The TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA performed a spectacular pryo and light show in front of a sold out audience at the DCU Center in Worcester, MA on November 19th. The concert featured two segments, which included a vast array of Christmas Carols in the first part of the set. Part two which included the Nightcastle set that included many special effects including snow, flash pods, special video screens that displayed gargoyles, and helicopters, and a second stage that guitarist Chris Caffery and violinist Anna Phoebe who walked through the crowd to reach during one song in the Nightcastle set. The stage was elevated in the air during their performance.

The highlight of the Nightcastle set included a ten-minute drum solo from MACHINES OF GRACE/former SAVATAGE/METAL CHURCH drummer Jeff Plate. BraveWords.com correspondent Deb Rao caught up with Plate and asked him about a number of topics including the current TSO tour, Machines Of Grace and the demise of Metal Church and Savatage.

BraveWords.com: Jeff, you are currently on tour with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. How is the tour going so far? I know TSO recently toured Toronto and Ottawa.

JEFF: "Yes, we did those two cities. We are playing Hamilton at the end of December and Vancouver on November 20. It has been fantastic considering with the economy and everything. The shows have been full. We've have had some very great and excited audiences. We had our fingers crossed this year knowing the people are having some difficulties. Non-the less the venues have been full. The new Nightcastle CD is out. Which I am sure has generated some more interest in and brought some newer people into the audience. So far so good. The show is once again way over the top. They have added some more production. They have changed some things. The show is certainly different than last year and much better in much respects."

BraveWords.com: Does the new Nightcastle album feature several tracks from the Savatage era?

Plate: "There are several songs on there which come from the old days and the old Savatage catalog. One of them is 'Believe' which we actually started doing this song live last year finally when the CD was finished. There is another snippet of the old 'Prelude To Madness' is now called 'Mountain'. It is an instrumental piece. There are certainly other instrumental parts and pieces from some old Savatage stuff that has made it's way into the TSO music."

BraveWords.com: It has been an exciting year for you. You have reunited with Zak Stevens on your new band Machines Of Grace. Now MOG was formerly known in the Boston area as WICKED WITCH. It is always great to see when a former Boston band reunites. You are back on the scene. How did the re-union come to fruition?

Plate: "It was about 2 1/2 years ago. Matt Leff, who was the guitar player he owns a music store in Weymouth. Since the Wicked Witch days he has stayed in the area and ran his business. I had gone out to do these other things. A friend of Matt's was trying to be an agent or manager and was talking to some of the old bands from back in the day from the Boston area. He was trying to get them some small record deals. He ran into Matt and said you guys should think about re-doing some of that music because it was awesome. Matt kind of scratched his head and he gave me a phone call and said, 'What do you think?' Matt and I and Zak all spoke about this, we figured Zak and I had been in this business now doing this professional with Savatage and TSO for the past 16 years. We should be a little bit smarter. We should have enough people in our corner to help us out. We have our foot in the door, so to speak. So we figured this was a good chance to re-do the music that we put out there and at least give the music a shot in which it never had back in the day. Once we decided let's go away and do this, then the ball was rolling. I did my drum tracks in upstate New York. Matt did his guitar parts out here in New England and Zakk did his vocals down in Florida. We recruited Paul Hagar to do our engineering. Paul back in the day was our soundman back in the clubs. He worked with Wicked Witch from pretty much the very beginning and helped us develop who we were at that time. He was the most familiar with the people in the band. Paul has since gone out to work with PINK and AVRIL LAVIGNE. He works full time with the GOO GOO DOLLS, so he has definitely made a mark in the industry. It just seemed like a no-brainer to bring the guy in who knew what we sounded like and what we wanted to sound like."

BraveWords.com: Are you happy with the outcome of the debut album of Machines Of Grace? Upon listening to the tracks versus the early Wicked Witch days, the band has grown so much due to the fact of your years with Savatage and TSO. I can also hear that familiar old school sound but it has also has a modern twist. Do you agree?

