Carlos Santana will hit the road for additional dates of the Oneness Tour in 2025.
Santana will perform songs from their fifty-year career, including fan favorites from Abraxas to Woodstock to Supernatural,and beyond.
The US portion of the tour kicks off in Highland, CA at Yaamavaā Resort & Casino at San Manuel on April 16 making stops in Phoenix, AZ; Albuquerque, NM; San Antonio, TX; Sugar Land, TX; Thackerville, OK; Tulsa, OK; and Nashville, TN.
The Europe and UK portion of the tour begins on June 9 in Lodz, Poland with stops throughout Europe and the UK, ending in Copenhagen, Denmark on August 11. Full tour dates are below.
Tickets will be available starting with a fan presale beginning on Wednesday, December 11 at Santana.com. Additional presales will run throughout the week ahead of the general on sale beginning on Friday, December 13 at 10am local time at Santana.com.
The tour will also offer a variety of different VIP packages and experiences for fans to take their concert experience to the next level. Packages vary but include premium tickets, exclusive merchandise item & collectible laminate.
For more information, please visit santana.com.
2025 Oneness Tour North American Dates:
- Wednesday, April 16, 2025 - Highland, CA - Yaamavaā Resort & Casino at San Manuel
- Friday, April 18, 2025 - Phoenix, AZ - Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
- Saturday, April 19, 2025 - Albuquerque, NM - Isleta Amphitheater
- Tuesday, April 22, 2025 - San Antonio, TX - Majestic Theatre
- Wednesday, April 23, 2025 - Sugar Land, TX - Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land
- Friday, April 25, 2025 - Thackerville, OK - Lucas Oil Live at WinStar
- Saturday, April 26, 2025 - Tulsa, OK - River Spirit Casino Resort *ON SALE 2/18/25
- Tuesday, April 29, 2025 - Nashville, TN - The Pinnacle
2025 Oneness Tour Europe & UK Dates:
- Monday, June 9, 2025 - Lodz, Poland - Atlas Arena
- Wednesday, June 11, 2025 - Budapest, Hungary - MVM Dome *ON SALE 2/13/25 AT 1PM
- Friday, June 13, 2025 - Berlin, Germany - Uber Arena
- Sunday, June 15, 2025 - Hamburg, Germany - Barclays Arena
- Wednesday, June 18, 2025 - Glasgow, UK - OVO Hydro
- Thursday, June 19, 2025 - Manchester, UK - Co-op Live
- Saturday, June 21, 2025 - London, UK - The O2
- Monday, June 23, 2025 - Paris, France - Accor Arena Paris *ON SALE 1/10/25
- Tuesday, June 24, 2025 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Ziggo Dome
- Thursday, June 26, 2025 - Antwerp, Belgium - Sportpaleis
- Saturday, June 28, 2025 - Zurich, Switzerland - Hallenstadion ZĆ¼rich *ON SALE 4/11/25
- Monday, June 30, 2025 - Vienna, Austria - Wiener Stadthalle
- Wednesday, July 2, 2025 - Mantua, Italy - Piazza Sordello ā Mantova
- Wednesday, July 16, 2025 - Rosenheim, Germany - ROSENHEIM SOMMERFESTIVAL 2025, Mangfall Park
- Friday, July 18, 2025 - Montreux, Switzerland - Montreux Jazz Festival
- Saturday, July 19, 2025 - St. Julien, France - Guitare en ScĆØne *ON SALE 12/19/25
- Monday, July 21, 2025 - Nimes, France - Festival de NƮmes
- Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - Monte-Carlo, Monte-Carlo Summer Festival *ON SALE 12/18/25
- Friday, July 25, 2025 - Marciac, France - Jazz Ć Marciac Festival
- Sunday, August 3, 2025 - Marbella, Spain - Starlite Occident Festival
- Friday, August 8, 2025 - Cologne, Germany - Lanxess Arena
- Saturday, August 9, 2025 - Hanover, Germany - ZAG Arena
- Monday, August 11, 2025 - Copenhagen, Denmark - Royal Arena
Intermediate
Intermediate
- Learn the difference between diatonic and non-diatonic notes.
- Use dissonance to spice up your solos.
