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On tour with Nick Simper and Don Airey in Russia7 March 2015, 23:55

Cry Free - Deep Purple's Favourite Tribute
Ex-Deep Purple bassist Nick Simper and his Austrian band Nasty Habits, who are to go on tour in Russia next week presenting their special DP mk1 set, invited Cry Free frontman Attila Scholtz to step in for his Austrian "colleague" who is not available for this tour. Attila, who has known Simper and Nasty Habits since 2010 when they performed together in Budapest with the legendary bassist also guesting in Cry Free, agreed to do the tour with pleasure. He is travelling to Vienna early next week to rehearse with Simper and the Austrian rockers.

After the rehearsals the international team of musicians is off to Moscow, where they are scheduled to play Crocus City Hall, the venue where Cry Free were performing alongside Maestro Jon Lord on his Sarabande Tour 4 years ago. The show will take place on 11 March, followed by a second concert the next day (12 March) in the town of Ufa. The original follow-up gig was to have been booked in another previous "Jon Lord location" Ekaterinburg, but finally it was moved a little towards the west to the European side of the Ural mountain (to Ufa).

Another speciality for Purple fans is that the tour is a double bill also featuring current DP keysman Don Airey's band. The keyboardist genius needs no introduction, as besides having spent almost one and a half decades playing in Deep Purple, he has been a member of virtually every serious rock act including Rainbow, Jethro Tull, and Ozzy Osbourne. His group also consists of seasoned veterans from bands like Primal Scream, Jamiroquai, and Black Sabbath, and artists like Eric Clapton or Gary Moore. To top it all, at the end of the double gig, members of the two acts hit the stage together for a 15-minute jam as well.

So we can say that Russian rock fans are in for a treat, but until then here's a video from the concert in 2010 that started it all for next week's English-Austrian-Hungarian collaboration: