You can now be in with a chance to win a signed Jackson JS32RT Dinky in Transparent Black

5 Jacksons are up for grabs when you purchase a ticket to Scott Ian’s Speaking Word Tour 2013. Each night all ticket buyers will be entered into a raffle with one lucky winner winning a bag of merch. Each winner will then be entered into another raffle which will see 5 ticket buyers win a Jackson guitar signed by Scott. Further details can be found at http://scott-ian.com/

Scott Ian will be heading out for a full UK ‘Speaking Words’ tour next May/June 2013. The tour comes in light of his highly successful spoken word evening at The Garage, London in November 2012.

“My first ‘Speaking Words’ tour and I get to do it in the UK and Ireland? Really? Wow, how fucking cool is that!!! My one-off show in London went so well and now I get to speak words at you all over the place. Thank you for having a superior sense of humour.

I’m calling it ‘Speaking Words’ because the pretension of saying I am doing a ‘Spoken Word’ tour is too much to bear. This ain’t no poetry reading. This isn’t an evening of sensitive discourse.

It’s an evening of ridiculous truth. It’s me talking (swearing) about this insane life I’ve led over the last 31 years, the people I’ve met and the shit that’s happened. And when I’m done swearing, you can ask me anything you want, the floor is yours. Cheers my friends, see you in May and June.” Scott Ian

In a career spanning three decades, Scott Ian, as the co-founding member of Anthrax, helped to create the “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” or as it’s more commonly known, “Thrash Metal” in the mid-80’s. Scott is widely known as the face of Anthrax, and for being a constant and extremely recognizable figure in the worlds of music, poker, comics, movies and television.

In a rare outing Scott will do a spoken word performance. The show is very entertaining and funny, filled with stories from his 30+ years of travelling around the world. The night concludes with a Q & A where the audience gets to ask Scott what they want to know.

Scott Ian’s ‘Speaking Words’ tour will be sponsored by Metal Hammer magazine.

“Geek, author, guitarist, icon: when it comes to recounting the history of metal, Scott Ian’s the man – catch him while you can” Alex Milas – Editor Metal Hammer

UK Tour

Hello friends how are ya?

We’re a week into the Metal Alliance tour and things couldn’t be better. Almost every show has been sold out and the crowds have been amazing. The LA show was really on another level. I’ve never felt such crazy energy from an LA crowd. And then add Slash getting up and playing TNT with us and Chuck D doing Bring The Noise and ripping the roof off the place, it was just an incredible night.

Getting to do Noise with Chuck, and of course when we toured together with PE and we did it with the whole band every show, it has always been an incredible experience. It’s musically dangerous and there’s a feeling of invincibility when we’re doing it.
Maybe we need to do it again. What do ya think?
The crowd at the San Francisco show were relentless. The circle pit was huge and never stopped. Bay Area fans have to be the most fit metal fans in the world. Cardiomosh.

Right before the tour started my wife Pearl and I went to Greg Nicotero’s 50th birthday party. Greg is a producer and director on The Walking Dead and he is also in charge of all the makeup effects. Greg and his team are responsible for all the killer zombies. He’s also responsible for me getting made up as a zombie for the webisode he directed. Here’s a link to that. My zombie debut is at 1:41.

With Norman Reedus, Michael Rooker (aka: Daryl) and Merle Dixon

Anyway, I got to meet Michael Rooker at Greg’s party. Michael plays Merle on The Walking Dead. I’ve been a fan of Michaels since seeing him back in the late 80′s in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. I got to tell Michael the story of seeing that movie in Times Square in late 1989. Back then Times Square was still Times Square. Some of the filth had been swept under the rug but overall it was still a dirty, transient, dangerous place. Not too far off from the Times Square you see in Taxi Driver. I took the girl I was dating at the time to see Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in one of the crappy theaters on 42nd St. I guess I was trying to share my interests with her. Right from the start she was not stoked to be in Times Square, not stoked to be in this grimy old ex-porn theater. Everything had a greasy film on it. I was aware of her disenchantment but I chose to ignore it. I was stoked to be there and I wanted to see the movie.

During the first murder in the movie my date elbowed me and when I turned to look at her she was no longer just a little weirded out, she was crying and whispering at me in that cutting way where a whisper can be louder than yelling to turn around and look behind us. Her teary eyes kept darting to the left for me to follow and the look on her face was sheer panic.

I slowly turned to look.
A few rows behind us there was a guy jerking off. To the murder scene. I tried to stifle myself from laughing but a few escaped. Yes it was disgusting, creepy, gross and many other adjectives but at the same time it was somehow fitting considering where we were and it added to the entertainment. He was behind us, we didn’t have to see what he was doing, just hear the rustling of his coat. I offered for us to move our seats so we wouldn’t be near him any more but she was way past that. She couldn’t believe I laughed and that I wasn’t completely disgusted by it. I was, I just didn’t care enough to want to leave the theater. She was mad at me and was asking me “what kind of person am I to take her to this kind of place” and “how could I like this kind of stuff?” She was hysterical and all I could think to do at the time was to once again offer to move seats. That was the wrong answer and she got up and stormed up the aisle leaving me and Jerky in her wake. I followed her out of the theater and walked into the scene in Taxi Driver where DeNiro chases Cybill Shepherd out of the porn movie and she is just disgusted and totally over Travis Bickle except now I am Travis Bickle and I stammer and stutter a bunch of crap to try and calm her down and surprisingly it works because we ended up getting in a cab together. In hindsight, it’s a bummer my date wasn’t totally over me like Cybill was with Travis because we ended up in a shitty long term relationship, married, divorced that could’ve been avoided if I just didn’t leave the theater that night.
Michael loved the story. He had my back. Big hi-five at the end of it.

