STUART SMITH & KELLY HANSEN
Heaven & Earth guitarist & vocalist
www.heavenandearthband.com

(Winter 2005) by George Dionne

Black Star Records is a new independent label with independent ideas. It’s a label ‘for musicians, by musicians’, with the goal of introducing ‘new classic rock’ to the masses. The brains behind Black Star Records are members from the melodic rock band Heaven & Earth; Stuart Smith, Richie Onori, and Kelly Hansen. Their first release is Heaven & Earth, featuring Stuart Smith (read CD review), and album that was originally released in the early nineties on Samsung Records. It features plenty of well-known guest musicians and has two new bonus tracks. Normally I’d go into a brief history about the band and their music, but vocalist Kelly Hansen and guitarist Stuart Smith we’re so excited to talk about their new venture, they covered everything for me.

RIL: Your latest album Heaven and Earth, featuring Stuart Smith contains a wide variety of musicians. So my question would be who exactly is in Heaven and Earth?
SS: I don’t know if you know the history of the band. What happened was, I was playing with Richie Onori, in fact long before that, we had a band called Heaven and Earth with Kelly, myself, and a couple of other guys. We wrote a lot of songs, laid them down, but never got around to doing anything with them. I went off and played with Keith Emerson, and Samsung the electronics giant offered the band I was in with Keith a deal; The Aliens with Extraordinary Ability. They offered us a deal which we couldn’t take because I was going to be part of the Sweet reunion and Keith was off with ELP with their reunion.

So the Sweet thing fell a bit of course when Brian died and the Samsung guys heard me jamming one night at a bar in town with some friends, and they came back to my house and heard some of the stuff Kelly and I wrote. The basically offered me a solo deal. Kelly was busy with other things at the time so we didn’t have a full band. So I called everybody I knew like Kelly, Richie Sambora, Joe Lynn Turner, and Glen Hughes to sing on the album. That’s was how this first one came out. It was released in Japan and Europe, but never released out in the States. Frontiers released it in Europe, which gave us a chance for a second album called Witness to the World with Kelly Keeling on vocals.

We went out and toured on that album. Frontiers were good in Europe, but really don’t get people out and touring, which is what we needed in Europe. They offered us a deal for a third album, but we said we’re going to form our own record label. That’s what we did; we called it Black Star Records. We’re actually starting on the third Heaven and Earth record now. In the meantime, we have re-released the first Heaven and Earth album and are concentrated on the States. We have radio promotions behind it and full-time publicists and everything. So, we’re doing this properly. We have stations at Tower Records, Borders, and all the stores. The next Heaven and Earth album will of course be myself, Richie [Onori] and Kelly [Hansen] and a couple of other players. So that’s the band as it stands.

KH: We are the core.

RIL: On the Taste of Heaven EP you had Paul Shortino on vocals.
SS: Basically what that was; we had a show on July the 4th out here to play to forty-thousand people, and we brought in Paul to do that show. We thought we should have something to sell at the show, it was a large crowd. So we went in and recorded these four songs and added 4 tracks from the 1st album. Basically it was called A Taste of Heaven just to give the people there, if they didn’t know us, what the band was about. That was our only involvement with Paul; he was just a quick fill-in.

RIL: This next question is for Kelly.
SS: Oh, don’t worry about him. He doesn’t want to talk.

RIL: I was a big fan of Hurricane back in the day.
KH: Alright. Thanks.

RIL: I was really into that 80’s metal scene.
KH: Nice!

RIL: So my question for you is…there isn’t much information on you on the Internet. I ran a web search for Kelly Hansen and…
KH: You got the transgender site, didn’t you?

RIL: I did! I was wondering if you knew that.
KH: Let’s keep that out of the interview (laughs).

SS: Actually, that’s really him (laughs).

