The rock group Tesla will be performing at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre on March 8 with Bret Michaels as part of Michaels’ “Live and Amplified Tour.” I got the chance to sit down with Tesla guitarist Dave Rude ahead of the upcoming show to talk about joining the band in 2006, the album that got him into rock, and his first guitar.
Even though he joined the band 20 years ago, Rude says he still gets that surreal feeling playing with the band he grew up listening to. “It’ll just be in the middle of the show somewhere, in the middle of a song, and look over be like ‘I’m in Tesla, this is weird.’ You know, like ‘There’s Brian Wheat, I used to have posters of him on my wall. This is strange.’ Like, we’re doing songs that I grew up listening to. So it still will, on occasion, just happen out of the blue, like in the middle of a song. But yeah, that first couple of years, it was pretty constant. The first show that I ever did with Tesla, it was so much fun, and it felt great and really natural right away, so that’s always been the guiding light,” said Rude. “You’re in the moment right, so you’re just [...] making sure you’re playing everything right, put on a good show, performance-wise, and you’re focusing on that primarily, but then you kind of look around and be like ‘Oh, I’m playing Heaven’s Trail right now with Tesla. This is odd,’ and that type of thing, you know, the first year or so, is all the time.”
You can hear about the album that got him into rock and learning what he calls the “weedley-deedley” stuff in the full interview.
Tickets for Bret Michaels and Tesla are on sale now.
You can listen to more interviews in the Chase Chats section.
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