Between the times after Steve Perry's departure and Arnel Pineda's arrival, there were two vocalists that sang for the band Journey. As much as Pineda's popularity with his voice being widely known resembling Perry's voice (but I did disagree to this in some level in the previous entry), the other two singers may not have been as close as Pineda in terms of resemblance, but they do pack punches of their own.
Firstly, Steve Augeri.
He came in the band in 1998. He basically looks like Kenny G, with that long blond curly hair with tight leather pants and long sleeves. You may be quite mislead by his sort of "gayish" demeanors, especially in the 2001 Las Vegas concert, but he certainly can sing. For my opinion, his voice suits the ballad songs of Journey. In fact, I think his rendition of Open Arms tops all present and past Journey singers.
His voice presents a strong but still conservative attitude. It's like you know he's delivering some power in some lines, and at the same time he seems not putting much effort to it, which is really good. The end result is a soft rocker/balladeer.
He has this certain level of creativity too (but not too exploratory as Perry). In his 2001 concert, you'd hear his style in different ways. Check out the video below of his rendition of Faithfully (that could have honestly be the best Faithfully rendition among the Journey singers). If you can notice how he sang the line "Sleep alone tonight..." in 0:54-0:55, he sang the syllable "to..." in the word "tonight" in a quick melisma style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma), singing three quick sixteenth notes of D#4, C#4 and B3 in succession. No other (at least in my knowledge) has done this aside from the sixteen year old kid from Batangas, Philippines named Jovit Baldivino in the TV show contest Pilipinas Got Talent. Also, listen to 2:18-2:19 of the same video, where he sang an additional syllable, completing his own lyrics "THERE'S always another show" and it turned out nice.
What really good in Augeri's singing is he would always take his time in every syllable he would sing, and that results to him that the lyrics that come out of his mouth would tend to be understandable (compared to Perry's somewhat "garbled" singing in some songs). But yeah, I mentioned above that his rendition of Faithfully could have been the best one among the Journey singers but not, because his vocal range may not be as wide as Perry nor Pineda. If you listen at the ending of the same video (3:52 onwards), when he hits C#5, he's already faltering and may sound he's already employing falsetto, but still alright. But when he hits D#5, that's already a subpar compared to Perry, Pineda and surprisingly to Deen Castronovo too. Try to listen to other Journey songs reaching those high notes, and you'll know what I mean.
In my opinion, if this guy didn't hurt his throat, he'd still be singing for Journey.
Next up is Jeff Scott Soto.
There are not much decent Soto videos with Journey out there, so I just settled for a few non-Journey songs that he sang. So this part may be not so definitive as compared to the other parts of this blog.
Soto has a bad ass voice definitely, and quite the opposite of Augeri. If Augeri has a conservative voice, Soto wouldn't conserve his voice and he doesn't sound doing it too. I can't really say if he has the range compared to Perry or Pineda, but in the video of Til The End of Time above, he hit B4 and C#5 in succession beautifully.
Not really much about to say about him, but in my opinion it's a good thing that he left Journey. I am not saying the guy treated the band badly or the other way around, but on the musical side, his voice would be more suitable for alternative rock (like those two videos above) rather than Journey's power ballad / glam rock genre.
So those are the two vocalists that came after Perry and before Pineda. But how about this guy...
Deen Castronovo.
Deen is Journey's drummer since 1998, along with Augeri's entry in the band. If you would see him play the drums, you'll see how much of a bad ass this guy is. The song, Still They Ride, in the video above is, in my opinion, the most soulful song that he sang while hitting the drums. That was in their concert here in Manila in 2009.
He doesn't only hit the drums. He can sing too, and his voice pretty much resembles Perry's. He never was listed as Journey's official lead vocalist, but he does sing a few Journey songs in their concerts, being really popular in singing the song Mother, Father. You hear him hitting those high notes with his modal voice while his concentration isn't really paid attention on singing only. That makes him a really talented musician. What more if he's just standing, focusing only on the singing part. That makes me really wonder what kind of wonders he can do.
I think if he really wanted to sing, he'd beat the sh*t out of Perry and Pineda. But who needs competition when they can sing and play together?
Still not convinced on Deen?
Eat your heart out!
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