SCRAP METAL - 24 Hour Party People
by Martin Popoff

Eric Martin, Kelly Keagy, Matthew Nelson, Gunnar Nelson, and the man I talked to about the whole thing, Mark Slaughter. They call themselves Scrap Metal, and together are an illustrious and industrious collection of melodic metal veterans who crank out their hits and bits in a show that is sure to please fans of the genre who know the songs perhaps more than they know the personnel in the bands who first delivered them.

"This came about, because we were doing a benefit show, meaning Gunnar, Kelly and I, here in Nashville, for a songwriters organization called NSAI," explains Slaughter. "And when we did this benefit, at the end of it, we had all these great songwriters, Artimus Pyle from Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jim Peterik from Survivor and 38 Special; it was quite a Who's Who, and we were playing all these hit songs all night, and at the end of that, Gunnar turned to me and said, 'We should call this Scrap Metal,' and that was pretty much the beginnings of it. And the idea and the plan of this is to make it like a modern-day rat pack of all these different people who have the songs, and are from these different bands, and giving it a place where it will be traveling all around the country. And miscellaneously, you don't know who you're going to see, but at the same time, you'll have these hit songs where ever you go."

Pertinently on that miscellaneous point, if the band's show at Melodicrock.com's 10th Anniversary Party in South Bend, Indiana is any indication (see www.melodicrock.com/southbend/index.html), famous folks may jump up at any given Scrap Metal show for a blast through a classic. Now, the above mentioned event is a special occasion, but on tap for the gig (tickets are going fast) include Joe Lynn Turner, Jack Blades, Jim Peterik and Jimi Jamison (and incidentally, Harem Scarem is also playing this special gig, as is Jeff Scott Soto and 7th Heaven).

"We're working on a lot of corporate stuff right now," says Mark, asked if they've had any success in the murky, little talked about world of corporate gigs. "We just signed with the William Morris Agency, and they're actually pulling a lot of those things in. We've also played casinos and there are always more of those."

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