Kobra and the Lotus – 1st ROAD BLOG from KISS’ “40th Anniversary Tour” with Def Leppard

The hard rock/metal band, Kobra and the Lotus, are currently on KISS’ “40th Anniversary Tour” with Def Leppard. While they are out on this tour, the band will be doing an exclusive blog for us. You can check out the first entry, with pictures, after the break.

Not even two months ago, we received the ultimate call of honour; Kobra and the Lotus on tour with KISS and Def Leppard for the summer?? HELL YEA!! Like most people, this was a childhood dream for all of us and we never could have imagined an opportunity like this. So here it is, the first couple weeks of our touring escapades with metal and rock giants KISS and Def Leppard.

Midnight in Calgary, Canada, we are live on the air with our local radio station CJSW, sending us off to pull a full all-nighter packing for the plane we have to catch 6 hours later. Barely getting all our baggage checked in on time, we miraculously made it onto the plane and came out on the other side at Salt Lake City with only two bags missing…. Our bus waiting at the curb…time for the big rock show!!

Every massive LCD screen on the KISS stage has 100’s of separate wireless signals for every 1 foot by 1 foot section. This caused mass interference with all the wireless units for our instruments. During our entire set, on the “kick-off” show, both guitar and bass kept dropping in and out as well as us having random radio music playing in our wireless in-ear systems!! It was like playing the show with a bunch of ghosts hovering around us.

Rolling on into Denver the next day, load in and sound check was derailed by a SPIDER! It was the first stadium show doing set-up for the KISS Spider and ALL things fell waaayyy behind. As the opening band, we are at the mercy of whatever schedule comes our way. Doors opened, we threw our gear up sporadically, 5 minutes before set time, hoping all would work properly. One of our guitarists even plugged his guitar into a Dummy head on the ENGL amp stack throwing him into a complete fluster. Miracle of miracles, everything worked…sound came out! As we charged threw the set, we passed our 30 minute mark by 30 seconds and the sound was cut on us. Still rocking out full force on stage, it took us a good 15 seconds to realize there was no more sound coming out toward the audience. We had no choice but to throw some horns to the audience and get the hell off the stage… It was hysterical! \<_>/

We have definitely had our share of support band moments. Our first show in California, our bus got the ultimate shaft. We were moved 1.5 km away from the venue and parked on a steep dirt road. This amphitheater had some serious safari park terrain; hills and all. The bus was so tilted that you had to walk at a 45 degree angle inside AND it got hit by a semi-truck carrying pieces of the KISS/Def Leppard stage set up.

All night we we’re running back and forth in our leather pants in the blaring heat, sweating buckets and the venue was not going to give us a shuttle cart no matter what the case was. Moving on thru Chula Vista we we’re met by another one of Gene Simmons’ “Sound-check Hi-jacks”, showing us how it’s done on the mic, weaving threw the guys while he took some sneaky twitter pics of us doing our thing.

Here’s the part where we tell you how we spend our off days. Our singer’s sister flew down and had her birthday with us so we went to none other than Disneyland! Here’s where we had our best photo shoot of all time! Conquering Splash Mountain last, we made our tribute to Paul Stanley, master frontman and master of the ultimate star child pose. (see photo 7 in the gallery above)

Moving on… what’s up LA?? The place where a rock show at The Forum is a gathering event for anyone and everyone in all forms of the entertainment industry. Another great show and some great hang outs with great people. We wrapped up the night with a final chill on the bus with our new label team Titan Music, Chris Broderick of Megadeth and Def Leppard’s awesome monitor engineer Nate who we’ve had the pleasure of having our in-ears mixed by on the tour. (see photo 8 in the gallery above)

Nate’s bus left him behind and amazingly came back for him 15 minutes later once they realized it….something totally unheard of for a bus on tour! It blew our minds! That’s some serious bro love!

All in the name of Rock n’ Roll and WE ARE LOVING every minute of it!!!

That’s all for now! Thank you all for your amazing support, we hope to see you soon as we roll through North America with the KISS and Def Leppard train!!

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