On April 25th, Gigantour 2008 thrashed its way into The Palladium in Worcester, MA. On the bill: Megadeth, In Flames, Children of Bodom, Job for a Cowboy and High on Fire.

After some miscommunication at the front door, I ended up missing High on Fire and was unable to shoot them. After that, I settled into the photo pit with about 20+ other photographers. At first this was pretty surprising because I had heard that they weren’t allowing a lot of photographers access to the tour but then I realized that they had coupled Gigantour with this years New England Hardcore and Metalfest so there were several photographers from all over there to cover that.

Megadeth

Job for a Cowboy

Children of Bodom

You can read my review of the show here on TheyWillRockYou.com and check out my photos from the show in the TheyWillRockYou.com photo galleries here.

Usually I’m the interview-er not the interview-ee so when The Pulse asked about doing a piece on TheyWillRockYou.com I was pretty excited. Finally the tables were turned and I was able to answer the questions rather than ask them.

Jillian did an amazing job at capturing the true essence of our website, so I’m really happy that she was the one who was assigned to this. Check out the full article in The Pulse Magazine online here. (If you’re in Massachusetts you can pick up the print copy around town too!!!)

Thanks again to Jillian, you rock!

As a lifelong New Englander and more importantly my obsession with music, I guess you could say I’m a fan of Aerosmith, so when the opportunity to interview Joe Perry was presented to me, I nearly peed my pants.

It’s always tough to prepare for an interview because you really never know how talkative or non-talkative an artist is going to be. They could give you one word answers or talk forever. The latter is definitely my preference but not always the case. A good interview should feel like a casual phone conversation with a friend with a comfortable flow. So considering all of that, I wondered how Joe Perry would be? Having met him briefly in the past at a show, he seemed pretty quiet so I really wasn’t sure.

Fast forward to the day of our interview, Joe could not have been a cooler guy. He talked honestly and openly about everything from his two sons and his involvement with their band TAB to his partnership with Guitar Hero to the current state of Aerosmith. After about 45 minutes and only having made it through about half of my questions I had to let Joe off of the hook since I had been asked to keep it to 30 minutes (which is still a really long time to talk to a rock legend!). When I hung up the phone, I did a happy dance and thanked my lucky stars that not all of my heroes are assholes!

You can read my interview with Joe in the February print issue of The Pulse (available in MA) or read it online at The Pulse here.

You can also read the full unedited version posted on TheyWillRockYou.com here.

You can also check out photos I took of Joe Perry performing with TAB here.