IRON MAIDEN drummer Nicko McBrain‘s TITANIUM TART project kicked off a short tour of Florida last night (Saturday, July 13) at The Barn in Sanford. Fan-filmed video of the concert can be seen below (courtesy, in part, of the Capnharris YouTube channel).
Remaining TITANIUM TART shows:
July 14 – OCC Road House – Clearwater, FL
July 19 – Piper’s Pub – Pompano Beach, FL
In a recent interview with 98.7 The Gater‘s Franny, McBrain, who has lived in Florida for three and a half decades, stated about the TITANIUM TART gigs: “It’s weird because my manager came up to me and said,’ Oh, we’re not doing Florida this year [with IRON MAIDEN], Nick. I hope you don’t mind.’ I said, ‘Well, I do mind.’ And he said, it’s just the logistics of getting down there and doing the shows, the way the tour is scheduled from when they had the tour worked out last year. So, I thought, well, I’ll get my TITANIUM TART lads, the TARTS, get the TARTS together. And we’re playing the same set that I’m doing with MAIDEN. And it’s kind of a two-fold thing. One is it gets me back into the vibe of doing the show and gets my hand working. And we’ve got three dates coming up.”
Asked how long TITANIUM TART has been going for, Nicko said: “It’s been a few years… I call it a celebration band of IRON MAIDEN, not a tribute band, ’cause I’m still playing with the guys. So, we have had shows at the restaurant [Rock N Roll Ribs, the barbecue restaurant owned by McBrain and close friend Mitch Tanne, in Coral Springs, Florida] where I’ve had the TITANIUM TART band together, the same guys, playing IRON MAIDEN‘s music, but we only came up with this idea to call it TITANIUM TART a couple of years ago.”
Joining Nicko in TITANIUM TART are Rob Stokes on bass, Eldad Kira on keyboards, Mike Rivera and Mitch Tanne on guitar, and Paolo Velazquez on vocals.
McBrain was born in Hackney, East London, on June 5, 1952. His first experience of music came via his father’s love of traditional jazz. Young Nicko‘s hero was Joe Morello, the late, great drummer with the legendary THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET. Nicko would often take to the kitchen, using forks and knives to beat on anything he could find at home. Fed up with him bashing up the kitchen utensils, his parents finally bought him his first drum kit when he was 12.
By the time he left school at 15, he was already a veteran of several part-time pub groups. Musically, however, his tastes had broadened to include more contemporary sixties sounds from THE SHADOWS, THE ANIMALS, THE BEATLES and THE ROLLING STONES. On the recommendation of another drummer he knew, he began to take on session work, playing on countless different recordings.
In 1975, Nicko joined STREETWALKERS, the band formed by ex-FAMILY members, vocalist Roger Chapman and guitarist Charlie Whitney. From the late seventies until 1982 when he joined IRON MAIDEN, Nicko had spent his time in session work, most memorably with the PAT TRAVERS BAND on their 1976 “Makin’ Magic” album, and also appeared in the band MCKITTY in the early 1980’s. It was during a MCKITTY gig in Belgium that he first met IRON MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris.
He officially joined IRON MAIDEN in December 1982 for the 1983 “Piece Of Mind” album and tour, replacing Clive Burr, after McBrain‘s previous band TRUST had supported IRON MAIDEN during the U.K. leg of the “Killers” tour in 1981.
With 14 studio and eight live albums currently under his belt with MAIDEN, Nicko‘s role as the driving force behind the band’s sound has served as a major influence to many of today’s top drummers and solidified his place in music history.
McBrain and his wife still live in the same Boca Raton, Florida home they bought in 1989 when Nicko relocated from England.
In January 2023, Nicko suffered a stroke with partial paralysis.
When Nicko first went public with his stroke in August 2023, the drummer said in a statement that the episode left him “paralyzed” down one side of his body and “worried” that his career with the band was over.
Four years ago, McBrain was diagnosed with stage 1 laryngeal cancer and opened up about it in a single interview in 2021 but otherwise kept it mostly under wraps.