Friday, May 3, 2019, Jacksonville, FL saw a torrential downpour hit the Welcome To Rockville festival grounds. Fans were drenched from head to toe and a good majority of them were over at the Metropolitan Stage watching Light The Torch perform. The most ironic part about it was them performing “Calm Before The Storm” right before the rain hit. It couldn’t have been a more perfect moment….outside of getting soaked. After that performance, I had the opportunity to meet up with Howard Jones (vocals), Ryan Wombacher (bass), and Francesco Artusato (lead guitar).
We started off the discussion around their performance and the downpour. Ryan stated it was the first time as Light The Torch they had an experience like that and Howard said “…it was a moment”. We discussed the name change as the band used to be known as Devil You Know and how they stated it was a necessary change in order for them to move forward in order for them to create their debut album as Light The Torch titled Revival. The band is currently on tour with Sevendust and In This Moment and had just gotten back off a European tour and we briefly discussed the support for the rock and metal music between the United States and Europe. We discussed what they did when they were not on tour and the main theme from Howard and Ryan was “outdoors” while Fran considered himself an “indoor kid”.
Finally, we touched upon both Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame and was interesting to hear Howard talk about his comic book collection around the Infinity Stone story. No spoilers in the interview!
You can find details on their tour, music, and merch at through their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pg/LightTheTorchOfficial. You can watch the full interview with the band below!