There is a holiday tradition like no other, such as hearing the popular and emotional Trans-Siberian Orchestra's rock-opera-holiday-inspired music play over the radio. Clevelanders are even luckier, as the city has become a standard stop on the rock band's tours during the holiday seasons, performing shows that have dazzled fans for years with their music, storytelling and spectacular productions.
Hearing the group’s music is like coffee to some fans — drummer Jeff Plate believes fans can’t function during the holidays until they see the show. TSO plans to bring back a popular flavor after a long hiatus, with The Lost Christmas Eve on stage for the first time since 2013 to celebrate the album's 20th anniversary.
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The organization plans to honor the band’s late founder and writer of the album, Paul O'Neill, who died in 2017. This tour, like every tour before, will follow principles he instilled into every aspect of the band that are still key to this day: a fresh take on the production, to carry the deep emotional connection of his storytelling and the band’s long-standing commitment to charities by surpassing $20 million donated. (That includes more than $650,000 donated to Cleveland’s St. Augustine Hunger Center since the band's first appearance in Cleveland in 1999.)
TSO will play two shows at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Friday, Dec. 27. Cleveland Magazine caught up with Plate to discuss the upcoming tour.
Cleveland Magazine: This year’s tour celebrates the 20th anniversary of The Lost Christmas Eve. How does bringing the album back after more than a decade feel?
Jeff Plate: It feels great. We've always been a big fan of this album and this particular show. This album contains some of our biggest hits, “Wizards of Winter,” “Christmas Canon,” and some other favorites like “Siberian Slay Ride” and “What Child is This.” There's a lot of great music and a lot of great lyrics, and Paul surrounded all of this with a very deep and emotional story. This is one that always really tugged at the fans' hearts, and we always had fun playing this in the years past before Paul passed away in 2017. Prior to that, he was already talking about trying to revise the show and bring it back to the stage for another tour. After things had settled a little bit, Paul's family and management decided that this was a great year to do this.
CM: How does the band perform music today based on Paul's ideas that shaped it? Is there a deeper meaning to it since he passed away?
JP: We all feel a little bit more responsible for carrying on his legacy. Myself and a few others have been here from the very first note. I'm going to speak for myself here, but my career is because of Paul O'Neill and what Paul wrote with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He had one saying that he always used “do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.” I've always kind of lived by that myself. In all of Paul's stories, there is an element of sadness and tragedy but also love and happiness, and at the end of the day, everything that is right comes back full circle, and everything ends up being a good place. For us as a band, and the vocalists especially, because they are the ones singing Paul's words, not to mention the narrator in our shows who has to narrate the story around these songs. There's a really deep connection to all of this with all of us.
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CM: Your fans are incredibly loyal. How does knowing that some of your fans have been coming for decades make you feel?
JP: It feels great. It is amazing to think that you're part of something that's literally timeless. Paul always used to say that TSO was going to outlive us. All this was going to be passed off from generation to generation. And ironically, we are doing this without Paul, which wasn't in the plan, but the man was absolutely right. I remember autograph lines in the early 2000s with children that came through the line, and you sign their program, and you give 'em a high five, and now they’re parents coming through the autograph line and bringing their own kids, and it really is pretty cool. Obviously, that really puts a stamp on the fact that we've been doing this for a long time. But also just exactly what Paul said, this is going to be passed on for years and years and years to come, and it really is awesome.
CM: TSO has a long history in Cleveland, and the 25th anniversary of your first show here is coming up. What makes Cleveland such a special stop for TSO?
JP: There was a DJ in Cleveland, Bill Lewis, WNCX, who would play [Christmas Eve and Other Stories] in its entirety nonstop every Christmas Eve. Lewis was kind of the instigator for us doing the very first tour that we did because he was getting such a strong response to the album and the music. He's like, "Guys, you should really come to Cleveland. Let's make this happen." So in 1999, we only did seven shows, and three of 'em were booked in Cleveland. They all sold out immediately. Right there, Cleveland was already established as a real show of support for the band. Over the years, every time we played in Cleveland, it was sold out.
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