I’d take this over STP 2.0 myself but it doesn’t seem likely anytime soon... It’s all about the benjamins baby.
100% agree. I had a close friend that was not a big STP fan and we went to the Chicago show at the Metro. It was a killer show and he became a big fan of the Deleos and AoA as a result of that show.
Absolutely love AoA, and I hope they do one day bring it back as a side project, but you have to be completely out of touch with reality to expect them to do that as their main band. We're not just talking "making less money than STP", we're talking making almost no money at all. They were playing mostly empty venues ten years ago, and they'd be playing even emptier ones now.
Best we can hope for is that they use STP and Filter to subsidize another AoA album, and that they make just enough money off a tour to break even.
The only way AoA can work as the DeLeos' main band is if they make Richard Patrick the new singer for STP. In that case you get the sonic blueprint of what made AoA so great, but with a better drummer and with a name that will garner interest in the project. But I don't think that's happening any time soon.