Johnny Lee Middleton says Savatage are working on US dates for 2027, and explains the economics behind the delay.
Johnny Lee Middleton has said Savatage expect to play in the United States next year, and set out plainly why the band have spent two years back on stage without going home. The bassist told Metal Walt of “Metal Mayhem ROC” that the group are operating to a long-range plan and that American dates have always come down to arithmetic rather than appetite.
“We have a 10-year plan, so we’re on year two. So we’ve still got some time left. We have some more music we’re gonna release. We have a game plan. And we’re working on getting some stuff together in the States for next year. But, yeah, we plan on coming back to South America next year and in Europe again, and we’re trying to snake some stuff in the United States, whether it’s a package deal with a couple other bands or just doing some one-off shows with ourselves,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Middleton was blunt about the reason, and it comes down to what the show now costs to put on.
“The problem is we never did get to the point of drawing enough people in the United States to warrant the money that we need to pay the 18 guys that I gotta pay to do a gig,” he explained. “And when we did the stuff back in the [earlier] Savatage days, we used a lot of our friends and stuff as crew guys. And it was, like, the music friends. Now the guys we use are the TSO guys, and they don’t work for cheap. So we have really good crew, but they cost a lot of money. And so we could make the guarantees in Europe that make it worth our time to do this, and we’re working on some stuff in the States right now that we’re… You’ll probably see us next year.”
The 2026 “Prelude To Madness” run opened without Jeff Plate. The drummer sat out the first two shows, Sweden Rock in Sölvesborg on 4 June and Heavy Week-End in Nancy on 5 June, after a recurrence of the chronic nosebleeds and blood loss that caused him serious problems three years ago. He announced it himself on 21 May and returned to the band in July.
Blas Elias, who has played with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Slaughter and Stephen Pearcy, covered both dates with a few weeks’ notice. Plate thanked him afterwards, saying he had nailed it.
The rest of the tour ran with the settled lineup: Zak Stevens on vocals, Al Pitrelli and Chris Caffery on guitars, Middleton on bass and Plate on drums. The run took in nine headline shows alongside festival appearances, opening on 19 July in Istanbul.
Savatage returned in April 2025 with festival appearances at Monsters Of Rock in Brazil and Masters Of Rock in Chile, then played their first non-festival headline concert in more than two decades on 21 April at Espaço Unimed in São Paulo. Ten European dates followed that June, including Hellfest and Graspop Metal Meeting.
Before that, the band had been off the road since 2002 apart from a single reunion at Wacken Open Air in 2015, played to a crowd of 80,000.
Alongside the touring, the band released Madness Reigns From The Gutter (1990), a shelved live recording from the Gutter Ballet tour. It came out in Europe on 26 June as a CD digipak and triple gatefold vinyl, with the US physical release following on 18 September.
Savatage were founded in Tampa, Florida by brothers Jon and Criss Oliva, and built their reputation on records including 1987’s Hall Of The Mountain King and the 1991 rock opera Streets. Criss Oliva died in 1993, months after Edge Of Thorns; the band continued, and 1995’s Dead Winter Dead set the template for what became Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
