A Little Bit of Country
A Little Bit of Classic Rock

Gretchen Wilson, Big & Rich, Journey close out the 2005 Season at Woodlands Pavilion

Mark Williams
Music Editor

A big weekend is in store for music lovers in Montgomery County: no matter whether your tastes run toward good ol’ down-home country or classic cruising rock tunes from the 70’s and 80’s (or maybe both), you’re in luck as the Cynthia Wood Mitchell Pavilion (2005 Lake Robbins Rd., The Woodlands) hosts two great shows. First up on Friday (11/4), it’s a full night of new country with hot new Nashville queen Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich, while on Saturday (11/5), it’s the return of classic rockers Journey -- back with a new album and tour to celebrate 30 years of music.

GRETCHEN WILSON: Just over 16 months ago, rising country queen Gretchen Wilson made history when her debut album, Here For The Party, entered Billboard’s Country Albums Chart at #1 and the Top 200 Album Chart at #2. History didn’t repeat itself last month, however, when Wilson released her second album on Epic Records, All Jacked Up, sold over a half million units in its first week, debuting at #1 on both charts. Meantime, the album’s leadoff single, “Redneck Woman,” became an anthem for women everywhere -- whether they live in the country or the city.

Wilson co-wrote seven of the twelve songs on All Jacked Up, while co-producing the disc with Sony Nashville VP Mark Wright and recording artist John Rich (from Big & Rich); the sophomore CD has already received numerous rave reviews -- including the cover of Billboard Magazine, four star reviews in such national magazines as Entertainment Weekly and Blender, while the Dallas Morning News gushed that Wilson’s “second album is fearless, amped-up and autobiographical, showcasing traditional country, Southern rock and even a little jazz.” 

She penned the title track, already a top 5 radio hit, with John Rich and Music Row songscribe Vicky McGehee. Meantime, Kid Rock and Hank Williams, Jr. -- both of whom made cameo appearances in 2004’s “Redneck Woman” video -- joins such luminaries as Charlie Daniels and Larry the Cable Guy in the new “All Jacked Up” video clip, showing locally on country cable channel GAC.

Wilson says the new song is “a cross between ZZ Top and the Charlie Daniels Band. It starts with the licks of ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ and ends with ‘The South's Gonna Do It Again.’ And then there’s some other stuff in the middle. It’s book-ended with Charlie licks...I’ve gotten to know him. We both live in Wilson County [TN]. The first day I met him he gave me a hug and said, ‘Welcome to Wilson County.’ He said, ‘I know everyone out there, I know all the good ones and all the bad ones. If you have any questions, call me…’”

“I don’t know how the fans will react to it. I hope they love it. I love it enough to make it the title track and make it the first single and video. I think it’s funny, and I think it is going to bring people exactly back to that. They’re going to think Charlie Daniels…and ZZ Top. They’re going to think good ol’ rockin’ American country music hopefully, and dig it. The video’s…a monster. I wrote the script again. I wrote it for ‘Redneck Woman’, too. I just kind of go in there and pop open a beer and say, ‘Now here we go, boys. This is it. And when I told them I wanted to drive a truck through the barroom wall, they said, ‘That’s really gonna drive the price up.’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me? That’s one trip to Home Depot and a piece of drywall.’”

Other songs on the new record have Wilson’s trademark rockin’ country with titles straight outta Nashville: songs like “One Bud Wiser,” “Rebel Child,” “He Ain’t Even Cold Yet,” and “Skoal Ring”: “We were sitting there writing a song about tobacco, first of all, about Skoal, so I just loved it immediately because it sounded so Loretta. It sounded so old and real and to the point and country to the bone, you know? And of course, it should, like I said, we’re singing about Skoal. When we got to the second verse and we’re trying to figure out...we came up with ‘I’ve always been a Bandit Girl and he’s a Long Cut Man.” 

