Zak Stevens, the man behind the microphone on the Savatage masterpieces. Kind, down-to-earth, and in the mood for a chat, he told us about the past and the future of Savatage, about CircleIICircle's new album and the side projects he participated in, which will be of interest to many fans.
Rock Overdose: Zak, welcome to Rock Overdose! It’s an honour to have you on board!
Zak Stevens: Thank you!
Rock Overdose: How’s everything on Camp Savatage? Not too long ago, you were rocking the shit out of Wacken after a way too long break up. What news from the band can you share with us?
Zak Stevens: Well, we are just kind of talking about what the next phase can be. We are meeting very soon. TSO starts a tour here. The rehearsals start on November 1, so that’s when we’re gonna have our meetings about what we are gonna do next. There’s lots of different things out there. Will it be something like a tour or do we wanna start making an album? We have to talk about all that. Everybody is excited to do a lot of different things. The best thing is that the Wacken show really lit a fire and it got us getting together and discussing what is the order of business. We can do something smart that will get everybody fired up and keep things rolling. Keep the iron hot and get out there and rock. I got my own idea of what exactly I would like to do but I have to share it with the group. But at least we don’t have TSO touring next spring, so that leaves it open for some very good stuff. We’ll let everybody know what we come up with in fall, leading in to next year. There’s a lot of good music, I’ll tell you that much… There’s a lot of good music being written right now.
Rock Overdose: You’re writing new material?
Zak Stevens: Yeah. Jon is writing a lot of material that we don’t know where it’s gonna land exactly, but at least I can tell you that he’s very excited and very inspired right now. He’s very excited about what he is writing. He’s been writing stuff and calling me: “Oh my God, I think I just wrote the best song since “Streets” or “Gutter Ballet””. And I’m like: “Oh, my God”. It’s pretty exciting, what’s going on behind the scenes right now.
Rock Overdose That’s great! I think this is gonna get the fans really fired up.
Zak Stevens: Good, cause it’s been too long already. We need to work hard to make sure we light a big fire, because we let the flame go out. Now, it’s gotta be an even bigger one.
Rock Overdose: Many fans were expecting this reunion for years. So, what was it like to be on stage in Wacken, seeing all those young and older fans, who came to see Savatage? What did you think of the people’s reactions?
Zak Stevens: I thought it was awesome! Saw people crying out there. Saw lots of people crying. That’s what our fans do. They are very passionate. So, I knew I was gonna see a lot of that. And I tried to make people cry as much as possible during my own songs. I’m just joking. Sometimes, I get that effect, people crying on me, so that’s good. That means that they like what they’re hearing. That was nice, and I saw a lot of happy faces. I just looked and saw smiles after smiles. I mean, I can’t see that far to see 80,000 people, but I saw a lot of people smiling. There were a lot of people happy about what was going on. That was the first thing and it was to relax everyone so that we could try and put the best show we could. I didn’t get nervous at all. I don’t get nervous for stuff like that, anymore. I mostly get anxiety from not being able to go on stage soon enough. The waiting for the days to go on stage gave me a bunch of anxiety. So, once the show started off, I was ok! I was very happy with the way everybody played. Everyone did a great job, the band coming together in rehearsals, preparing for Wacken was like, we fell in love with each other all over again. Everyone was just so happy. It’s one of the reasons Jon is so excited right now. Jon liked the vibe. A lot! He really got surprised with how great he felt about all the guys coming back together, how great the vibe was and how much love was going around. The other thing that we noticed was that we’re better now. We’re better now, than what we were back then as a band. Everybody’s better and that’s a good thing. I think it’s because we’ve been away for so long and we’re seasoned. Maybe it’s because we care a little more now. Who knows? And for whatever reason it is, we’re better now. We didn’t get worse. So, that’s two great things. I think that’s what keeps this team going. Why we’re able to have a good story here to tell people, with Savatage going on.
Rock Overdose: That’s great! I watched your Wacken live. I wasn’t at the festival, unfortunately, but it was a live that I’m sure will go down in history as the return of Savatage, along with Trans Siberian Orchestra, TSO.