- Understand how scales, chords, and non-diatonic notes work together.
Why is it that when soloing some notes that seemingly shouldnāt work, do? And no, itās not jazz weāre talking about. So get ready to play some dissonant music that sounds wonderful.
Which Are the Wrong Notes?
For the purposes of this lesson, when weāre referring to āwrongā notes, what we honestly mean are ānon-diatonicā notesānotes that are not in the home key of the chord progression. For instance, in the key of C major we have the notes C-D-E-F-G-A-B and the chords C-Dm-Em-F-G-Am-BĀŗ. Thus, any notes not found in this collection are non-diatonic. As a result, this entire lesson will only use chords from the home key of C major, making the non-diatonic notes easier to identify. Respectively, Iāve also labeled the āwrongā notes as flats, even though sometimes they technically function as sharps.
Spice up Your II-Vs
When it comes to playing āwrongā notes, one of the best places to start is the old I-IV-V progression. While the tradition of the blues obviously fits into this category, Iām going to bypass that genre as there are plenty of other lessons focused on that idiom. Instead, Iām going to jump ahead to the bluesā babiesāthe first wave of rock and roll from the 1950s; its second wave, the British Invasion; the third wave of American garage rock; and ending with some rock/fusion.
Though I am skipping traditional blues, the chord progression in Ex. 1 is in fact a 12-bar, but without the traditional blues riff. In fact, this feel is more akin to Gene Vincentās āBe-Bop-a-Lula,ā and the note choices are based on Cliff Gallupās original solo.
To our 21st-century ears, most of this solo sounds normal, however, in the 1950s, many of these choices were radical to those raised on pop music. Thatās because this solo is full of non-diatonic notes, specifically the b7, b5, b3, and b2, all of which can be seen in the notation by looking for the flat symbols. For example, measure one starts on a Bb, aka b7, measure two has a Gb, aka b5, etc. So keep your eyes and ears open for these non-diatonic notes.
One important piece of theory information here: When labeling notes as b7, b5, etc. itās important to understand that these notes have two relationships, one to the overall key and one to each individual chord itās being played over. For instance, a Bb is a b7 in the key of C and over a C chord, yet over the F chord the Bb is a 4. Additionally, over the G chord, the Bbis a b3. This can seem confusing at first but just think of it as a familial relationship: A daughter to a mother can also be a sister to a brother. Itās that straightforward: same person, two different relationships.
Ex. 2 is based on another I-IV-V 1950s rock and roll classic, Buddy Hollyās āItās So Easy.ā It would be understandable to presume that this example is merely using the blues scale, but this isnāt true. What this solo, and the entire lesson, emphasizes is that itās the combination of both diatonic and non-diatonic notes that makes this lead so dynamic. Thus, this solo contains all 12 notes found in Western music! Even better, this solo also contains three so-called āquarter-stepā bends (measures five and seven), which are not normally acknowledged in the traditional Western chromatic scale. A solo with 15 different notesā¦ Amazing!
Moving on to a British Invasion era sample, Ex.3 contains non-diatonic notes in both the lead and accompaniment. At this point, itās worth mentioning that many of the āwrongā notes are what we call chromatic passing tones, meaning we donāt spend a lot of time on these but pass through them on the way to diatonic notes. This can be seen and heard when the accompaniment moves from F to Gb to G, and throughout the solo. This lead also benefits from a ārhythmic motif,ā meaning that the rhythm of the lead is consistent throughout the first three measures, which brings cohesion to the solo, and feels satisfying when measure four, surprisingly, varies the rhythm. This example is loosely based on āThe Game of Loveā by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders.
Ex. 4 is our final I-IV-V example, which was inspired by the McCoyās garage rock-era cover of āHang On Sloopy,ā featuring a young Rick Derringer on guitar. This lead is almost entirely composed of double-stops, combining both diatonic and non-diatonic notes.
