Journey, the legendary San Francisco rock band, known for their massive international hits ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’, Who’s Crying Now’ & ‘Open Arms’, will play six UK concerts this June. The tour begins at London Hammersmith Apollo on 17th June and finishes at Newcastle Metro Arena on 28th June.

Journey has recently been propelled back into the mainstream after a prestigious honour to their music. ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ was the piece of music chosen to play out the very last scene in the final ever episode of popular US sitcom ‘The Sopranos’.

The current line up includes founding members, Neil Schon (guitar) and Ross Valory (bass) performing with longtime member Jonathan Cain (keyboards) and Deen Castronovo.

New lead vocalist, Arnel Pineda, replaces Jeff Scott Soto, who parted ways with the band earlier this year after stepping in for Steve Augeri, who had to leave the band in 2006 for medical reasons.

Arnel hails from Quezon City in the Philippines and has been singing Journey songs, in addition to original material, with his band ‘The Zoo’ for the past couple of years in clubs all over his homeland. Joining the legendary band is a dream come true for him. “It’s so exciting to sing with one of the best bands in the world. It’ll be a lot of hard work on my part and I’m actually looking forward to the scrutiny I’ll get from the hardcore Journey fans. I know they’ll expect me to sound exactly like ‘the voice’ (Steve Perry), but that will never happen. I know there’s only one Steve Perry in this world.”

Journey turned to the internet to find their new lead singer. Guitarist, Neil Schon, wanted someone new to the music business and so he started trawling YouTube. After seeing Arnel singing ‘Faithfully’ he knew he had found the perfect frontman.

“I was frustrated about not having a singer,” explains guitarist Neal Schon, “so I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours. I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody. But then I found The Zoo and I watched a bunch of different video clips that they had posted.”

“After watching the videos over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true. I thought, ‘he can’t be that good.’ But he is that good, he’s the real deal and so tremendously talented. Arnel doesn’t sound synthetic and he’s not emulating anyone. I tried to get a hold of him through YouTube and I finally heard from him that night, but it took some convincing to get him to believe that it really was me and not an imposter.”

Journey is currently working on a new album with legendary producer Kevin Shirley, which they’re hoping to release later this year.

Schon say “We feel reborn. I think there’s a lot of chemistry between the five of us. At first we were going to go into the studio and just write 4 songs, but now it’s escalated to a lot of great new and diverse material. The stuff sounds tremendous. We feel very fortunate to have found Arnel.”

Full dates for the UK Tour are:

Tuesday 17th June - London Hammersmith Apollo
Thursday 19th June - Manchester Apollo
Sunday 22nd June - Wolverhampton Civic Hall
Monday 23rd June - Cardiff International Arena
Friday 27th June - Nottingham Trent FM Arena
Sat 28th June - Newcastle Metro Radio Arena 

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