Zak Stevens may have been a fresh, new face to some seeing Trans-Siberian Orchestra's east touring group in 2015 as he joined the annual winter tour for the first time, however Zak's association with the band members leads back to its inception.

In 1995, Zak was lead vocalist for the band Savatage. It was Savatage's song, "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo (12/24)" that launched the Paul O'Neill side-project prog-rock group with no limits, Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He sang a bit on TSO's 2000 release, Beethoven's Last Night, but had not performed onstage with them until the summer of 2015 when Savatage and TSO joined forces for the Wacken Open Air festival in Germany.

While in the midst of his first TSO winter tour he caught up with Zak to discuss in-depth his start in music, introduction to Savatage, Jon Oliva's departure, memories of Criss Oliva, decision to step aside during the peak of their European success, the Wacken reunion, becoming involved with the TSO tour, what he's learned on the road with TSO, the importance of staying in touch with fans, and more.

Stevens: "By the time we got in the studio to record Edge of Thorns we knew that it was something special going on and I just wanted people to sense that I'm singing from the heart and there's this feeling there, it's not something contrived, it's not something brewed up to try to sound like Jon or something like that. We really had to make that the specific instrument and make it something special. Luckily we came out with the first single 'Edge of Thorns' and it was the biggest single they ever had on radio. We had something like about 150 rock stations in the country that played it over 500 spins. All through that tour we were on radio, radio, radio, every day. I mean it was tough because I had to sing on the radio in the morning and play the shows at night and it was pretty taxing, but for good reason and that was a long running single. At the time in '93 it ran for 6 to 9 months and that's a pretty long running single for back then, especially when metal was on the way out and giving way to grunge.

It was a magical time. Everywhere you'd go in the United States, I'd be in Denver, you couldn't get in and out of the car without hearing your own song. I mean it was unbelievable. Everywhere I go, 'Hey, that's me again.' You get in the car, 'Hey, who is this?' and they'll turn it up. You'll be riding with people to the radio stations or just meeting friends on tour or something like that, here we go again. That's pretty wild and pretty rare. Especially these days to have that, it's very rare. You've got a very short window to have a radio song. Maybe it's a little better on satellite radio and stuff like that, but you know, it was real magical at the time.

And then of course I lived with Criss the whole time and it was just when I had just moved out, I was only moved out maybe about ten days and moved in with my future wife at the time, Tina, and we were just kinda hanging out around October waiting to go on tour with Vince Neil and his solo band and that was looking like it was gonna be the next run and everything was looking good and all of a sudden I got that call (that Criss died). Johnny called me, "Oh I got some terrible news." That's when we found out that the drunk driver guy came across all those lanes and crashed (into Criss' car) and it was horrible. Dawn (Criss' wife) was barely alive and my whole family rushed down to Tampa and it was like, 'Oh my god.' And I think I just sunk into a corner and I didn't really move for about, I don't know. Tina was like, 'Are you gonna be alright?' I just sank into a corner and didn't even move for like eight hours."

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