JON OLIVA'S PAIN drummer/producer Chris Kinder has checked in with the following update:

"After a fantastic sold out and wildly successful debut at the prestigious Progpower Metal Festival in Atlanta last month, Jon and I will taking our songwriting workshop on the road in the US in early 2013. A Tampa performance is sure to happen, and while we are working on dates; please feel to contact us if you are in a position to make this happen in your area. We are going to start on the east coast and thru the mid-west and down into Texas. But if all goes well we will certainly bring this to the west coast.

The show is a rare and detailed look into Oliva's endless musical ideas, his life in the music business and the process we go through to create the demos for upcoming albums.

It's educational, informative, humorous and emotional. We blend the show with Jon's live performances of songs old and new and include audience participation in being apart of the recording process. We will record an entire song live in front of all of you...edit and mix it on the fly. It might just be one of the best two hours you could spend up front and personal with one of the most gifted singer/songwriters ever.

Feel free to leave your thoughts here and as always we appreciate the incredible support from all of you. New studio CD details coming soon. Cheers."

Jon Oliva recently discussed the band's forthcoming album with MetalBlast.net. An excerpt is available below:

Oliva: "I’ve got some weird ideas that I wanna try and I’ve got some time to do it. I don’t wanna do just 'another' JOP record, I’ve done four of those already. I wanna do something different. I have some material that I’ve wanted to put out for a while, that I’ll talk with the record company about, maybe putting something out quickly, like in the next four or five months, to give me more time to do this JOP record, because I want that to be special, and I’ve got some friends from other bands that are going to come and play. We’re going to do a regular JOP record and then a bonus disc with guest stars, kind of like the AVANTASIA thing but not a whole story. Tobias Sammet does a magnificent job with it, but I don’t have that much fucking time to write a whole story, so I’ll just have some friends from various bands come in."

Click here for the complete interview.