Zak Stevens: I think so! I think that part will be done and it’s what we do now. We’re going forward, may be even more important what the next chapter is going to be and that’s the stuff we’re gonna be talking about in November, so hopefully, we come up with a good plan.
Rock Overdose: It’s nice to hear Jon is excited with the whole reunion, because it was out of his frustration, from what he has stated that Savatage was an underrated band, that the band fell apart.
Zak Stevens: Maybe, but that was from a different timeframe. Now, it could be much different. You know, TSO is very big in the United States, platinum selling band, highest-grossing ticket sales in Christmas season, 15 years in a row on billboard magazines and stuff like that. Now we got some other ammunition. Now, we can use the success of TSO, which came from Savatage, to actually help the band it came from. And I think we should take advantage of that and let that help us out here and there, too. Maybe it won’t be so underrated, as we get this train rolling.
Rock overdose: That’s great. What is like to playing live without Chris? What is the difference, what’s the element of his that is missing from the lives without Chris?
Zak Stevens: Well, he’s one of those guitar players, he can do so many things by himself. He can be switching sounds, almost playing a part with his right hand and playing another part with his left hand, you know, you can’t really play that, I don’t think it’s possible to replace him. You just have to do the best you can and get the guys in there, and to the best they can, you know. To say that you are replacing those elements to the point we ‘re okay it sounds bat do Chris, you know. He just had a special sound about his rig and the way he set it up then, not really many people knew exactly, you know, how to get their sounds, plus if you talk about Criss Oliva back in the early 90’s, it was different rigs back in the day. A lot of stuff they don’t make it anymore. He was used to stuff that they don't produce anymore, things have changed, there are modeling amps now, there’s all kind of new technology, that is crazy. He would love all that, but you know… Back in that time there are so many things that are impossible to emulate, so I think it’s just impossible to do the whole replacement. You just have to move on and having to adjust.
Rock Overdose: Great, now let’s take this conversation to CircleIICircle. In your website I saw you ‘re releasing your new album in two weeks, the “Reign of Darkness”. Any comments about the release?
Zak Stevens: Yeah, it’s been going very good, we released a teaser, an instant download song about five days ago with the first single, the second song of the album. Actually the album begins with an instrumental track for the first time, it’s kind interesting, and we ‘re moving on on the first vocal song the “Victim of the Night”, that’s the one we got released and it has already over 10.000 hits in a matter 2-3 days, that’s a record for us. It looks that is going to be very well received, we have on next Thursday we have our first lyric video coming out for the album, it’s called “Ghost of the Devil” and that should be pretty received as well and I liked that song a lot, you know, it has a darker theme on the album, it’s very aggressive, the tempos are way up. There are songs, you know, the pay homage to the past CircleIICircle stuff, they‘re more traditional for us and you can definitely hear two or three of these songs on the album and a lot of other stuff really kind of branches out into this, you know, new, aggressive, modern, much more modern sound that we’ve discovered and we’re going continue to use at the bases of that sound at least at next album after this but, we still have a good ways we can go with it, there’s a lot more area to still explore in the sound. So we’re really excited about it, it’s unpredictable at all, the songs they twist and turn on you and then you go to places probably would not think you could go. So, it’s cool. We’re very happy about it. There’s nice collection and I think it’s going to do the band a lot of good service.
Rock Overdose: That’s sounds like a promising album. I really like the most of the CircleIICircle releases. Are you planning on touring with the band?
Zak Stevens: Yeah, we’re gonna hit now, after TSO is finished around the first of the year, then we will be straight out to Europe and also do a little tour at the spring, maybe do a few of the festivals in the fall. Hopefully we get back to Greece at some time. We’re really trying, it’s hard right now. They have an economic crisis like Brazil which is causing us problems over there right now, because of just economic reasons beyond our control, but hopefully things will start easing up and we’re going see you guys again. It’s been too long since we been to Greece, so we have to get over there somehow. We’ll do some touring at the States as well, here we have a few bands we’re gonna play with, you know, we’re gonna satisfy some of the States. The fans don’t get enough CircleIICircle over here. So, yeah, there’s quite a lot planned, I think the music on the album will help us to get even other possibilities that I’m not touching on right now, but that’s what good albums are supposed to do. So we’re gonna let the album take us to places this time and see what happens.