Plate: "That is exactly it. That was something when we decided OK let's do this. All of those factors certainly played in. First of all, I always believed in what we were doing back then was very good. It was unique. Sometimes just always don't line up and always work out. But we always knew after all of these years after listening back to some of the tracks and some of the stuff that we had written. It was wow that could be better. Zak being 16 years down the road mentally he is in a different place. The lyrics didn't make sense anymore, so he re-wrote some of the lyrics. A couple of the melodies changed a little bit. Myself as a drummer, Matt as a guitar player, you got to live and learn. We cleaned up some stuff that we needed to do, we added some stuff that we needed to do. We brought in a new bass player Chris Rapoza, who is from the Providence area. He filled the whole thing out tremendously. He certainly changed the whole atmosphere of some of the songs, which it needed. Having said that, we knew it was going to be very similar but we knew also that there were changes to be made. As we did them along the way, we realized that it was all for the better."

BraveWords.com: Machines Of Grace played a couple of shows in September. Tell us about the show in Cleveland at the House Of Blues with STRYPER. What was sit like opening for Stryper?

Plate: "Yes, we did Cleveland and Detroit with Stryper. It was awesome. In all honesty, I have never seen Stryper up till that point. The weird connection is that Michael Sweet lives in the Massachusetts area. I think he is out in the South shore or Cape or something. A friend of his is a friend of Matt's the guitar player. So Matt go the CD to Michael Sweet, he listened to it. He called up Matt and said this stuff is great. We would like to work with you. Then we started to dialog, trying to get on their tour in America. But we just didn’t connect. But they had a couple of open slots on these days. With TSO Cleveland is our second home aside from New York City. Cleveland is the city that helped put this band on the map. I have popularity there. Savatage always did well there. This is a no brainer let's get to Cleveland and so this show. I had never seen Stryper before and I was completely blown away. The guitar playing the vocals everything in the band was just great and they are some of the nicest guys. They are a pleasure to work with. They really like our music. All of the members of Machines Of Grace, we got a long great with Stryper. We struck up a pretty little decent relationship. Although it was only two shows. Now we have stayed in touch with them. We got a couple of things in the works. We may possible go over to Europe and Brazil to do a few shows with them. But we have to work some things out first. The audience was great. They really had no idea who we were. But we came out and did our thing and by the end of the show we had them screaming and yelling at us. We certainly made an impression. It was one of those things that worked out. We really didn't know what to expect in the end working with Stryper was one of the better things that we could have done. We are hoping that we can do it more in the future."

BraveWords.com: What are the future touring plans of Machines Of Grace?

Plate: "Once this TSO tour gets done. We end on January 3rd. Then the month of January, I am basically home watching football and sleeping."

BraveWords.com: I read that you are a big Yankees fan. Are you happy that they won the World Series? I heard that you wanted to become a pitcher for the Yankees in your early days.

Plate: "Again, that is what I did. I was a baseball player, and I was a pitcher. Of course, I was young at the time and along with that your body is still growing and what happened is my hip popped out. I was like 13 years old. I was on crutches for 4 or 5 months. Then the next thing I know I saw Kiss on television and I got some drumsticks and it was all over. Honestly, as far as the Yankees are concerned. I am not a real Yankees fan. I am more of a Met fan which is kind of sad because they have just been terrible the past couple of years. But the Yankees have a really good team and a bunch of very good players. There really isn't anybody that I dislike on that team. But they are always the favourite and the joke quote is the evil empire. I usually root for the underdog. But seeing the Yankees win, they certainly deserve it. They just started mowing people down there at the end of the year. What can you do? If you can't score runs you can't beat them."

BraveWords.com: Were you sorry about the demise of Metal Church this past summer? Are you sad that Metal Church decided to call it quits?

