Myles Kennedy – Year of the Tiger Tour
Mon May 14, 6:00 PM - Mon May 14, 10:00 PM

Myles Kennedy had finished his first solo album. Then he threw it away.

“I had been working on a record for about seven years,” says the singer/songwriter known worldwide as the voice of Alter Bridge and of Slash’s band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. “It was actually finished two years ago, but when I listened to it with a fresh perspective, when all was said and done, I thought it wasn’t the right first step to take in this journey—its shelf life had expired.”

So he started over, and found himself “writing like a madman.” More than twenty songs spilled out in a short period of time, and as Kennedy listened to his work, he began to comprehend the direction in which the music was pulling him. “It became incredibly obvious what the source of inspiration needed to be lyrically,” he says. “I realized it was time to jump head-first into something I’ve been putting off for my whole life as a writer.”

What eventually emerged was Year of the Tiger, an album almost entirely focused on the loss of Kennedy’s father when the singer was just four years old. “My family was very involved in the Christian Science church,” he says. “So when he became ill, he chose not to seek medical attention, and passed away a few months later. By all accounts, my father was a good, honest man, but I still struggle with the choices he made which ultimately led to his death.

“This was something I had wanted to dive into throughout my career,” Kennedy continues. “It just took decades to muster up the courage. Beneath the surface, the wounds were pretty raw, but it just had to be done.”

Delving into this emotional territory required a musical approach far different from the hard rock that has defined Kennedy’s arena-filling career. The majority of the record was written on acoustic or resonator guitar and recorded directly to tape using a limited number of tracks. Kennedy himself plays banjo, lap steel, bass, and mandolin in addition to guitar on Year of the Tiger, joined by drummer Zia Uddin and Tim Tournier on bass, along with longtime Alter Bridge producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette.

“I’ve always wanted to make a record where I could have the opportunity to explore and document a different element of my musical DNA,” h