I have performed my music in concerts for most of my life. However, I have never embarked on a proper tour until this year. With a set list comprised of songs from my debut rock album, The Singularity, and music drawn from throughout my scoring career, my 2025 Themes and Variations Tour took me across Europe, the Eastern Seaboard of North America, and will, in two weeks, bring me to Australia. After having spent most of my career as a composer for media locked away in my writing studio, I am excited to finally get a taste of the rock star life! As this was a wholly new experience for me, I kept a daily diary. This blog is the first in a new series of travel journals in which I chronicled my daily adventures on tour, starting with my European run. Here we go!
Tuesday, April 15
11:10 pm
Los Angeles, California
I just finished four consecutive days of rehearsals in Burbank, California. Every song clicked into place quickly, which isn’t a surprise given the caliber of musicians, who have all been a foundational part of my music for years. The core rhythm section is comprised of Gene “The Atomic Clock” Hoglan on drums, Pete Griffin on bass and backing vocals, and Omer Ben-Zvi on guitar. Morgan Sorne is once again our opening act and now a full member of the band, and my long-time violinist Paul Cartwright has joined as well. My brother, Brendan McCreary, fronts the group, singing lead vocal and playing acoustic guitar.
I was excited to meet our road crew, all of whom are seasoned veterans. Our tour manager, Frankie Orange, was instrumental in producing my Fonda Theatre show last year, and I’m looking forward to getting to know him better as we hit the road together. I connected with both our front-of-house mixer Igor Stolarsky and our guitar tech Jai Kaminoff through my friend Javier Reyes from the iconic progressive metal trio Animals as Leaders. Igor and Jai are already exceeding my high expectations, demonstrating remarkable attention to detail and passion for the job. Our monitor mixer Timmy McGugin comes from the Dethklok camp, and gives me the sense he can handle anything because he’s seen it all. I look forward to meeting lighting director Jack Spittler Jr as well as our European drum tech Charles Degolla once we land in London.
Unlike last year’s concert in which I performed virtually the entirety of The Singularity, I decided for this tour to integrate some of my rock songs with themes and cues drawn from throughout my scoring career, all performed in a rock setting. In rehearsal, music from epic projects as diverse as Battlestar Galactica, God of War and The Walking Dead blended beautifully in with songs from The Singularity.
I was grateful my guitar teacher, Sasha Birrittella, was on hand to help coach me through the toughest guitar parts and dial in my presets on my amp modeler, the Neural DSP Quad Cortex. And I was touched to see my team at Sparks & Shadows sent over a cake with my tour poster on it. (My daughter Sonatine insisted on eating the piece with me face on it!)
After working everything out with my band and crew for a few days here in Los Angeles, I feel confident about the set, and excited to fly to London tomorrow.
Thursday, April 17
7:30 pm
London, England
What a long day spent traveling! I am finally in London, in my hotel room. I slept maybe two hours on the plane last night. I’ve managed to stay up this late, and now I’m about to fall asleep.
Friday, April 18
11:50 pm
London, England
Woke up at 2am this morning. So much for conquering jetlag.
At 7am, I was the first one to stumble into the hotel cafeteria. I was eventually joined by Gene, Omer, Morgan and Paul. I ended up chatting with Gene for a long time, getting incredible stories about his time in legendary bands like Dark Angel, Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad, and many more. The depth of his knowledge and experience, conveyed with his soft speaking voice and congenial demeanor, is always fascinating. I feel so lucky to have him by my side for my first tour.
We headed over to the venue, Indigo at the O2, around noon. While the crew loaded in our gear, Brendan and I explored the shopping center outside. Shortly after we sat down for lunch at a Thai place across the promenade, I noticed my tour poster was on the wall right behind us. What a surreal rush, seeing one of my posters out in the wild for the first time!
Our first show was a blast! Morgan Sorne’s opening set is a solo performance of his own original music. He stood before his customized rig of wires and electronic devices and put on a one-man-show in which he ran his voice through effects to create hypnotic textures. He captivated the audience and set a cinematic mood for the rest of my show. He returned as a member of my band, eventually moving to center stage to sing the song he and I wrote together for The Singularity, “Tears for the Dead Life.”
Our set went smoothly though admittedly not perfectly. We had one technical issue where I realized after “Old Tom Bombadil” started that the keyboard we rented was set in transpose mode. Whoops! So, I had to transpose the song on the fly, and play it, as well as “Da Vinci’s Demons” following it, in a new key to compensate. That was scary, but lesson learned: check the keyboard in soundcheck!
Songs like “God of War,” “Da Vinci’s Demons,” and “Dance of the Druids” have been fairly radically transformed, while tunes like “Masters of the Universe Revelation,” “This Game’s Called Murder,” and “Child’s Play” translate more directly to this ensemble. Having done something similar with the music of “Battlestar Galactica” on stage about fifteen years ago, I suspected these arrangements would work. Tonight’s audience in London, the first in the world to hear this all, proved me right!