“And we got stuck there for awhile, and I remember that for a few minutes we just sat there and tried to figure out what the next line was. I remember saying something about, ‘I’m Bandit Girl, he’s Long Cut Man, those are so...different. The idea is that we still get along even though we have different-colored cans. When I said that, John Rich almost fell out of his chair backwards. I said, ‘What's so funny about that?’ And he said, ‘Gretchen, that is so truly you to think that we could be so different because we chew different flavors of Skoal. That’s the most redneck thing I've ever heard in my life. But we’ve gotta use it because it’s true. That’s really the way you feel.” 

Proving that she is indeed a “Redneck Woman,” Wilson cops to a not-so-secret vice: “Yes, I use Skoal. But I’m berry blend, pouches, so it’s not loose in my mouth. It’s more of a girly flavor, I guess. So I guess I can be feminine,” she says with a laugh. While Hank Jr. and Charlie Daniels appeared in the video for “All Jacked Up,” Wilson got help in the studio from another country legend -- Merle Haggard, who sings on a track called “Politically Uncorrect.” 

“That song’s been floating around Nashville for 10 years, and no one ever cut it,” explains Wilson. “I heard it and have had it on hold since the last record. What I love about this song is that I when listened to it the first time, I got the sense that, that is just like the perfect political stance, as far as any musical artist. We don’t wanna talk about politics. But, for a political song, when you finish listening to that song, you get the sense that this girl is just for everything. And that’s just what's so cool about it. I’m for everything. I guess that means I’m politically uncorrect. I’m for everything. That’s what I love about it. I think it’s funny. Merle twisted the lyric around a little bit, his pieces, to suit him a little better. I can tell you the day I hear it on the radio, that’s going to be one of the highest points of my life. It’s unbelievable, the feeling that overcomes me as soon as his vocal kicks in on that, it’s like I can’t believe it’s really him.”

Another album highlight is a song called “California Girls” -- but it’s not the Beach Boys’ surfin’ 60’s classic. “I was in the studio with John Rich when I got this idea. I said, ‘you remember that Beach Boys song, how I wish they all could be California girls? He said, ‘Everybody’s kind of out of that trend now. Women just want to be real and be themselves. And everything else you say on this record, just be proud of who you are, and be themselves. You know, we should write a comedy like, ‘Ain't you glad they are not all California girls?’ Paris Hilton was the one person that John and I both thought of at the same time. John said, ‘We need to pick that one person you don’t want your daughter to be like when she grows up.’ That’s harsh, isn’t it? But that’s what I said, I said, ‘I don’t want her to grow up to be like Paris Hilton.’ But I would love to meet her some day. And tell her it wasn’t any offense, and hope it didn’t make her mad, and then I'm gonna ask her to be in the video,” she laughs. “Can you imagine me and Paris Hilton mud-wrestling in the video?”

Wilson steps outside her image a bit for a hidden track on the new CD, a cover of “Good Morning, Heartache,” a long-ago hit for tragic jazz chanteuse Billie Holiday. “When the idea came up, I immediately said that it had to be unlisted, it had to be a silent, hidden track on there. I said it doesn’t fit the flow of the record. It’s a whole different ball of wax. It’s a cover song. It’s just...a bonus for fans at the end of the record. I discovered Billie Holiday in a movie I watched a long time ago when I was a little kid, about a couple falling in love, and they shared a dance to a Billie Holiday tune. And I remember it being so moving. It blew my mind, the passion and the sorrow in her voice. I don’t think I went out and bought her music for a few more years after that. But it was that sound.”

Wilson says recording the song “was one of the coolest experiences of my life, to go in a room and crowd around one microphone, and do it in one take like that. And listening back to it and hearing the room noise…it sounds old because that’s the way they recorded then, to know there’s no mixing in the studio. You don’t mix that. It’s done. As soon as the bow stops sliding across that fiddle, it’s just over. There’s nothing we can do to that song. It just is what it is…”

Long before Wilson came along, a generation of country queens (Wanda Jackson, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette -- just to name a few) sang of inner strength and gaining their womanly independence; like them, Gretchen Wilson also sings of those things with which she is most familiar: growing up in backwoods trailer parks in Missouri, struggling not to be looked upon as “poor white trash.” As the daughter of a teenage mother, life was stressful. “My mom made a lot of mistakes, but she was young,” says Wilson. “There were times we only had a little bit and times we didn’t have anything, but she always made sure that we had love.”

