John Brown's Body w/ Passafire July 30, 2009

When John Brown's Body released their fifth studio album in 2005, the band looked forward to the happy grind of touring to support the release. With Pressure Points hailed by critics as "their strongest, most consistent effort to date," [Popmatters] JBB set out on tour and continued their efforts to conquer the world. Little did they know that they were about to go through a series of events that would significantly change the band. They endured the death of bassist Scott Palmer, the departure of several long time members (including singer and co-founder Kevin Kinsella), and throat surgery for lead singer Elliot Martin - enough challenges to end the career of many groups. Instead, JBB emerged with a brand new line-up and a fearlessness born out of this musical near-death experience.

The last of the big life changing events of the past few years involved Elliot's voice and threatened the band's ability to soldier on once more. Fittingly, it was during that same January 2006 tour that Elliot began to notice problems with his vocal strength and endurance; after months of doctor's visits and vocal training, the problem was finally revealed to be vocal polyps. Elliot not only had surgery in early 2008 to remove them, he also began voice training to teach him to put less strain on his throat. "I feel better every day. Each show back after surgery, I could feel myself getting stronger. Now I think I'm doing things I couldn't even do before," Elliot says. "Add that to the energy of the new line-up and this new batch of songs, and we can't wait to get back on the road. It's going to be fun!"

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