After the show, I enjoyed catching up with several friends backstage, including J.D. Payne, my “The Last Ballad of Damrod” co-writer who was in the audience to witness the debut performance of our epic song about a troll from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The first show of my first tour is officially finished!
Sunday, April 20
1:30 am
Berlin, Germany
After Friday’s show, I showered at the venue backstage and, after a celebratory shot of whiskey with the crew, returned to this massive tour bus that will take all thirteen of us—seven musicians, six crew—across Europe. That was when the reality hit me: I would basically live on this bus for the next two weeks. Furthermore, the first time I ever set foot on a tour bus also happened to be the start of the longest drive of our entire tour, a two-day trek from the heart of London all the way to Warsaw, Poland for our second show.
Our drums and gear are pulled behind the bus in a trailer. The downstairs of the bus serves as a lounge, with a small kitchen, stocked with sandwich supplies, a toaster, and two mini-fridges, across from a table that seats four, and a couch seating five. There is a very small bathroom with a tiny toilet, strictly limited to flushing liquids only (do the math on what that means!). Following the spiral stairs to the second level, I found a tight hallway with bunks, stacked two high on either side. At the front of the upper level, I discovered a second lounge capable of seating another six people comfortably. Cozy!
Even more cozy was my bunk. When I first crawled into it, I felt like I was in a coffin. I barely have space enough to lift my head off the pillow!
By 6 am, after a sleepless night (that included having wake up at 3am and show our passports to British border officials) we found ourselves aboard the ferry to France. I was so sleep-deprived I felt like I was in a barely lucid dream.
I stumbled behind my bandmates and crew to get breakfast at the ship’s café, then we sat together before giant windows, watching the sun rise over the cliffs of Dover.
Throughout the next day we drove across France. I was struck by the beauty of the countryside where gently spinning modern windmills pierced rippling oceans of yellow tulips, interspersed with idyllic villages, marked by beautiful church steeples. To my surprise, the sandwich I picked up at a French truck stop tasted as delicious as any deli food I have ever ordered in America.
I spent most of the day in my bunk, trying and ultimately failing to sleep. By nightfall, we had crossed into Germany. We are currently stopped in the parking lot of a hotel outside Berlin. We won’t sleep in this hotel, but we will be here long enough that we can all access a shared common room to grab a much-needed shower. I am quickly learning that any chance one has to grab a shower in a decent bathroom, or use a fully-functioning toilet, should be enthusiastically taken!
Sunday, April 20
7:05 pm
Somewhere in Poland
My second full day on a tour bus was more enjoyable than the first, as I have better adjusted to its continuous rocking motions. Our drivers, Chris “Coach” Morgan and Ania Wasilowska, were forced to take a detour somewhere in Eastern Germany and left the main highway.
From the upstairs lounge, I watched in awe as they navigated our huge bus through the streets of a quaint little village that looked like it came from the pages of a storybook. Then, we rounded a sharp corner and I saw an abandoned castle tower hidden in deep trees, wrapped in vines. One of the most enchanting sights I’ve ever seen!
For the second day’s journey, I spent most of the afternoon in the downstairs lounge getting to know the crew better, as we made sandwiches from the deli meats in the mini-fridge. Igor, our front-of-house mixer, looks like a rock star, with a slick strip of bright red hair down his head; he has an impressive swath of knowledge of All Things Nerd. I have figured out that if I bring up video games or anime with him, I can settle in for a lengthy and illuminating discussion.
Our lighting director Jack, whom I first met at the venue in London, loves to talk about how his lineage can be traced back to the Knights Templar–you don’t hear that every day! Our drum tech, Charles, often wears a shirt from one of my favorite bands, New Zealand’s Alien Weaponry, so he has a ton of fun stories about working with them. Our monitor mixer Timmy is bursting with anecdotes from his long career.
I have been impressed with how quickly our guitar tech, Jai, has taken to the tuning and maintenance of the infamously finicky hurdy gurdy. (By the end of this tour he should add “Hurdy Gurdy Tech” to his already impressive résumé!) When at work, Jai is focused and quiet, almost like those guards outside Buckingham Palace, so I didn’t really get to see his personality until we began traveling. He’s hilarious! He came back from a truck stop with this big stuffed goose, because he needed a second pillow. Something him about holding this goose just cracked me up.
And, there’s our tour manager Frankie, the mastermind behind this entire operation. This guy is working constantly, always buried in his phone or laptop. I feel like he’s working so that we can relax. I’ve quickly come to realize that I don’t need to worry about any logistics when this guy is with us.
By now, nearly two full days on the road, I have newfound appreciation for my dark, cramped little bunk. It is my personal space to sleep, charge my phone, scroll social media, listen to podcasts, or just rest my brain. It’s a home on the road, a welcome space to escape.
Oh, looks like we just arrived in Warsaw… where we get to spend the night in actual hotel rooms! I get to sleep in a bed that isn’t moving!
Continued in Part 2.
-Bear