Mixolydian Hybrid
Returning to the British Invasion, countless songs from that era employ chord progressions that emphasize the Mixolydian mode, which is to say that they revolve around, and resolve to the V chord, instead of resolving to the I. The Themās āGloriaā is a prime example. Hence Ex. 5, a Mixolydian hybridāthe progression is pure Mixolydian, the solo is not. While the original āGloriaā solo avoids non-diatonic notes, it does possess a rhythmic motif, which is a triplet figure comparable to the one in our example. As mentioned earlier, a rhythmic motif is a shrewd way to bring cohesion to a solo, even more so when using āwrongā notes. Ex. 5 abuses this privilege by running through a series of triplet groupings. Of particular interest are measures seven and eight, which contain a Db, which is extremely dissonant against the F and C chords yet still works wonderfully.
The Who also had their fair share of Mixolydian progressions (āI Canāt Explainā being perhaps the most famous) and Ex. 6 was inspired by their āRun Run Run,ā featuring a solo by a studio musician named Jimmy Page. Unlike Pageās solo, which is largely pentatonic, this lead accentuates the differences between the various diatonic and non-diatonic notes.
Our final example, Ex. 7, is another Mixolydian hybrid inspired by both Jeff Beckās āFreeway Jamā and Steely Danās āReelinā in the Years.ā Once again we enjoy plenty of chromatic passing tones, and also noteworthy is the Gb, in measure four that wants to resolve to G but instead goes to B; and final descending triplets, which, as wrong as many of them are, find structure in their symmetry.
While there are myriad worlds of āwrongā note genresā20th Century classical music, free jazz, art punk, etc.āthose are contexts in which wrong become ārightā by way of stylistic intent. This lesson has attempted to demonstrate wrong notes in more pedestrian situations, circumstances in which an otherwise ānormalā solo may be enhanced by spice, tension, and the unexpected. I hope youāll attempt some of these ideas the next time you find yourself in a classic rock, country, or even folk jamā¦because wrong notes are alright!
Wayne Kramer in the ā90s.
The bone-rattling guitarist helped set a revolutionary path for expression in 6-string-based music, while drawing on the cultural explosion of the ā60s and elevating its promise for future generations.
Poet, author, patriot, rebel, felon, jailbird-turned-prison-reformer, andāmost importantāpart of the twin-guitar engine of the influential rock band the MC5, Wayne Kramer died on February 2, at age 75, leaving a gap in the world of activist musicianship and a tear in the fabric of American music history. The cause was pancreatic cancer.
Kramer was just 19 when his career began with the founding of the Motor City 5 in Detroit, alongside fellow guitarist Fred Smith, singer Rob Tyner, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson in 1963. The group were as tough and complicated as their hometownāmusical firebrands, playing with an energy and intensity rarely seen in the then still-evolving rock genreāand Kramer performed like Chuck Berry and Sun Ra in one body. Which made sense, for while rock was their voice, they embraced the cultural explosion of the times in all its glory, including free jazz, and in particular figures like John Coltrane and Sun Ra, whose music reflected the Black freedom struggle in its themes as well as the purity of self-expression.
As a result, before Hendrix began recording, the MC5 were blazing a trail in rock improvisation. āWe attacked that concept like a dog on a steak,ā Kramer told me at our first meeting in the ā90s, which was arranged by our mutual friend, the bandās original manager and counterculture icon John Sinclair. āThe people we idolized were Coltrane, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor ā¦ and the Yardbirds and the Who. We saw a connection between those kinds of music. I was pushing Chuck Berry-inspired solos into the territory Coltrane was in. We cultivated music in the moment, coming up with it on the spot. Taking risks is what makes something unique, no matter what it is.ā
āItās those moments when everyone in the room is on the same wavelength, and the barriers between us explode.ā āWayne Kramer
And so, for their raw, unbridled, and at times practically unhinged sonic attack, the MC5 are an important element in the bedrock of punk rock. āThe context of punk,ā Kramer explained, āis to try to move away from the status quo and do things of principle that are of value. Most people today understand it as something thatās been commodified to mean Green Day or the Offspring, which are mainstream music business success stories, not my understanding of what punk really meant.ā
The MC5 almost immediately became a cultural force, in both music and American politics. āKick out the jams, mother****ers,ā the shout that singer Rob Tyner used to lead the charge of their every performance, became not only a call to rock, but a call of the rising tide of youth culture in America. On their own turf, the band used its record-deal advance, the largest scored by a rock group at the time, and concert proceeds to fund a food kitchen and for their local communityās medical needs.
