Alter Bridge making “conscious effort” to improve production on fall tour

Credit: Dan SturgessAlter Bridge will launch a U.S. tour in support of their forthcoming new album Walk the Sky Thursday in Raleigh, North Carolina. For the first time, the band plans to really focus on the live show’s production, which frontman Myles Kennedy and guitarist Mark Tremonti admit has never been a priority.

Speaking to ABC Radio, Tremonti explains that, because they’ve been so focused on “being the best musicians that we can be,” when it comes to visuals, Alter Bridge is “the worst.”

“Our production [was], like, ‘No, we just do what we do, put some [spotlights] on us and let us rock,’ but now I think we need to start picking that up,” Tremonti explains. “We have, little by little, over the tours, so this time we wanna make a conscious effort of improving our presentation.”

That will include a lot more video screens and smoke effects, although Tremonti’s idea for giving Kennedy a cryo gun that he “could shoot the crowd or shoot us on stage” probably isn’t going to make it.

“We wanna experiment…[and] present ourselves like we’re really professionals doing this,” Tremonti laughs.

Kennedy adds that they’ve been looking for inspiration from other rock acts.

“There’s a lot of cool things happening,” Kennedy says. “I feel like bands are really doing cool stuff visually now. Like, I’ve seen some of the footage of the latest Gojira tour, and the visuals on that are just unbelievable.”

“You just got to ask yourself, ‘What would Gojira do?'” Tremonti adds.

“It’s pretty much getting to that point!” Kennedy replies. “They’re so good.” 

Following two headlining dates, Alter Bridge will launch a joint run with Skillet Sunday, September 22 in Baltimore.

Walk the Sky will be released October 18.

Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.