Journey Has No Plans To Feature New Album On Tour Named For New Album
By Andrew Magnotta @AndrewMagnotta
March 1, 2022
Journey will release its new album, Freedom, sometime this year, but the band plans to perform only one of the LP's 14 new tracks on the upcoming 'Freedom' tour.
Keyboardist/guitarist Jonathan Cain told Ultimate Classic Rock in a new interview that the band will perform the single it released last summer, "The Way We Used to Be," on the tour. The rest of the record will stay under wraps, at least until it's released this summer.
"You kind of want to let the album simmer a little bit and get into the ears and minds of people before you start [playing it]," Cain said of the band's thinking. "You want to let it come out and breathe in the marketplace and get reactions, too. I think it's always cool to get that. I remember when we did [2000's] Arrive, Napster kind of dumped it out on the fans and the fans reacted and, boom, we had all these reactions to our music, and we learned a lot from it. I think we're gonna learn a lot when [Freedom] is released and watch how people respond. I think it's gonna be interesting."
Journey founder/guitarist Neal Schon told Q104.3 New York's QN'A last summer that the album was mostly complete; the band was just unsure when it would be released. He initially proposed that the album would arrive in late-2021 or early-2022. Now it appears Freedom is due this summer.
Schon revealed the track listing for the album last month in a social media post, assuring his followers that the record is coming.
Though no release date has been announced, Cain teased that the band is planning something special for this coming August.
He says the album features "some surprises," wherein the band members "step out a little bit" and jam, like they would in the pre-Cain/Steve Perry-era. But it's also undeniably "a Journey record," with a few rockers, a few ballads and some stuff in-between.
"We really tried to stay true to what we do best, and that's just write good songs," he added.
Journey has tour dates announced through May. Go here for all the details.
Read his full conversation with UCR here.