’s a big hit that all live performance venues took. In Europe, they seem to be more into the live-performance thing. In America, people are too busy and it’s too expensive. You worry about getting busted by the cops if you leave having too much alcohol in your system. It scares a lot of people off.
The official lyric video for the song “Father Time” from JON OLIVA’S PAIN and SAVATAGE mastermind Jon Oliva can be seen below. The track comes off Oliva‘s first-ever solo album, “Raise The Curtain”, which will be released on June 21 in Europe and July 2 in North America via AFM Records. The 11-song CD, which contains ideas collected over the course of the last four or five years, was tracked this past winter at Morrisound Studios in Tampa, Florida with producer Tom Morris, with Jon handling laying down nearly all the instrument tracks and vocals himself as well as playing drums on three songs.
“Raise The Curtain” will be released simply under the banner OLIVA and you can expect a mixture of Jon‘s early influences and the material he wrote and recorded throughout his whole career.
“Raise The Curtain” track listing:
01. Raise The Curtain
02. Soul Chaser
03. Ten Years
04. Father Time
05. I Know
06. Big Brother
07. Armageddon
08. Soldier
09. Stalker
10. The Witch
11. Can’t Get Away
12. The Truth (bonus track)
“Raise The Curtain” will be made available as a CD digipak (first pressing) and two-LP vinyl (gatefold, limited to 800 copies worldwide).
Check out the cover artwork below.
Commented JON OLIVA’S PAIN drummer/producer Christopher Kinder: “Oliva will be the first to admit that it took one hell of a challenge writing, performing 90% of all the tracks himself and vocals… he is exhausted, for sure.”
He added: “It’s a very interesting and powerful offering. Diverse, emotional, and varying styles of writing and music everywhere. A truly great accomplishment for the mountain king, indeed.”
Last summer, JON OLIVA’S PAIN toured Europe where it celebrated the 25th anniversary of one of heavy metal’s most iconic records, “Hall Of The Mountain King” by SAVATAGE. The band performed the entire album as a special one-time-only treat for the still massive amount of loyal fans, along with songs from the DOCTOR BUTCHER album (by Jon Oliva and Chris Caffery, released in 1995), SAVATAGE and JON OLIVA’S PAIN.
JON OLIVA’S PAIN and SAVATAGE mastermind Jon Oliva has completed recording his first-ever solo album, to be released later this year via AFM Records. The 11-song CD, which contains ideas collected over the course of the last four or five years, was tracked earlier this winter at Morrisound Studios in Tampa, Florida with producer Tom Morris, with Jon handling laying down nearly all the instrument tracks and vocals himself as well as playing drums on three songs.
Commented JON OLIVA’S PAIN drummer/producer Christopher Kinder: “Oliva will be the first to admit that it took one hell of a challenge writing, performing 90% of all the tracks himself and vocals… he is exhausted, for sure.”
He added: “It’s a very interesting and powerful offering. Diverse, emotional, and varying styles of writing and music everywhere. A truly great accomplishment for the mountain king, indeed.”
Oliva previously stated about his decision to record a solo album: “I’ve got some weird ideas that I wanna try and I’ve got some time to do it. I don’t want do just ‘another’ JON OLIVA’S PAIN record. I’ve done four of those already. I wanna do something different. I have some material that I’ve wanted to put out for a while, that I’ll talk with the record company about, maybe putting something out quickly, like in the next four or five months, to give me more time to do this JON OLIVA’S PAIN record. I want the next JON OLIVA’S PAIN CD to be very special. I’ve got some great friends from other bands that are going to be a significant part of the next JON OLIVA’S PAIN release. We are going to do a killer JON OLIVA’S PAIN record and then an additional bonus CD with guest stars.. kind of like the AVANTASIA thing, but not in a story line. [EDGUY and AVANTASIA mastermind] Tobias Sammet does a magnificent job with it, but I don’t have that much time to write a whole story, so I’ll just have some powerhouse friends from various bands come in and take it over the top.”
Last summer, JON OLIVA’S PAIN toured Europe where it celebrated the 25th anniversary of one of heavy metal’s most iconic records, “Hall Of The Mountain King” by SAVATAGE. The band performed the entire album as a special one-time-only treat for the still massive amount of loyal fans, along with songs from the DOCTOR BUTCHER album (by Jon Oliva and Chris Caffery, released in 1995), SAVATAGE and JON OLIVA’S PAIN.