Plate: "Yes and no. I think I speak for Kurt Vanderhoof too when we talk about this or when I talk about this. Kurt and I are very good friends. All of the guys in the band have always been very cool. It is just one of these things in this day and age how difficult it is to go out and play and tour. Especially when you get older. Not to make excuses and not to think that we all need to be pampered and treated like kings but there just comes a point where you are trying co-ordinate a tour or you are trying to co-ordinate shows and you are dealing with agents that are not helping you at all. The digital download and electronic world is good and bad. There was so much music that was illegally downloaded if we have money that every record that was illegally downloaded, we would be able to support ourselves and do tours and stuff like that. When it comes to that point that the money isn't there and you are trying to make end meet with a limited budget it becomes too much work and it is not fun. Now Metal Church played Rocklahoma this year and just the crap and nonsense that we had to go thru to make everything work and co-ordinate the whole deal with the agent and with ourselves, all of the above then after the show to have more of this trouble. It was kind of a forgone conclusion before that that Kurt really kind of looked at the whole thing and said look if we can't do this and have fun and if we can't do this and do it properly meaning getting onstage with the proper equipment having the proper crew and being able to perform well and sound good if we can't do it at this level anymore than, 'What is the point?' I will be honest with you, Rocklahoma was a great experience but I couldn't hear a thing onstage and it ended up being one of the tougher gigs I have ever done. Here again when you are going into something like this on a limited budget, you are going to have this. Kurt has a number of other projects that he is doing right now. Obviously, I have my hands full with a ton of stuff. Everyone just kind of looked at each other and said let's bow out of this gracefully. Let's all remain friends before we get into a situation where we are screaming and yelling at each other and get so frustrated that we just can't stand it. Let's walk out of this with a little bit of pride and smile on our faces. If something along the road comes up that really sounds like it could be a possibility and could be fun then we will consider that. For me when I was brought into the band, I had actually been touring with Chris Caffery and we opened up for Metal Church over in Europe. I knew the guys in the band quite well; I knew the music after 40 shows opening up after listening to them every night you kind of learn it by default. I became a big fan of the band and the guys in the band. When Kurt came to me and asked me would you consider playing on this new record, which was a Light In The Dark, and he gave me the demos and I listened to and said this stuff is great. I was thrilled to be in the band. One thing I can always say about it the band kicked ass every night we played. Metal Church had so many high points. This was one of Kurt's things. He wanted the band to end on a high or at least on a positive note. Rather than the band becoming one of these punch lines. So instead of trying to make these tours happen and show up at a club with your fingers crossed and hopefully the monitor’s works and hopefully there are people there, hopefully somebody did there job promoting the show. A lot of this stuff is so much out of our control. That is the most frustrating part about it."

BraveWords.com: Now I have to ask some of fans want to know is there any chance of a Savatage re-union?

Plate: "That is the million dollar question. You can imagine that myself and Chris Caffery and everybody is asked that at least once a night. My response is I hope so. Obviously, the whole TSO thing was born out of Savatage. '12/24 Sarajevo' was a Savatage song on the Dead Winter Dead CD. That took off in a completely different direction. Then we all know the story from there. What TSO has become and the amount of work that goes into making TSO what it is it certainly pushed Savatage to the back burner. Here again, I don't want to sound like I am irrelevant in this whole thing but Savatage comes down to Jon Oliva and Paul O'Neil. These guys will see fit to do what they think is necessary and what they think is right. Of course I think everybody that has ever played in Savatage collectively we all think,” It would be great to go out and do this again." But it comes down to a lot of other things than just saying that. It is quite an undertaking to re-tool and get together and go out and do this kind of thing. I don't believe anything until pen and paper are in hand."

BraveWords.com: Is there anything else that you want to add about Machines Of Grace? The debut MOG album has everything on it. It is old school with some ballads on it and overall great production with no filler tracks.

Plate: "Stryper is going to be doing a run of Europe in January and February. They got a run down in Brazil in February. Here again, we have been talking with them a lot about some shows in the future. If those work out then that is great. If they don't work out then we are going to concentrate on doing some stuff in The States. We will try and do three or four shows in the New England area and New York get down to Florida do some shows there. We will pick some areas where we have a pretty good response for the band and get there and play. Obviously, the Mid-West worked out real well for us. The Cleveland crowd really dug what we were doing. We are going to play it by ear. We have to do everything carefully. It is funny back in the day when this thing was called Wicked Witch this was considered heavy metal. So now when we re-corded this stuff, the production kind of smoothes is out quite a bit. Metal from 1990 until know has changed so much from what we were doing back that. Now when I listen to the CD, it is a hard rock CD. It is not a metal CD although there is definitely some metal in there. But for the most part with the song structures and then you add Zak's vocals in which Zakk is a great singer and the melodies are right there. The harmonies are right there. Vocally it takes it away from that real heavy metal sound. It is almost too melodic to be what modern metal is. You got a couple of songs that could work on FM radio. Back in the day I always believed in this music. So I knew when we re-did this it was going to sound great."