Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain is again leaving room for a possible reunion, though not quite enough room to say who might be involved.
In a new interview about the band’s Final Frontier farewell tour, Cain suggested that Journey’s Nov. 28 show at Chase Center in San Francisco could include special guest appearances.
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Journey:
7:30 p.m. Nov. 28. Tickets start at $83. Chase Center, 1 Warriors Way, S.F. 888-479-4667. www.ticketmaster.com
The concert is scheduled to close the band’s current tour in the city where Journey formed more than five decades ago.
“It’ll be fitting to end there for sure,” Cain told the Associated Press on Tuesday, Aug. 18. “Who knows who’s going to show up? I don’t know. There might be a reunion of sorts, I hope.”
With Cain, Journey fans have recent reasons to be skeptical. Earlier this year, the musician floated the possibility that former Journey singer Steve Perry might appear during the band’s farewell tour, saying guitarist Neal Schon had asked and that he was “thinking about it.”
Perry quickly denied the rumor, stating speculation that he would rejoin Journey was “simply not true.”
Cain later told Rolling Stone that he had been deliberately testing the waters.
“I just kind of planted a little seed out,” Cain said. “I was trying to fish a little bit.”
Members of the band, Journey, pose after receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005 in Los Angeles. Band members are, from left, Jonathan Cain, George Tickner, former lead vocalist Steve Perry, Aynsley Dunbar, Neal Schon, Robert Fleischman, Ross Valory, Steve Augeri, Steve Smith and Deen Castronovo. (Nick Ut/Associated Press)
Cain did not mention Perry by name in this latest interview, nor did he specify whether a “reunion of sorts” would involve former band members, guests, friends of the group or something less formal.
Still, for Journey fans, any reunion talk inevitably points toward Perry, whose voice defined the band’s imperial era and whose absence has shadowed later versions of Journey for decades.
Perry, who left the band in the late 1990s, appeared with Journey when the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 but did not perform with them.
Current singer Arnel Pineda has fronted Journey since 2007, after Schon discovered him on YouTube.
Journey’s touring lineup includes Schon, Cain, Pineda, keyboardist Jason Derlatka, drummer Deen Castronovo and bassist Todd Jensen. The band’s farewell tour has been promoted as a final run, though Tuesday’s interview made clear Journey remains unsettled.
“The future kind of remains up in the air really,” Cain said.
Neal Schon, of Journey, performs in Canton, Ohio, in 2022. (David Dermer/Associated Press)
Schon also declined to rule anything out entirely.
“I’m not nearly done with what I want to do,” Schon said. “I think there’s many great opportunities in the future. Whether or not it’s with everybody that’s here right now, I’m not certain.”
Journey formed in the Bay Area in the 1970s, became one of arena rock’s defining acts and turned “Don’t Stop Believin’” into one of the most durable songs in American pop culture.
The tour’s closing show is expected to cap more than 100 concerts this year. The band has been playing more than two hours a night, mixing hits with deeper cuts from its early catalog – with Cain previously describing the trek as “a grind” during which the group is “just repeating ourselves.”
The farewell run has also been marked by public friction, including Pineda’s claim that he tried to quit and Schon’s criticism of Cain’s pro-Trump advocacy.
For Cain, the uncertainty around the Chase Center show comes as he prepares to delve deeper into faith-based music.
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This article originally published at Journey keyboardist teases reunion for farewell tour finale in San Francisco.