Good to see Silveroller getting lots of applause on this tour. Where their sound will go will be
interesting to see, since the new lineup could mean more of a change than I'd expected.
(Earlier thread on the lineup change is at https://www.democraticunderground.com/1034124758 with a reply from Silveroller's Jonnie Hodson, registered here as TheReverend.)
I still haven't been able to find any clues online as to why three members of the five-member band left when they had commitments for a summer festival, a September tour, and a festival in the Netherlands in December headlined by their friends in DeWolff. I'd wondered at first if they might form their own band, but as far as I can tell, they haven't. No music news about guitarist Aaron Keylock other than an appearance with his vocalist girlfriend at a blues festival in Gloucester in late July. Bass player Jake James Cornes has for years played in a band with his girlfriend, Sian Richardson, whose stage name is Blue Jean, and that's continuing, as it did while he was in Silveroller. I haven't been able to find anything on what keyboardist Ross Munro is doing. Really nothing about any of them that would explain why they left Silveroller.
Kudos to lead singer Jonnie Hodson and drummer Joe Major for being able to find new members and rehearse enough to make those scheduled appearances.
If you remember my early posts about Silveroller last fall, you know I was curious about the origins of their sound, which had Jonnie and Aaron's creative partnership at its core. Aaron has been a blues and blues rock phenom since his early teens, praised by Joe Bonamassa, touring in support of major artists while still in his midteens. Jonnie's first band, Black Cat Bones, had been hard rock with some Guns N' Roses influence - Jonnie was lead singer and songwriter - but he's also been the lead singer for the Head Hunters Blues Band, a great blues band doing covers of classics.
Jonnie and Aaron bonded over a shared love of blues and blues rock.
I don't know if any of the three new members share that love of blues rock.
I couldn't find anything on bass player Dylan Evans. There is more info on Lucas Tadini, the keyboardist, who didn't join till last month.
I couldn't find anything at first on guitarist Joey Smith - there are a number of guitarists with that name - though it seemed from video from a festival Silveroller appeared at last month that his musical influences were very different from Aaron's.
IMPORTANT NOTE: As I've said here before, "very different" does NOT mean "worse" - and I've always tried to make it clear that since we all have different tastes, it's best in a Music Appreciation forum to keep your opinion to yourself if you don't understand why someone else likes artists or types of music you don't like. Really don't want this forum turning into Music Wars with the loudest self-appointed music critics dominating or even bullying others into leaving.
Anyway, that diversity is what keeps music interesting.
Back to Joey: I discovered that before Silveroller, he was in the Dead Medicine Band. This is what their SoundCloud page says about their influences:
https://soundcloud.com/dead-medicine-877165843
In a March interview done by Mark Watkins on Tumblr - https://markwatkinsconsumerguide.tumblr.com/post/746461910053027840/consumer-guide-no128-joey-smith-of-the-dead - Joey said he considers Goat the best band he's ever seen, and that SoundCloud page also mentions Goat.
To be honest, I'd never heard of Goat, a Swedish alt/fusion band - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_(band) - and when I searched this forum back to 2011, I found their music had been posted only once, in December of last year, by DUer orotna (and with no response indicating anyone else here was familiar with them).
I'm not sure what happened with the Dead Medicine Band. Last month they posted on Facebook that they were on hiatus and Joey had joined Silveroller, but in that March interview, Joey had said this:
JS: So we're the hardest working band in showbiz this year. We’ve got the double A side singles, ‘Steady The Ship’ and 'Only A Light Year Away’, coming out, followed by the other five, culminating in the debut albums release at the end of the year.
We're playing an endless stream of gigs including going on tour with Twink, of The Pink Faires AND The Pretty Things fame. We’re playing some festivals including Cosmic Vibrations in Sheffield, which will be an amazing event and we’ve started writing tracks that will go onto the next album, which all being well will come out next year.
I haven't been able to find those singles, though Joey had posted photos or video of a recording studio in the months before that.
When I was finding information on Silveroller's origins - much of which I've posted here in MA with some in replies in my first post about them in the Lounge, https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181892763 - it was immediately obvious why Jonnie and Aaron had hit it off and been able to combine their talents, melding their influences.
It's much less obvious with Joey. Who seems like a very nice guy, from what I've read and the videos I've seen (there are quite a few videos from this tour on YouTube already, plus video from the August festival appearance). He cares a lot about music, especially from that classic rock era. His style of guitar playing is very different from Aaron's. He's used to singing lead and writing his former band's songs, very much in charge of the band's sound. Which was very different from Silveroller's.
For this tour Silveroller included a song Joey wrote, possibly one he'd planned to include on the Dead Medicine Band album that wasn't released. Jonnie does sing lead on that song, but it's different from Silveroller's usual sound.
I don't know if they can meld these very different sounds/influences, if they'll work out an arrangement to go back and forth between them, or if there will be a tug of war. Anything can happen with bands.
Aaron Keylock had been writing his own songs and singing lead for years before he teamed up with Jonnie and let Jonnie have the lead vocals on their new songs. But at the time he wanted to do that, to focus on guitar, and their favorite types of music matched. He also still shared the spotlight with Jonnie, with most of Silveroller's media attention on them equally, if not more on Aaron initially because of his previous career, both solo and with his power trio.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this new lineup.
Fan reaction - what I've seen posted online and seen on all the videos from the tour - has been positive. And again, kudos to these guys for being able to play these gigs with so little time to rehearse.
I'd been hoping to see reviews from some of the magazines and bloggers who'd reviewed Silveroller previously, but haven't found any reviews so far. Still watching for them...
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