The Petra Zone

They are not IN the industry at the moment to be black balled. They are operating outside of it. Without demand, there are no bookings. The industry machine only creates demand for the profitable goods it sells.

Why did they make that announcement on their Facebook page last year that they were officially out of retirement? At least that's what I remember reading/seeing...I could be wrong. Does anyone else remember that?

The correct question should have been, "Does Petra play concerts?" Petra has not toured, in a long time. They will likely never tour again. They will play one-offs.

superfly wrote:Why did they make that announcement on their Facebook page last year that they were officially out of retirement? At least that's what I remember reading/seeing...I could be wrong. Does anyone else remember that?

Well, because they are available to play. If you book them, they will play.

Since they have never stopped playing, even while "retired", I think it has more to do with the oldies secular rock tour that never materialized. They had previously announced a tour with former members of Asia touring as Asia, and a guy who sang in Genesis for about 5 minutes after Phil Collins retired, touring as Genesis. That would be like Jeff Scott Soto touring as Journey. Evidently, nothing developed and this all fell through. Look around. There is info on it here.

John solo is the way to go. You get Petra songs. You get John songs. Promoters only have to fly in one guy, no instruments, no real rider issues. Give the man a mic, a stand, a DI for his MP3 player and he's off.

So when would Petra's last real US tour have been?

I am guessing 98-99. That was the last era they had professional management and booking agents. Even then, they were not touring with a full stage, lighting, sound package full time. They did tour with a ME, LD, and keyboardist/tape op.

I was guessing around that period of time, God Fixation Tour.

The PP2 tour was hugely successful for its day, nothing like what the 85-93 tours were like but profitable nevertheless. Even with the No Doubt miss step the fans came back when PP2 was released and according to Bob has most likely gone Gold status even though its never been certified and the tour showed that; what hurt was God Fixation & Double Take. I think God Fixation's sound was a very big departure from any previous record and I think it just lost the long time fans.

Didn't they tour for Revival, or was that separate bookings? Anyway, that's the only time I've seen them live as a band (probably 2001 or 2002, don't remember well)

They did have a Greatest Hits tour after God Fixation in 1999-2000, but I don't think they had enough connected dates to really call it a tour. After that they only had separate bookings, until 2005. I would say that the Farewell tour ended up being a proper tour, just one leg unfortunately, but I think they had about 80 shows from September-December 2005, the majority of which took place in the US.