Journey & Steve Miller Band Concert Review, May 22, 2014, San Antonio, TX

Let’s just get this straight. I do not like The Steve Miller Band. I never have. I think it was because of high school and everyone played the greatest hits album incessantly. That being said, I can tolerate Livin’ in the USA, Wild Mountain Honey and Space Cowboy. To say I was disappointed to see that they were on the bill with Journey is an understatement.

But I bought tickets anyway. I’ve only seen Journey one other time and that was in 2001 with Frampton and John Waite. Great show.

Last night’s show crept up on me and the person originally supposed to go with me forgot as well and had other plans. I asked a few others and with it being last minute, most were busy. Wait. A female too busy for Journey? Certainly their vaginas were not working properly when they said that. hahaha. So I called up Margarita in New Braunfels, a friend that I hadn’t seen in a while and she jumped at the chance. Perfect. She’s cool, lives on the way and is gorgeous. Great combo.

On our way down, there’s a bad accident on IH35 on the north side of San Antonio so after sitting in traffic forever, we were finally able to get off of 35 and take an alternate route. That made us miss Tower of Power who were the first opener. I wanted to see them just because. Miller is already on stage when we walk in and is on Space Cowboy. She likes Miller so we grab a beer and something to eat really quickly and go in for the rest of their set. Our seats were kind of eprfect in that that our row only had those 2 seats in it. No worries of having people coming in and out and having to move around a lot. I’ll admit to not hating them as much in a live setting, mainly because his drummer was kickass.

Then Journey comes on opening with Be Good To Yourself and go right in to Separate Ways (Worlds Apart). Great 1-2 punch for sure. They sound great and I expected no less. Arnel sounds great and he’s all over the stage. Kid’s got a ton of energy and you can tell how happy he is to be there. I had seen in previous setlists that Mother, Father was being played on this tour and it’s one of my favorite songs from Escape. What made this even better was that Deen Castronovo sang lead on it. MY GOD. He sounded incredible and that dude’s range is insane. Add to it that he’s an incredible drummer. He could easily front that band. That’s no slight to Arnel.

Journey played pretty much everything you’d expect them to play and added 2 songs from their last album. I really wanted to hear When You Love A Woman as I love Neal’s guitar solo in that one, but no dice.

Great show and a great companion and worth every penny of the ticket price. So…when are they coming back?