Living a life worthy of a country song, Wilson found herself influenced by singers like Tanya Tucker, Loretta Lynn and, no surprise, Patsy Cline. “I could feel the pain,” she says, “and I could only imagine what it was like to have an abusive husband and all the different things that she sang about.” 

Wilson gave up her job in a hometown greasy spoon to head for Nashville nearly a decade ago -- but it wasn’t easy. Just as she worked part-time singing in beer joints back home, Wilson was soon on Music Row -- again singing in beer joints. It may not have been the start she envisioned, but it beat the alternative -- packing up and moving back home. Things finally picked up when Wilson was discovered by the burgeoning country duo Big & Rich, who walked into the bar where she worked one Friday night to “have a few cocktails.” After hearing her play with the house band, Wilson says that John Rich “followed me up to my little cubby hole bar upstairs with his trench coat and cowboy hat and I think his exact words were, ‘How come you ain’t got a record deal yet?’ I looked at him in disgust and threw him a business card and a little homemade demo and said, ‘I’m busy. I’m working right now.’” 

Months later, Gretchen Wilson found herself being mentored by Rich, who introduced her to a circle of influential Nashville producers who “started to use me singing on some demos”; Rich also taught her how the Nashville songwriting community really works, “how they write, break for lunch and then come back and how they come up with ideas and how to contribute to a songwriting session.” Wilson was soon an official member of the Muzik Mafia, a loosely affiliated group of singers, songwriters and musicians who get together to jam every Tuesday. It was in front of her peers -- “very honest peers” -- that she honed her songwriting style. Gretchen Wilson has since written or co-written nearly 80 tunes, some of them with John Rich. “We have almost that kind of brother-sister relationship,” she explains. “When we sit down to write a song it almost takes on a life of its own. I guess he just knows me so well that it’s almost like I’m writing with myself. He knows who I am and what I want to say.”

Although she finds herself in a growing girls’ club of country music all-stars, Wilson tends to keep her bare feet firmly planted in the muddy Missouri soil: “What I’m doing has definitely been done before, it just hasn’t been done in a long time. It’s not perfect and it’s not glamorous. I had to struggle here, and all the people who did turn me down and the all the things that happened, it couldn’t have worked out more perfectly...”

It’s been a heady year for the Redneck Woman: the critically-acclaimed Here For The Party album spent a record nine weeks atop the country albums charts while selling four million records -- earning quadruple platinum certification; she wrapped up 2004 as the top selling debut artist of any genre while garnering awards from the Grammys, the Country Music Association, Billboard Magazine and the American Music Awards -- including the trophy for Top Female Vocalist by the Academy Of Country Music. 

Wilson has also become something of a road warrior as well: she recently wrapped up Kenny Chesney’s sold out “Somewhere In The Sun” Tour while the show tonight at the Woodlands Pavilion is the kick-off date for the 2nd annual “American Revolution” Tour, sponsored by Chevrolet.

BIG & RICH: If Blue Collar TV is the new century’s Hee Haw, then Big & Rich could definitely be considered kind of a hip-hop Buck Owens and Roy Clark -- bustin’ loose with a “genre-hopping, fence-busting, gully-whumping” sound that rarely comes out of Nashville or anywhere else. Big & Rich “may well be that true rarity in the music business: something new under the sun…Country music without prejudice” found on the duo’s breakout album, Horse of Another Color.

“Music just shouldn’t have limits, man,” says Big Kenny, who insists that is indeed his real name and not a mob handle. “We grab ‘em with the humor and the happiness, but then we want them to feel every emotion. And you can do anything you want with a song. You can make people laugh, but you can also make them cry if that’s what you're after. And when it’s all over they feel better, they feel hope, they feel bright, they feel love…”

“And sometimes,” adds John Rich, “they feel like somebody’s slammed a lighting bolt upside their head. Which we like to do every now and then. I mean, it’s fun to shake stuff up by bringing out your Mandarin Chinese-rapping black cowboy godfather” -- but more on that country phenom in just a bit.

