Godsmack & Staind Come to Town...

Enable frames

Godsmack & Staind Come to Town...

By Randy Chandler

Godsmack

Godsmack's Sully...photo by Kay McEntee

The recent Godsmack show at Saginaw's Wendler Arena, in addition to being one of the best rock concerts I've seen since my youth, was also a kind of homecoming for Godsmack drummer Tommy Stewart.

Born & raised in Flint, Michigan "in a little home by Bishop Airport", young Tommy began his playing career gigging at the now-fabled Conto's on Dort Highway with several circuit groups such as Kody Lee (with Slaughter guitarist Jeff Blando), Bad Axe (featuring Fade leader Rusty Wright), and Detroit's dark glam band Halloween.

He joined Lillian Axe, a melodic band with good hooks and big hair that had a video in light rotation on MTV, but got lost in the shuffle of late 80's hair bands soon to be made obsolete (as well as plain silly).

By the onset of 'Grunge', undaunted, Tommy headed out to see the country, living in Houston & Los Angeles. Lillian Axe had toured with a group called
Strip Mind, featuring a young vocalist named Salvatore 'Sully' Erna, and the two musicians kept in touch. In the mid-90s, Strip Mind dissolved and Erna was looking to put together a new project - with Stewart on drums.
Godsmack was born.

But success was not immediate, and Tommy parted with the band to return to

Los Angeles to work on other projects. In his absence, the group recorded a

demo, financed by a friend, that led to Godsmack getting a deal with

Universal Records. That album's release coincided with the prodigal

Stewart's return to the group.

While their self-titled debut was powered by Erna's drumming, the drum

arrangements were that of Stewart - a fact made abundantly clear by Tommy's

performance on Godsmack's latest sophomore effort, Aware.

"In the studio, it really is a collective effort," explained Tommy in a

mid-afternoon phone interview. "Sully and Tony usually come up with

sketches, and solid ideas, but each of us contribute to the finished

product."

When asked what a typical day on tour is like, Tommy readily replied:

"Basically you spend a lot of time on the bus, or flying, and then you wake

up, hang around for a few hours, maybe have a little work-out, do an hour

or two of press in the afternoon, and then get ready for the show."

While some have portrayed the group as a blatant Alice In Chains rip-off

(their name comes from a track on AIC's brilliant 1992 cd Dirt), in reality

Godsmack has as much in common with Alice In Chains as Kingdom Come had in

common with Led Zeppelin.

Only certain elements of Seattle grunge have been appropriated by the band

(down-tuned guitars, snarling, lower-register singing, close, minor key

harmonies), to be mixed liberally with simple yet infectious grooves and

anthemic choruses. In place of AIC's lyrical portraits of heroin-induced

junkiness, Godsmack substitutes occult mysticism with an all-pervasive

sense of alienation (How many 'smack' tunes have the words 'Get Away, 'Keep

Away', or 'Go Away'?) that, for all its darkness, still seems to come off

'lighter' and more optimistic than anything in the AIC catalog.

But enough comparisons. Let's talk about the show.

I managed to arrive in time for the beginning of Cold's set. They had

sparked my interest with their Just Got Wicked video, which was receiving

heavy rotation on MTV. Although they were a victim of lackluster

front-of-house operation, they put in a tight & powerful performance marred

only by poor lighting and the statue-like stage presence of guitarists

Kelly Hayes and Terry Balsamo. Cold played several cuts from their new CD,

Thirteen Ways to Bleed Onstage, including their current single Nobody

before culminating in a two-fisted reading of the aforementioned Wicked.

The lighting kept the band in darkness for most of their allotted time,

although the lights came up a notch when Staind's Aaron Lewis made a

surprise (if low-key) guest appearance.

Perhaps the funniest aspect of the show is that the stage was flanked by two video screens that, until late in Staind's set, featured a static shot of an out of focus stage taken from back at the soundboard. The people in the stands, who were the intended beneficiary of the video screens, actually got a better view by looking at the stage itself!

As for Staind, let me put it this way - they opened with Mudshovel, one of the most powerful Nu-Metal anthems of the last five years, and until recently, their biggest hit. From this point they only built further in
intensity. While the set mostly included songs from the 1999CD Dysfunction, it curiously did not include Home, which was a staple on MTV's Return of the Rock. The group's grasp of dynamics and sound-coloring was brilliant, and vocalist Lewis shined throughout as an emotive vocal power to be reckoned with.

Staind Pic

Aaron Lewis of Staind..photo by Kay McEntee

When Godsmack took the stage and the lights came on it was indeed a

different world at night. The stage was dominated by a huge gothic set

replete with gargoyles, a three-piece video screen and lots of Fire Fire

Fire (hehehe). Bathed in bloodred light, it was clearly an outgrowth of

Erna's occultist leanings. But it looked really cool.

Opening up with Bad Religion from Godsmack, the boys from Beantown laid

down elephant-sized grooves. Stewart's energetic drumming and Robbie

Merrill's solid basswork were driven home by Tony Rombola's simplistic

minimalist guitar approach. Erna was in fine vocal form despite it being

the third to last show of the tour, but his bullying take on stage presence

and crowd working skills did not sit well with some. "If you people don't

get your asses up out of those seats," he bellowed at one point, "I'm gonna

come down there and $$(# you up, and I'm not kiddin!". Ultimately, they won

the crowd over completely with the notable exception of Section 23, who

Erna actually pulled enmasse onto the stage so that the rest of us could

salute them with one of our fingers.

The set dragged midway with the atmospheric Trippin, which Erna dedicated

to "all the dope smokers out there in Saginaw tonight." With all the pot

references invoked throughout the night and the enormous crowd response

each time, one gets the feeling that Greg Schmid could get his PRA

Amendment passed had he been collecting signatures at the Civic Center that

night.

The set ended with the feisty Keep Away before Godsmack returned for the

dual encore of Voodoo and the 15-minute long extended version of their

biggest hit, Whatever that saw all four members adorned in Red Wings

jerseys in honor the Wing's recent win.

Sully pulled a sing-a-long with the Go Away parts before pulling all of

Section we onto the stage. This was cool, but it made the end of the show

somewhat anti-climactic. The sound still wasn't completely right this late

in the game; the snare drum was almost inaudible under the blazing guitars.

When asked about the most memorable night of tour craziness he could

recall, Tommy noted how "Once when we were in the middle of our set a fan

through his prosthetic leg onto the stage, which really amazed me, because

some kid was obviously pounding around in the mosh pit without it!"

As Godsmack exited the stage, leaving their crowd of new fans milling

around the stage, the smile on Tommy Stewart's face was unmistakable.

He had come home, and he had kicked ass.

Enable frames