Yellow and Black Attack Came To Nashville,Tennessee With Stryper at The Basement East – 5/16/22

 

 

On a beautiful Monday night in Nashville, Tennessee I didn’t mind waiting on a super long line outside of the Basement East venue. When I heard that Stryper was playing this particular concert location I was a bit surprised since it is smaller than a lot of the local venues in Music City. The Basement East hosts a lot of great shows, however it was almost destroyed in a tornado a few years ago. They built it back and built it better. It is a really cool place for a show and I’m glad it survived a major tornado that ripped up a good path across the city. The doors opened at 6:30pm and I had never seen a line of fans that long outside waiting to get in. I knew it was going to be packed inside and that makes for very challenging photography. No photo pit and barely any room to move through the crowd. But, Stryper has polite fans that were very kind to me when they saw my camera. 

On this particular night, Stryper decided to do a livestream of the show. This caused an issue with the original opening band so Stryper decided to ask Guardian frontman, Jamie Rowe and guitarist, Donovan White to do an acoustic set to warm up the crowd. As Donovan White told the crowd that this came together a couple of days before the show he joked about how everyone was watching simply another rehearsal! Jamie has one heck of a powerful voice and Donovan is a great harmony singer. They ran through a bunch of songs and a medley in the middle of the performance. I am not really familiar with Guardian songs so I can’t say that I could create a set list for this review. I will say that these two guys were fun, raw and played great. There were some die hard Guardian fans in the crowd that were really loving this very in-your-face performance. I give them credit for pulling something together in such a short time but as Jamie said, when Michael Sweet asks you jump on that chance!

 

Band:

Jamie Rowe – Lead Vocals/Guitar

Donovan White – Backing Vocals/Guitar

 

 

 

Stryper has been a long time favorite of mine. My first time seeing Stryper was in the late 80’s at the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden in New York City. I remember they played with TNT and Loudness that evening. It was a great show. What I found funny was that the song playing on the sound system just before Stryper took the stage at the Basement East was “Crazy Nights” by Loudness! That was a fun coincidence for sure! Stryper has had their challenges in the past couple of years but it was great to see Michael Sweet, Oz Fox, Robert Sweet and Perry Richardson take the stage and deliver a great performance. Michael and Oz nailed their two-guitar attack with total precision. Two really great guitar players for sure. Robert Sweet lived up to his “Visual Timekeeper” name with his over-the-top drum kit placed sideways and sitting atop a nicely elevated drum riser. This helped me as it made it easier to get some good drummer images which are usually difficult for most bands. I think I got one of my favorite drummer pics ever of him… You can check it out in the gallery below. Perry and Oz delivered some spot on backing vocals and Michael Sweet’s voice sounded as good as I remembered. Stryper powered through a very well rounded set list including some of my favorites such as, “Loving You”, “The Rock That Makes Me Roll”, “In God We Trust” and then finishing with two great encore songs, “Soldiers Under Command and “To Hell With The Devil”. They didn’t play my personal favorite, “You Know What To Do” but that’s okay. One of the newer songs they played that I really like is, “Sorry”. It’s got a great groove to it! It was a great show! One thing that Stryper has been known for is to throw New Testament Bibles to the crowd. Michael threw one in my direction and I was happy to get a picture of it in mid air with the Stryper logo actually facing upright. You can see that image in the gallery below as well. With the challenges of such a packed venue I tried to move around to get a variety of images to share with all of you. I’m happy with what I got and I hope you are, too! Cheers! 

 

Stryper Band Members:

Michael Sweet – Lead Vocals/Guitar

Oz Fox – Guitar/Vocals

Robert Sweet – Drums/Visual Timekeeper

Perry Richardson – Bass/Vocals

 

 

 

Stryper Set List:

1. In God We Trust

2. Revelation

3. The Rock That Makes Me Roll

4. Loving You

5. More Than a Man

6. Surrender

7. Calling on You

8. Free

9. Sorry

10. Honestly

11. All for One

12. Always There for You

13. Divider

14. This I Pray

15. The Way

16. The Valley

17. Yahweh

Encore:

18. Soldiers Under Command

19. To Hell With the Devil

 

 

 

 

Jamie Rowe Online:

   

Stryper Online:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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