When John Rich met Big Kenny over nearly a decade ago, both had “been through the record industry wringer”: Rich was in a band, he had hits, he went solo, he scrambled for attention and a new record deal. Big Kenny, who didn’t become a full-time musician until he was in his 30’s, got a big record deal but saw the ensuing album go nowhere.

A friend tried to drag John to one of Kenny’s shows at a Nashville club; John’s response, he says, was “Big what? I don’t think I want to see anybody named that” -- but he went anyway; whereupon he was whacked in face by one of the many pieces of bubblegum thrown from the stage into the audience. “I thought that everybody who came to one of my shows should leave with something,” says Big Kenny.

Despite the tensions caused by this aerial assault, the two men met after the show and made tentative arrangements to write songs together. Then one or the other of them blew off the first three appointments. “As John has said, we were like two old bird dogs sniffing each other,” says Big Kenny. When they finally did get together, they liked the first song they wrote and loved the second, “I Pray for You”; but they weren’t ready to record together quite yet, so the song became John’s first single in a solo deal he’d gotten. His subsequent album was adored by the listeners who heard it -- but not many people did, because the record label dropped him via e-mail before they actually released the album.

John and Big Kenny became friends and writing partners, jamming at each other’s shows; the casual sessions soon turned into a weekly Tuesday night gig at a small Nashville establishment called the Pub of Love. “We wanted to do it on the worst night of the week in the weirdest place in town,” says John Rich. “So that if anybody showed up, they’d be there because they wanted to hear music, not because they wanted to schmooze.”

The sessions were dubbed the Muzik Mafia, and they grew to involve far more than just John, Big Kenny and their immediate circle of friends. “It was every style of music,” says John. “We’ve had everyone come in…We had fiddle players, jugglers, guys blowing fire out of their mouths. It was a celebration. We never took money out of it, never charged anybody to come -- and anybody who had some kind of performance, we’d let ‘em get up there.”

Gradually, the Muzik Mafia turned into one of the most exciting scenes in Nashville -- although at first, John and Kenny resisted fans and friends who were convinced that Big & Rich, as everybody knew them, should try to land a record deal. “When anybody would mention, ‘Oh, you and Big Kenny ought to get together and make a record,’ I’d think, are you out of your mind?” laughs John Rich, who turned 42 on Tuesday. “Record companies didn't even get me -- do you think they’re going to get Big Kenny, Mr. Universal Minister of Love, psychedelic rock n’ roll man?”

“But as the Mafia kept going, we watched it go from twenty people to three or four hundred people, slamming in the joint. And that kind of made us think, ‘people love what we do, why worry about what anybody will accept? If I'm good by myself and you’re good by yourself, and we come together, we can be even better and more insane. And if we do it that way and get our legs cut out from under us, at least we’re having a party.”

The universe of Big & Rich is a “rollicking moveable feast inhabited by a cast of indelible characters,” a batch of remarkable sidekicks: the Wild Bunch meets the Rat Pack: there’s Cowboy Troy, a featured performer on the tour kicking off at the Woodlands Pavilion, known as “the world’s only six-foot, five-inch, 250-pound black cowboy rapper, who throws down in three languages and has a degree in economics to boot”; another Muzik Mafia member is Limo Larry, once a homeless drug addict and now a local legend who uses his limousine to ferry off-duty strippers and inebriated musicians around Nashville every night. Plus there’s a slew of “songwriters and drifters, millionaires and ne’er-do-wells, punk rockers and bluegrass pickers and young ladies in Catholic schoolgirl outfits.”

The Muzik Mafia also helped get Big & Rich signed to Warner Brothers Records’ Nashville division. Paul Worley, the company’s chief creative officer, already knew the pair’s songs, producing a Big & Rich composition, “She’s A Butterfly,” for country singer Martina McBride, a “fan and friend” of the band; Worley’s daughter was also a regular at the Muzik Mafia shows, and at her urging he met them in his new office. “We thought we had a meeting with him to pitch songs for Martina,” says Big Kenny. “After we did a few of those songs, he said, ‘I understand you have this Muzik Mafia thing going, this Big & Rich thing. Play me some of that” -- and the rest is now making country music history.