RIL: Well basically, what have you been up to since Hurricane?
KH: Well Hurricane was basically finished in 1991, because the label went bankrupt a month after Slave to the Thrill. I took a little time off, and then I got together in a band with C.C. DeVille, James Kotek, and Tommy Hendrix called Needle Park which had a deal with Hollywood Records. So we were in the middle of writing songs and doing demos, but the problem with Hollywood Records was they wanted another Poison and C.C. didn’t. C.C. wanted a band that could play with great songs more like a Van Halen type of thing, and we had some really great songs that I had some demos stashed away of. Since they wanted another Poison, they wanted a voice like that. Admittedly it was during the time of grunge and whiskey-soaked voices and rough singing. Stuff like that was really in, so my kind of voice was not really popular at the time. Soon after that I met Stuart, and over the course of time we had written songs, we had played shows, we had been in and out of working together doing different things, all kinds of things together with that.

I started doing record production and worked with a lot of artists, specializing in vocal production and I started doing my own productions. I produced the Robert Fleischman solo record and I did the Josh Ramos solo record. We did the Liquifury record, which was the last Hurricane record, released in 2001 on Frontiers. Jay Schellen and I were the core of it, we did it all ourselves. I did movie soundtracks and production stuff like that. Since I had some time on my hands, I had been looking to do something else. I knew that Stewart and Richie had been trying to get Black Star Records together; a label for musicians, by musicians. They had this concept of the new classic rock. I thought it was a genius idea, and we’ve been working on it ever since.

RIL: Does Heaven and Earth plan to tour in support of this album?
SS: Yes we do. Right now were doing all the promotion. We plan to start touring with some acoustic appearances like at Tower Records, to help promote the album. We're thinking about going on a full tour. There’s talk of us going to Russia and what not. We can’t wait to get out.

KH: We’ve been getting this really good feeling about this whole rock resurgence. You know, with Motley Crue getting back together and all these great things that are going on with rock right now. We’re getting huge feedback, especially from the whole Eastern block, which is developing this huge rock following. We’re getting good press for the records, good press for the label, it’s just unbelievable. It’s been keeping us on the ball all day and all night.

RIL: There’s no doubt about it. I haven’t read one bad thing about the new record. Honestly, I think the new record is great; even the stuff on the EP was great. This is the kind of stuff that I grew up with. This is the kind of sound that’s familiar to me. I’m in my late twenties, so I think that Heaven and Earth make the kind of music that my age group longs for.

KH: That’s the kind of stuff that we’re hearing. There’s a lot of other kinds of music out there. Even younger audiences are discovering all this great rock, like Led Zeppelin and bands like that from the seventies. When they hear stuff like that, they tend to want to check out who influenced that band and what not. They’re looking for something different, because there’s a lot of stuff out there that sounds the same. I do love a lot of the modern rock out there, but sometimes you put like three of them on and you don’t know one from the other. That’s the thing about classic rock. When radio used to be about music and used to be about people listening to the station and making requests, you had a wide variety of rock music where you knew every band’s distinction. I think that’s what people are looking for.

SS: To add to that, I think that people are hungry for well-played, guitar driven rock, with a good singer. Unfortunately with the new slew of bands, most of them have relied on image instead of learning enrichment. There’s no one that comes out there that blows me away like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, or Paul Rodgers did. They are the masters of their instruments. The problem for classic rock is that the radio stations are playing the same 200 songs over and over again. There is new classic rock out there, which we intend to start pushing. Even car commercials in the states are using seventies and eighties, guitar driven rock to sell their product. I think that Cadillac’s sales went up like 17% when they started using Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”. Cadillac was always viewed as an old man’s car, so they wanted to get a younger audience. There is a massive market out there like you; you’re in your twenties. I went to the Scorpions, Tesla, and Keith Emerson show the other night. The audience had a lot of people my age, but a lot of people your age. The whole genre needs some new classic rock, something that’s well played. There’s a lot of artists out there, they just need to be brought on the airwaves again.

RIL: Is that why you formed Black Star Records?
SS: It was originally just to release Heaven and Earth, but then the idea took on new life. We just signed Howard Leese from Heart who’s doing an album with Paul Rogers singing, Sammy Hagar, Ann Wilson, Mike Reno, and a whole mess of other people.

KH: That’s what we’re counting on too. People like you like the music, want to hear what you want to hear, and you’re not going to just sit back and let people tell you what’s a hit now or what’s good and what’s bad. When you hear something you like, you know it. You want to request it, you want to buy it, and you want to make sure it gets out to you. For too long, people have been sitting idly by letting some radio station tell them that this is the new hit, like it or not.

