Ace Frehley and Peter Criss to Play Together at Creatures Fest
Original Kiss alumni Ace Frehley and Peter Criss will perform together at this year's Creatures Fest.
The weekend-long event will take place from May 27-29 at Nashville's Sonesta Nashville Airport Hotel. Former Kiss guitarists Bruce Kulick and Vinnie Vincent are also scheduled to perform, meaning all four living, non-active Kiss alumni will be under the same roof.
Creatures Fest promoter Neil Davis announced the Frehley-Criss team-up last night on Facebook and said it will take place during Frehley's headlining set on Friday. "They both spoke, said they were excited about being at Creatures Fest — they were excited about seeing you, the fans — and they talked, and they just thought that what would be great for the fans, for all of us, is if they got together and played some songs during Ace's set," Davis said.
Frehley will also allow fans to help him curate his set list for the event. "Everybody who's purchased tickets to Creatures Fest ... will have the opportunity to vote on songs," Davis previously announced in a Facebook video. "As Kiss fans, we always say the songs that we'd like to hear at live performances. This is our chance."
Frehley and Criss both left Kiss in the early '80s. The drummer left the band on May 17, 1980, under unclear circumstances. (He maintains he quit, while Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have insisted they fired him.) Frehley followed a couple of years later, in June 1982, and was replaced by Vincent for the band's first makeup-free album, Lick It Up. Frehley and Criss both rejoined Kiss in 1996 for their massively successful reunion tour and remained in the group until the early '00s.
Vincent will headline night two of Creatures Fest, and Kulick will round out the weekend with a Sunday night headlining set. The festival will also feature performances by Quiet Riot, Enuff Z’Nuff, Vixen, John Corabi, Return of the Comet, Pretty Boy Floyd and more. Tickets are on sale now.