The ensuing album, Big & Rich’s debut, Horse of a Different Color, starts off with a sermon: “Brothers and sisters,” proclaims Big Kenny, “we are here for one reason and one reason alone: to share our love of music” -- and it ends with a hymn of sorts: “Live This Life,” which features a wailing background vocal by Martina McBride. In between are “party songs and sober songs, drinking songs and thinking songs, songs about the legends of the West and songs about the casualties of our streets.” Often as not, the songs fall into a few of those categories at the same time.

Musically, John and Big Kenny cover a similarly wide territory. They play country music, but country music that has room for echoes of everything from the Everly Brothers to Limp Bizkit to Queen, from honky tonk to rockin’ rap. “Charley Pride was the man in black,” they sing in their anthem, “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich).” “Rock n’ roll used to be about Johnny Cash.”

“We never went, ‘Nah, this isn’t a country song,’ or ‘This doesn’t sound like something anybody would cover,’” says Big Kenny. “We were writing stuff that was out there. We’ve written bone country and psychedelic rock and everything in between. We just love music, and we like taking all aspects of it and seeing what comes out. What we’re doing now is American music, and the most American music format that I know of is country. That audience understands us. People that listen to country music don’t just listen to country music. The kids who are coming up listen to Johnny Cash, then Kenny Chesney, then Ludacris or Outkast or Kid Rock. I mean, John’s little brother wears a John Deere hat and an Eminem t-shirt. And Nashville’s going to catch up to that. They want to…”

JOURNEY: Three decades and four lead singers have passed since the founding of Journey -- the formidable California arena rock band of the 70’s and 80’s, known for such album rock staples as “Wheel In The Sky,” “Lights,” “Any Way You Want It,” and “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” while inventing the power ballad with such FM weepers as “Open Arms” and “Faithfully.” The band’s current incarnation -- founding member and guitarist Neal Schon, bassist Ross Valory, keyboardist Jonathan Cain, singer Steve Augeri and drummer Deen Castronovo -- joined forces this year with the Sanctuary Records Group for the release the band’s 13th studio album, Generations, which is in stores now.

The 13-track album, which includes a 10-page booklet with new photos and lyrics, is the band’s first new recording since 2002’s Red EP and the first full-length CD since Arrival in 2001; keyboardist Jonathan Cain calls Generations “truly what loyal Journey fans have been waiting for. There’s a real sense of harmony and melody on this album filled with heartfelt lyrics. It has the ballads that people would expect from us and the rock & roll that I think has the Journey signature sound to it. There’s something for everybody. There’s a mix of fun, playful songs along with some solid rock tracks. I don’t think it’s going to disappoint anyone.”

The band turned to an old friend, producer Kevin Elson, to helm the board for Generations; a good choice, considering Elson is the man responsible for the band’s greatest successes of the 1980’s -- including multi-platinum discs Escape, Departure and Frontiers, and the band’s double-platinum live album, Captured. The new album’s title represents the faithfulness of Journey’s followers old and new throughout the past 30 years. “There’s a whole new generation that has become fans of ours,” says bassist Ross Valory. “For the last seven years in particular, I’ve been noticing that there are younger fans at the shows. Being that Journey has been popular for so long, there are at least three if not four generations of Journey concert-goers and listeners. We find people older than us and kids in the front row. So many of the lyrics on the album address the lives of these people.”

In an interesting twist, Generations is the first Journey album in which all the band members get a shot at being the frontman. “Everyone is singing at least one, if not two songs on the new album,” says Valory. “We’ve been doing that on the past few tours and the audiences love it. We’re spreading the talent around. I like to think of it as a blossoming of new singers who’ve just been playing their instruments before.”