Rock Overdose: That’s great. Now, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people will lash out at me if I don’t ask this question. Is there a chance you can tell me whether or not Savatage or TSO will start a European tour and therefore have a possibility to come here?
Zak Stevens: Yeah, there’s always talk about that, there isn't one exactly in the plan right now but, I think we were going to do a spring run in Europe for this coming up year and they decided to postpone that. I think maybe the summertime, and you know I’m definitely thinking it’s coming up because I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about it, and I think that TSO will be and in parts, I think you can expect, like you said, Savatage elements to be thrown all in there and maybe that’s actually a good way to get Savatage back in it’s initial tour back out again. Just be on the lookout, because I think you gonna hear some news about that on the upcoming month, so I’d love to see happen exactly what you said.
Rock Overdose: that’s great. Are there any other projects you are currently working up, any other bands you appearing?
Zak Stevens: I have a few things coming out I was doing in the months while we’re waiting to finish this album. We actually turned in the “Reigns of Darkness” album in January, it was finished in January, so now it’s coming out, it’s been nine months and they were waiting until they decided on a release date. I’m sure that was done for reasons of Wacken and stuff like that, you know for timing. At that time, I did three different projects, one is from Jens Faber and it’s called Dawn of Destiny, the last song on the album it’s pretty cool. I like to do the side projects for two reason, I learn something and usually it’s challenging. It’s like “oh my God, can I even do this?”, it’s kind of challenging you always learn something more. The other one is called Foreign. It’s kind of a very progressive pre-album set of a trilogy about the wondering Jew. So it really has a kind of Middle East thing, about religious stuff in it is the "Trilogy of the Wondering Jew". The second of the three albums will be released soon and the guy who is running the whole thing is called Ivan Juacquin. Then, I guess the other one was Jesus, a guy from Spain, Jesus Arhona has a few albums he released which are both of the same title, but they’re also concept albums. They are coming out of Spain but they’re worldwide releases, he has people there like Doogie White, older singers, I think I might be the youngest of all the singers and he has Graham Bonnet if you can imagine that, so he has a few guys that came from Rainbow and he’s got Edu Falaschi from Angra, he’s got Bill Hudson the guitarist from Circle II Circle and J.O.P., he does a guest solo on there, Lynn Meredith, you know just different performers. But it’s very interesting, it’s very progressive too, very prog. I mean, when I say prog, it is prog. Major prog, very different. I don’t know, these all three things I doubleteamed when I was waiting for the album to kick-up for the Savatage reunion to rehearse. Yeah, I think that answers that question. Not too much, I don’t really do much other side projects, but that was the three I did this year.
Rock Overdose: That’s great. Those were the questions that I wanted to ask, some of the questions I had written you to answer them inside another question, so I want to thank you for your time and I leave the closing of the interview to you, you can leave a message to your fans here in Greece.
Zak Stevens: I just want to say thanks for all the great years and for the support through out the years. I know it’s been a long time since we have been back in Greece playing for just a lot different reasons, some we can control, some we can’t, but we could be more thankful to all of you guys, all of you, as our supporters, fans, friends in Greece who been there for us since exactly the beginning of when I joined Savatage, so that’s a long time ago. We’ve got 20 years plus fantastic support from Greece so we definitely we owe it to you to get back over there either with Savatage or with at least CircleIICircle so we’re definitely working on it to see everybody again and we have great time playing there because, you know, you all have a huge heart for music and you’ve got big passion for music as we do so, we love to see that, there’s nothing better than that, to perform to an audience like Greece. So, we can’t wait to get back over, I hope you really enjoy the “Reign of Darkness” album, I think it will be a good enjoying experience for you and again thanks for everything, for your support all these years. I hope to see everybody real soon.
For Rock Overdose,
John Pitsakis
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