Warrant is currently on tour with Whitesnake, Slaughter and Kip Winger as part of the Rock Never Stops tour. I recently spoke with the band's guitarist, and one of the founding members of Warrant, Erik Turner.
Chad Bowar: Are you looking forward to the Rock Never Stops tour?
Erik Turner: You better believe it. We're stoked to be on this tour. We're playing a lot of great rooms and playing with a lot of great bands. It should be a great time.
You've toured with Slaughter many times. Have you ever toured with Whitesnake or Winger?
Not that I can recall. I met Kip Winger many years ago, but I don't remember ever doing shows with Winger or Whitesnake.
In a multi-band tour like this one, is there much interaction with the other bands offstage?
Definitely. Most tours that I've been involved with everybody sees each other in catering, different guys from the bands like to go golf, go bowling, party, whatever. Other guys stay to themselves. It's more by individual than by band.
As you get older, is it tougher to go out on the road?
Being married with a son, it's definitely a little harder, but I'm grateful to be working. We always make it a priority not to go too long without seeing each other. Most people work all week and see their kids in the morning or at night for a few minutes before they go to bed, but what I'm home I get to spend all day with him.
How is the setlist different for this summer's tour compared to last summer?
We added a keyboardist this year, so we're adding some stuff that works for him. We're adding a song called "Bonfire" that we haven't played for 10 years, from Dog Eat Dog. We're doing a new song called "Subhuman" from Under The Influence, and "Hollywood", which is also from Dog Eat Dog. We've been doing a medley of the ballads, where we play about half of "I Saw Red", but we're going to play the whole song now that we've got a piano player.
