Uriah Heep: Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble Very 'Old

When I entered the wonderful world of small market rock radio, I was taken by the number of off-beat songs that my station would play. There were tons of regional favorites that made their way into the playlist, songs that I had never heard before-even though I live within earshot of the station's airwaves growing up.

At the time, the station was a low-wattage, small town station that invested heavily on a huge FM tower, and a successful plead to the FCC to raise their wattage up to 50,000 watts of power. Now you understand why everytime I hear Nick Lowe's "So It Goes," I get all teary-eyed with nostalgia.

"More tower, more power!" was our stupid catchphrase that we came away with from a brainstorming session we used when we switched on the electricity to the big stick a few miles up the road.

What we didn't do was change the playlist all that much, so a lot of these regional "favorites" got to test the theory that people in Missouri and Illinois really knew who Mason Proffit was.

One of the band's for me that fit that "Wha?" category was Uriah Heep. I had no firsthand information about this band, but was assured that on one night, many years before, Uriah Heep played somewhere close by and a few people attended it.

Come to find out, Uriah Heep is still performing.

URIAH HEEP's Into the Wild scheduled
for release !

Frontiers Records has scheduled the release of URIAH HEEP's forthcoming studio album "Into the Wild" on April 15th in Europe and May 3rd in North America. Produced by Mike Paxman (Status Quo, Asia) the new album will include the following songs: Nail On The Head, I Can See You, Into The Wild, Money Talk, Trail Of Diamonds, Lost, Believe, Southern Star, I'm Ready, T-bird Angel, Kiss Of Freedom. The cover art was designed again by the renowned Greek-American artist Ioannis (LYNYRD SKYNYRD, STYX, SAGA etc). A videoclip for "Nail on the Head" is going to be shot in the coming days and will be added to the album as a special interactive tool.

The band has also recently posted a new video recording diary which can be seen following this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHl768v25Ho. European and Australian tour dates have been announced already and can be found on the band's official websites. The first leg of the US tour was also recently announced:

6/14/2011 Atlanta GA Variety Playhouse
6/15/2011 Chattanooga TN Riverbend Festival
6/17/2011 Kettering OH Fraze Pavilion for the Performing Arts
6/18/2011 Annapolis MD Rams Head on Stage
6/19/2011 Falls Church VA State Theater
6/20/2011 Sellersville PA Sellersville
6/22/2011 New York BB King Blues Club
6/23/2011 Foxborough MA Showcase Live
6/24/2011 Jim Thorpe PA Penn's Peak
6/25/2011 Ridgefield CT Ridgefield Play House
6/27/2011 Norfolk CT Infinity Hall
8/12/2011 Three Forks MT Rocking the Rivers Festival Site
8/14/2011 Rochester MN Mayo Park

Weblinks:
www.uriah-heep.com
www.frontiers.it
www.myspace.com/frontiersrecords