Making a return appearance on BraveWords’ Streaming For Vengeance this weekend is legendary Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, who has landed in Canada to continue his "An Evening With Bruce Dickinson 2022" spoken word tour. The chat will air tomorrow - Saturday, March 26th at 3:33 PM EST - via the BraveWords Facebook page or the BraveWords YouTube channel. 

In an excerpt from our SFV chat, we talk about the a cappella portion of the evening where the "Air Raid Siren" entertains the audience with a selection from his glorious past as a vocalist.

BraveWords: We've been enjoying the whole crooning part of these spoken word shows. 

Dickinson: (starts singing) "Are you lonesome tonight?..."

BraveWords: Exactly! Do they get chosen for you or do you have them pre-planned in your head? 

Dickinson: "No, no, no, no no, I just pluck around with whatever they're saying. I've done ‘Road To Hell’, I've done ‘Man Of Sorrows’. There've been a few. In fact, I did ‘Children Of The Damned’ the other night. I did ‘Children Of The Damned’, then I told the story of Nicko, then did ‘Tears Of The Dragon’. My agent almost fell over saying, 'You did it twice! You did it twice! You didn't tell me you were going to do it twice!', and I said, 'Well, I didn't know it either'. Hey, what the heck, you know?"

BraveWords: What's the hardest song to sing live in your repertoire? Are there some songs where you go, "I can't do that tonight?"

Dickinson: “If you're going to do a cappella, the big challenge is doing it after two hours of talking, which is terrible for your voice and all the rest of it. I sort of warm my way into it. The worst thing is trying to start in the right bloody key, because I've got no note to take it from. So I have to kind of do it from muscle memory, which works quite a bit of the time. When I did ‘Kill Devil Hill’, I actually had to take the thing a half step down in the middle of the chorus because I realized that some of the verse was in the next key up. It's kind of winging it, I don't do the whole song, I just do sort of like 30 seconds or so of it. And it's kind of cool because people hear the voice naked, which is unusual. They don't get to hear that. With Maiden it's completely different, because obviously everything is going to be in the right key, and it's in the same key as the original, so that's a whole different set of parameters that I'm looking forward to getting my chops around in May.” 

BraveWords: And there are some singers who actually want to or have to hide behind the music, so it's quite the wow moment to see someone just belt it out. 

Dickinson: "Yeah, well the crazy thing is with Maiden, the role of the singer varies. Sometimes it's really out front, and sometimes it's just an instrument, it's part of the ensemble. And as a singer, that's fine, you're in a band and that's the way music rolls. But it's nice sometimes to get things like texture, and not just the notes and not just the words, but the texture, the feeling, the soul behind the voice. That's hard to do in a lot of the Maiden stuff because it's so bang bang bang bang bang, you know? Then you get these lovely moments, like in ‘Blood Brothers’ and things like that, where it can really come out, the voice really has time to breathe. So it's not all like that. Certainly in the early days, there was like like ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ and then you have ‘The Trooper’, which is an unbelievable classic song. One question was, 'What Maiden song would you play for Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy?', and I went, 'Come on! You'll take my life, but I'll take yours too, You'll fire your musket, but I'll run you through!' I mean, that's it! It's the original Wars Magnificent, but my god, it's pointless. Stop it."

You can catch Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson on BraveWords’ Streaming For Vengeance tomorrow - Saturday, March 26th at 3:33 PM EST via the BraveWords Facebook page or the BraveWords YouTube channel. For more information about Streaming For Vengeance, visit this location.

Split into two parts, the first section of his spoken word tour sees Bruce taking a humorous and often satirical look at the world from his own very personal perspective, treating the audience to private insights into his drive and ambition, peppered with plenty of Maiden anecdotes, and a myriad of other experiences encompassing not just the giddy heights but also the extreme lows, told first-hand in his inimitable anarchic style, punctuated with photographs and sometimes even erupting into song a-capella, to illustrate a point.

The final section of the evening is devoted entirely to a Q&A session, with the opportunity to pose questions on any subject whatsoever. As Bruce’s answers will all be completely improvised – the more left-field and quirky the question, the more interesting and compelling the response is likely to be!

Remaining Dates:

March
26 - Ottawa, Ontario - Algonquin Commons Theatre
27 - Quebec City, Quebec - Palais Montcalm
29 - Hamilton, Ontario - FirstOntario Concert Hall
30 - Kitchener, Ontario - Centre in the Square