After raising the ire of the American political establishment with a conflagrant performance in Lincoln Park, Chicago, during the 1968 Democratic Convention, they landed in the crosshairs of the authorities and their slow erosion began, complicated also by drug use and other internal conflicts, and the arrest and imprisonment in 1969 of their colorful manager Sinclair, who had founded the White Panther Party in support of the Black Panthers, and later co-founded the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival.
The MC5ās battle cry of a live album, from 1969.
Nonetheless, by then the MC5 had laid enough groundwork to be widely acknowledged as progenitors of punk rock (by virtually everyone but the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in which they surely deserved a place while Kramer was alive). Drummer Dennis Thompson remains the only surviving member of the original recording band, which broke up in 1972.
That spirit of activism and DIY creativity stayed with Kramer throughout his careerāalthough it was sidelined by a four-year prison sentence in the mid 1970s for selling drugs to an undercover agent. While in prison in Lexington, Kentucky, he met Red Rodney, who was also incarcerated there on a drug charge. The jazz trumpet genius took Kramer under his wing and continued Kramerās musical education in prison.
After serving his time, Kramer moved to New York City and teamed up for a short-lived band with Johnny Thunders, and produced and played in a series of other groups. He also worked as a carpenter during a brief stint in Nashville. But in 1991, he ignited his solo career with a series of albums, including the beautiful gut punch of 1995ās The Hard Stuff, which features his acolytes from the Melvins and the Vandals. These albums blended Kramerās songs and his poetry set to music, and his list of collaborators grew to include Dee Dee Ramone, Chris Spedding, Bad Religion, David Was, Nels Cline, and, perhaps most importantly, kindred spirit Tom Morello, for whom the MC5 and Kramer were profoundly influential. Kramer eventually launched his own record label and a U.S. branch of Jail Guitar Doorsāthe latter an offshoot of the U.K. organization started by Billy Bragg, dedicated to reforming inmates through music.The classic MC5 lineup.
Kramer never lost his vitality onstage and, after 2011, always played the Stratocaster signature model that Fender created for him that year, with an American-flag finish and a humbucker in the middle position. Starting in 2018, Kramer put together a band he named the MC50, to tour in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the MC5ās 1969 live album Kick Out the Jams, the most furious document of their aesthetic. The band performed the MC5ās music with brass-knuckled perfection, and included Soundgardenās Kim Thayil, Fugaziās drummer Brendan Canty, and Zen Guerilla frontman Marcus Durant. And Kramer, then 71, led the fray with the snarl and pounce of his 19-year-old self, always heading the charge with solos that were brash, raw, and expressive, displaying his love of free jazz with unpredictable melodic lines, flurries of notes not unlike triple tonguing, and jagged riffs, and laying down self-assured and powerful chording that could drive a spike through a wall. And he did it all with a warm, midrange-ripe tigerās growl snarling from his ampsāthen Fender DeVilles, rather than the 100-watt Marshalls stacks he played through with the MC5.
During that tour, in 2019, Wayne was profiled in Premier Guitar by Bill Murphy, when his fascinating autobiography, The Hard Stuff: Crime, Dope, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities, was published. Astonishingly, Kramerās final recording project is an album under the MC5 name, featuring the bandās original drummer on two tracks, Don Was, Morello, Vernon Reid, and Slashāand produced by Bob Ezrin. The release of the album, Heavy Lifting, is scheduled for this spring.
Morello issued this statement following Kramerās death: āHis band the MC5 basically invented punk rock music. Wayne came through personal trials of fire with drugs and jail time and emerged a transformed soul who went on to save countless lives through his tireless acts of service.ā
When I last spoke with Wayne, when the MC50 played at Nashvilleās Exit/In, he still extolled his belief in the magic of the moment. āTo be right there, in a club, and to hear somebody play something theyāve never played beforeāto take a chance, to allow risks.ā¦ Itās those moments when everyone in the room is on the same wavelength, and the barriers between us explode.ā
YouTube It
Listen to the MC50 and Wayne Kramer kick out the jams, mother****ers! One more time....