ESCAPE THE HIVE Guitarist Joins ALICE COOPER For A Night
This past Saturday night saw rock legend Alice Cooper do a pop show at Phoenix’s Wasted Grain club with students and faculty from his Solid Rock Foundation – and one very special guest. Escape The Hive guitarist Conrad Varela joined Alice for his entire show.
Varela, who first gained national attention when he won the Alice Cooper “Proof Is In Pudding” talent contest in 2018, has played with Alice on multiple occasions in the past several years. Taking the stage alongside the 76 year old phenom he, as always, had a blast doing so. “Sharing the stage with Alice has always been an honor beyond belief, but the energy of last night’s crowd put this particular show above the rest! Working with Cooper is always an absolute blast, and in terms of stage presence, I can barely keep up!”
Escape The Hive frontman Michael Beck was in the crowd and remarked, “We are so proud to have our guitarist sharing the stage with Alice Cooper. But not surprised. Conrad is a top-level player and we are proud to have him on the Escape The Hive stage as well. I’ve been lucky to share the stage with some great guitar players. Conrad is in that conversation for a reason. “It was a great show,” Beck continues. “The band played a full set with Alice and his son Dash on vocals. Including ’80s hits like ‘Feed My Frankenstein’ and ‘Poison’ as well as some of Alice’s earlier catalog such as ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’, ‘I’m 18’, and ‘Schools Out’.”
You can see Conrad Varela in Escape The Hive’s new video for “I Can See It”, off of their debut release This Is Gonna Sting!
Politics is about coalition-building, which is how you end up with musical artists from different contexts like Michael Stipe, Jon Bon Jovi, and the War & Treaty performing a song together onstage. At a rally for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Sunday in the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna, attended by Walz and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Stipe performed a number of R.E.M. songs and told a story about meeting Harris and Emhoff at a restaurant in New York six years ago.
Backed by David Barbe and Andy Lemaster, Stipe started his three-song set by performing “No Time For Love Like Now,” his collaboration with the Justin Vernon/Aaron Dessner project Big Red Machine. He then sang “Driver 8,” noting that he heard it was Walz’s favorite R.E.M. song. He finished up with “The One I Love,” joined by Bon Jovi and the War And Treaty, both of whom also gave performances at the show. I would love to go back in time and tell some ’80s college radio DJ about the campaign rally where Michael Stipe performed with Jon Bon Jovi.