As a sign of gratitude to the fans who helped put Journey in the top 30 best-selling music groups of all time, with over 75 million albums sold worldwide, copies of the new album have been exclusively given away free with the purchase of a ticket at most concerts including in this special commemorative tour. 

The band also got special recognition in January when they were honored with their very own star along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Not only was the entire current line-up in attendance and past members as well, but the crowd also was surprised by an appearance from former frontman Steve Perry, the vocalist at the band’s most popular peak. Perry had been missing in action since his departure from the band in 1996 following the release of Trial by Fire -- the album that garnered the band’s first Grammy nomination for the single, “When You Love A Woman.” 

Journey came together in the early 70’s when keyboardist-vocalist Gregg Rolie, a co-founding member of Santana, decided to leave that band after disagreements with guitarist Carlos Santana about the musical direction of the group; Rolie was headed home to Seattle, opening a restaurant with his father. Meantime, Santana’s road manager, Walter “Herbie” Herbert became good friends with Santana guitarist Neal Schon, and the idea to form a new band around Schon’s burgeoning reputation as a guitar virtuoso. After Schon agreed, Herbert was able to get guitarist George Tickner and Steve Miller Band bassist Ross Valory to join Schon and form a new band. Drummer Prairie Prince was recruited from The Tubes to join the new effort.

While the genesis of Journey was coming together, Gregg Rolie’s restaurant in Seattle was not doing well. Herbert and Schon agreed to bring in Rolie, the members forming a band called the Golden Gate Rhythm Section; their initial plan was to be a ready-made studio band for anyone wanting to cut a record in San Francisco. While waiting for a job to come along, Tickner started submitting ideas for original material -- new songs with a progressive rock feel. They made a demo that was played on a San Francisco radio station, with the listeners coming up with a new name for the band -- Journey.

The band started played dates in late ‘73, but soon found themselves without a drummer when Prairie Prince returned to The Tubes. Herbert, having become the new band’s manager, soon found a replacement in Aynsley Dunbar, a drummer who played with Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Lou Reed and David Bowie. Schon remembered seeing him play with Zappa, and the hunt was on.

Signed to Columbia Records, Journey released its self-titled first album in 1975, showcasing their considerable talent as musicians on jazz-flavored progressive rock epics. Guitarist George Tickner left the band by the time of their second album, 1976’s Look into the Future, which toned down a little the overt progressiveness of their first release but still retained a jazz fusion base. The band’s third album, 1977’s Next, tried for shorter tracks to increase accessibility, but without finding any commercial success -- although it did start a pattern of one-word album titles.

Meantime, the search was on for a permanent lead singer: Gregg Rolie had been serving this role, although he preferred to focus on the keyboards; as a result, Journey enlisted Robert Fleischman -- but his tenure in the band was short-lived. Manager Herbie Herbert then learned of singer Steve Perry, who was recommended to Herbert by an executive at Columbia Records. Perry’s first album with the band, 1978’s Infinity, finally made the band click, with Perry adding his signature vocals to now classic tracks such as “Lights,” “Wheel in the Sky” and “Anytime.”

In addition, Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker was brought in to provide a more layered sound; the changes worked and the band was finally a hit, with Infinity reaching #21 on the album charts -- but more personnel changes were in the wind: in 1979, drummer Dunbar left for Jefferson Starship and was replaced by Steve Smith for the album Evolution; soon, the band had their first Top 20 single with “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.” The band released Departure in 1980, which reached #8 on the album charts. “Any Way You Want It” was a Top 25 single and received solid FM radio airplay. At this point, the band had a solid concert following as well. They were poised for large-scale success -- but even more changes were on the way when keyboardist Gregg Rolie departed, but handpicked Babys keyboardist Jonathan Cain to replace him.

In 1981, Journey’s 7th studio album, Escape, went to #1 on the album charts and would go on to become their most popular -- going platinum nine times over. The album’s trio of singles -- “Who’s Crying Now,” “Don’t Stop Believin’”, and “Open Arms” -- all hit the Top 10. 1983’s Frontiers, reached #2 on the album charts and scored four hit singles, with “Faithfully” and “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” peaking near the top of the charts.

