SKID ROW singer ERIK GRÖNWALL needs “more time to recover”
19-09-2023
SKID ROW singer Erik Grönwall has released a video blog in which he offers more information about the band’s decision to postpone the third North American leg of “The Gang’s All Here” tour with BUCKCHERRY until early next year. SKID ROW also postponed shows in Huntington, New York and Lynn, Massachusetts — originally scheduled to take place earlier this month — to late September in order to allow Erik time to fully recover from his recent illness.
Grönwall said in part: “I had a great performance, a great night at The Wellmont Theater in Montclair, New Jersey on September 8, and then I went to bed, and I woke up, and I was, like, ‘What the actual fuck?’ Like, it came from nowhere. And I woke up, and I had no voice. It was just gone. I couldn’t even warm up. But we tried our best until last minute. And it sucks, because we’re out here, we wanna perform and wanna do what we love, but when you postpone, there’s a lot of people that get affected by a decision like that. There’s a lot of people involved in making the show happen, which makes me feel bad. But also health first. I believe everybody gets this.”
He continued: “So for those of you who don’t know, I did a bone marrow transplant two years ago, and I have a new immune system, I have a new blood type — I’m completely new. My immune system is, like, two years old. That’s something I just have to live with. Believe me, it beats the alternative. It’s gonna take a while to build up the resistance and the immune system again.
“Six months after my transplant, I was on tour with SKID ROW,” Erik added. “It’s been going great. But I need more time to recover. Being on tour six months after a transplant, after chemo and everything, is not really standard, so to speak. My body and my immune system obviously need more time to recover.”
SKID ROW‘s fourth leg of “The Gang’s All Here” tour in December with BUCKCHERRY is still scheduled as planned.
Erik was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in March 2021 and was declared cancer free six months later after receiving a bone marrow transplant.
In September 2022, Erik spoke to Australia’s “Everblack” podcast about how his cancer battle affected his outlook on his music career, particularly as it relates to the passion that he puts into his vocal performance. He said: “First of all, I’m so happy to be alive. So you get a lot of passion from just waking up and realizing, ‘Fuck, I could have been dead now. But I get to wake up another day and another one and another one’ — hopefully. And second of all, I get to wake up in SKID ROW, as the lead singer of SKID ROW. And I told myself that I would just keep singing for the rest of my life, and I’m privileged to do it in this band. And I also think there’s a lot of… I’m a bit pissed off (laughs) about having to go through my cancer battle in 2021. But it’s just that I find some kind of aggression. It’s just, like, ‘Fuck, I hate what I went through but it made me stronger, and I’m gonna fucking make this vocal take count if it’s the last thing I do.’ I think I’m just more aware of the here and now, and when I record my vocals, that’s the only thing that counts. And I’m gonna do everything wholeheartedly — just record it and give it all I’ve got until I can’t do it anymore.”
In September 2021, Grönwall announced that he was cancer free. “Some anonymous wonderful human being somewhere in the world donated his/her blood cells so that I could get a second chance at life,” he told Headbangers Lifestyle in January 2022. “Sometimes I can just get tears in my eyes when I think about it. It’s so beautiful that one person who is not connected to me in any way wanted to do that for me. He/she doesn’t know that the blood cells were for me. It’s completely anonymous.”
Grönwall, who auditioned for the competition show “Swedish Idol” back in 2009 by singing a cover of SKID ROW‘s “18 And Life”, joined SKID ROW in January 2022 as the replacement for ZP Theart. Theart, who had been in the group for more than six years, played his final gig with SKID ROW in February 2022 before being officially given the boot.
SKID ROW recorded most of “The Gang’s All Here” in Nashville, Tennessee with producer Nick Raskulinecz, who has previously worked with FOO FIGHTERS, STONE SOUR, HALESTORM, EVANESCENCE, RUSH and ALICE IN CHAINS, among many others.
01. Hell Or High Water
02. The Gang’s All Here
03. Not Dead Yet
04. Time Bomb
05. Resurrected
06. Nowhere Fast
07. When The Lights Come On
08. Tear It Down
09. October’s Song
10. World’s On Fire
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