My kind of guy.
I went on to tell him how much I loved his character Merle in The Walking Dead and that I hoped Merle would never get any redemption, never sell out, just always be a dick. Of course he already knew that (SPOILERS AHEAD) Merle dies and does redeem himself but he played it off and didn’t give anything away.
After watching the episode where Merle meets his fate I have to say I was wrong. Merle’s redemption is a thing of beauty. He goes out big on his own terms. The writers nailed it and Michael’s portrayal of this man on a mission made you feel sorry for and root for a character that was at best, vile. Rooker rules. Do yourself a favor and watch him on Walking Dead.
That’s it for now. Getting on the bus to head to Vancouver. Had a great day in Portland. Coffee and beer. They do them well here.

Cheers,
Scott

I hope you all had a great weekend. I’m just about recovered from the crazy jet-lag coming home from Australia. The Soundwave festival was amazing! The shows were great, biggest we’ve ever played in Australia. The pit during Indians in Sydney was incredible! Now I have two great memories of that stadium; seeing AC/DC there in 2010 and playing to you crazy fuckers in it in 2013. A huge thank you to everyone involved in SW13 especially our man Nick Tkalac for taking such good care of us and AJ for having us!

I’m taking a break at home right now getting ready for the Metal Alliance tour that starts here in the states March 22. You don’t want to miss this tour. It’s our last time through on the Worship Music album cycle so we won’t be back for a while and our main man on the skins Charlie Benante will be back with us!!!

And we’re playing all of Among The Living!!! We also have our old buddies Exodus coming with us as well as High On Fire, Municipal Waste and Holy Grail. THRASHTASTIC.

You can check out all the dates and tix/meet & greet by clicking here.

The facebook page for the tour is here.

Today I am actually checking out the prototype for my new Randall signature amp designed by Mike Fortin. It’s sounding sick. It’s going to be all new, totally different direction but powerful as Hell, like Bruce Lee’s fist to your ribcage. More info, pics soon as soon as I know when it’ll be finished. I heard Kirk’s new Randall heads in Australia. His tone is great and he told me he’s never been happier with his guitar sound. His new amps are coming soon as well.

My talking tour, or Speaking Words tour is coming up in May/June in the UK/Ireland. I’ve had to re-route some of the dates and in the case of Liverpool, I had to cancel. Why you ask?

Because Anthrax got offered the Sonisphere Spain shows with Iron Maiden and well, do I really need to say any more? There’s not really anything much better than playing shows with Maiden. The new dates are posted here. Not that different, York got moved from May 30 to May 28 and Manchester got moved from June 1 to June 3. And to my friends in Liverpool, you’ll get a refund for your tix. Maybe you can make it out to Manchester? And if not, I’ll make it up to you next time. Hope to see all of you at these shows. I did two talking shows in Australia and they went great. And I know you’re all wondering how tomato sauce on pizza can cure any STD. I’ve got the answer for you, you’ll just have to come out to a show to find out.

That’s all for now my friends. The revised Speaking Words Tour Routing is below- so stay tuned and I’ll see you all somewhere very soon!

Cheers,
Scott

Hope everyone is having a great Sunday. We are in Quebec City for tonight’s episode of Thrashing Canada the most headbanging reality show of all time.

This is the third leg of the Anthrax/Testament/Death Angel tour. It’s been a blast and obviously we owe the success to all of you maniacs out there coming out to see us. At the end of this run we’ll be at 119 shows in support of Worship Music and after the upcoming UK/Europe tour and Soundwave next year as well as more touring we’ll be close to 200 shows played. That speaks volumes to how things have changed for us. We could probably keep touring this record all the way through 2013 but the plan is to cut back on the touring next year so we can focus on writing new stuff. We don’t want to go too long between records again. Of course we will never rush anything, it’ll be done when it’s done, no schedule. So we’ll be doing Soundwave, we’ll be doing festivals in Europe in the summer and there are some more things TBC so you’ll still get a chance to see us next year.

Until then we’ve still got Montreal, Portland, Hartford, Montclair and Atlantic City on this run so come on out and rage with us. Then it’s the UK and Europe’s turn in November and December. We’ll be out with Motörhead, there’s an opener as well. We’ll be doing a 60 minute as well. That’s killer for a middle slot. We can pack a lot of music into 60 minutes. Tickets are going really fast on these dates so if you’re waiting ’til the last minute you risk getting shut out.

Time to start warming up for tonight’s show. Check out the pics from the last few weeks.

Talk soon.
Cheers,
Scott