But trouble was on the way: lead singer Steve Perry, who received much of the credit for Journey’s success, in 1984 released a solo album, Street Talk, which scored a major hit with a song called “Oh Sherrie.” By all band accounts, Perry began to take charge of the band -- arguing with Herbie Herbert while original member Ross Valory and drummer Steve Smith were fired from the band; the two were replaced by various studio musicians -- including future American Idol judge Randy Jackson on bass -- for the recording of the 1986 album Raised on Radio, which was produced by Perry. Production was stop-and-go due to the poor health of Perry’s mother, but the classic Journey sound was heard on songs like “Girl Can't Help It,” “Suzanne,” and the Top 10 single “Be Good to Yourself.”

A tour followed, but Perry, exhausted from constant touring, overcoming the death of his mother and the end of a six-year relationship with girlfriend Sherrie Swafford (for whom he wrote “Oh, Sherrie”) walked away from the band in 1987. Founding member Neil Schon and keyboardist-songwriter Jonathan Cain left in 1989 in to join Cain’s ex-Babys pal John Waite in a short-lived band Bad English. By 1991, Valory, Smith and Rolie formed a band called The Storm; all the members had moved on with their lives and careers.

In 1993, Kevin Chalfant of The Storm performed with members of Journey on a few shows, and a reunited Journey was in the works with Chalfant, Schon, Cain, Valory, Smith and Rolie. But that line-up was scrapped when Steve Perry announced he was rejoining Journey in 1995, with the band releasing a new album Trial by Fire in 1996. Following the success of that album, band members prepared for an much anticipated reunion tour, but it was postponed when Steve Perry injured his hip while hiking in Hawaii. The band waited for Perry to make the decision to either have surgery on the injured hip or decide to tour -- but after Perry failed to come to a decision, Jonathan Cain and Neal Schon decided to continue the band without him. Drummer Steve Smith, believing that Journey would not survive without Perry, decided to leave the band as well, in favor of a jazz project he had been working on prior to the reformation of Journey.

Suddenly, Journey was without a drummer and a lead vocalist. Deen Castronovo, Schon and Cain’s band mate in Bad English filled the gap on the drum riser while Steve Augeri was named the band’s new lead vocalist. Ironically, Augeri is sometimes confused with Perry, as they physically resemble each other, are both named Steve, and have similar vocal styles. After providing a new song, “Remember Me,” for the soundtrack of the Armageddon movie soundtrack, the band recorded their next studio album, 2001’s Arrival. That same year, the band participated in an episode of VH-1’s Behind The Music, but statements made during the interviews only worsened tensions between Perry and other band members.

Although written off by many as “corporate rockers,” the band has become a half-ironic, half-reverent touchstone of sorts among some who would have been too young to see their original success, with references to their greatest hits popping up, among other places, on a recent episode of Family Guy. In 2001, Columbia Records released a greatest hits package as part of the label’s “Essential” series -- an honor previously bestowed on legends such as Miles Davis, Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Simon & Garfunkel and Barbra Streisand. The latest tribute to the band, however, might just be a sore subject for fans of the Houston Astros: Their 1982 hit, “Don’t Stop Believin’”, was used as an anthem this year for the Chicago White Sox. Guess it worked, huh?

TICKETS & TIMES: On Friday, Cowboy Troy & the Muzik Mafia open the show with a short set at 7:30, followed by Gretchen Wilson at 8:15 and Big & Rich at 9:45. All times are subject to change. Covered reserved seating $49.50. Uncovered reserved seating $34.50. General admission lawn seating $19.50. Preferred parking is available at all Ticketmaster locations and the Pavilion ticket office for $15 plus service charge. Meantime, gates on Saturday open at 6PM for Journey, who take the stage at 7:30. Covered reserved seating $50. Uncovered reserved Seating $35. General admission lawn seating $20. As with the Gretchen Wilson/Big & Rich show, preferred parking is available at all Ticketmaster locations and the Pavilion ticket office for $15 plus service charge.

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