RIL: Why do you think that European and Japanese audiences accept this style of music more than the U.S. has today?
KH: I can tell you from my perspective, now I’m not knocking anybody here, but the European culture is much more artistic based and artistic appreciative sometimes than the U.S. is. I love being an American and I love living in the U.S., but we’re fast fed everything. Everything is instant now, if it doesn’t change in thirty seconds we get bored. That doesn’t lend itself to creative nurturing. You get a lot of that in Europe. In Europe they have a lot of help for artists, whether it’s a writer, artist, or musician. They’re very supportive of that, and they love the diversity. In reality, art and creativity is what fuels us in the rest of our lives. When you’re in a fast fed culture, there’s not enough time for you to take things in. As far as Asia goes, their culture has always enjoyed Western style stuff, whether it’s art, business, or whatever.

SS: We had a whole conversation about this the other day. It’s really down to the people out there as well. I think for some reason the rock crowd became apathetic. They didn’t really make the effort to say that we want to hear this. For some reason I think they’re come to the point where they can’t take it anymore. They’re actually making an effort now. It’s up to the listener. The listener doesn’t know how much power they have. Rock fans are a great power for change if they just raise their voices.

RIL: The first artist signed to Black Star Records, besides Heaven & Earth, was Howard Leese from Heart. How did his signing come about?
SS: I’ve known Howard for years. He actually produced me through the guitar solos when I was doing the guitar solos. He also produced the second Heaven and Earth album Windows of the World. For the last four or five years he’s been playing with Paul Rogers. It was just a natural progression. He’s a great guitarist and songwriter. He wrote a couple of songs on the new Heaven and Earth album. I’ve heard some of the tracks from the new album and it sounds great.

RIL: Does Black Star Records plan to focus on veteran artists that have been out there for a while, or are you going to focus on newer bands that have that classic sound, or a little of both?
KH: You’re exactly right, it’s both. What were starting with is a couple of established artists, and we know they have a track record behind them. That helps us as a label. It helps get songs out there from artist people already know. Now that so many people are hearing about the label, we’re starting to get overwhelmed will all these different bands. There are some that are really great new artists in the classic rock style. When the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream, and bands like that came out, in the tens years that followed you could hear that bands coming out we’re influenced by them. We’re seeing new bands now that are showing the same thing. It’s really exciting.

RIL: Is there anything significant behind the name Black Star?
SS: Basically, it’s all we could get (laughs). It’s funny, since the Internet came out people have been going on to buy any name they can.

RIL: I ran into the same problem, I know what you mean.
KH: Hey, what about me with the transgender (laughs)?

SS: I was lucky in the beginning that I got Stuart Smith.com, but Heaven and Earth was taken about the same time. I believe it’s a metal works company out of Connecticut. They don’t even have a website up, and they’ve had it for years. When we came up with all these names, we did an immediate search. What they do is they register the name and you have to buy it off them. I know Richie Sambora went through that for his website. Even though no one named Richie Sambora owned it. I don’t know about the Kelly Hansen story, that’s something between him and his friend there (laughs). With this, someone suggested Black Star and I thought it would already be taken. A Black Star is also a black hole. Howard Leese turned around and said we can use that name we the slogan ‘we suck harder than anybody’ (laughs). It was available, so we registered it, trademarked it, and everything. It was a name that we all likes.

KH: You can find all kinds of metaphors how the Black Star can tie into the whole concept of the label, but we’ll just leave that to the imagination of the reader.

RIL: Stuart, in the liner notes of the new CD you dedicate the album to Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple/Rainbow) for being your friend, inspiration, and teacher. Did Richie teach you the guitar or was he someone that influenced you?
SS: Oh no. I was classically trained since seven years old. Richie was classically trained as well. At fourteen I had never really heard rock. I had gotten dragged along to this concert, and the last band of this open-aired festival was Deep Purple. Suddenly, this guy in black come running to the front of the stage playing this incredible, high-energy guitar runs. It was around the time of “Speed King”. It was so exciting to watch, it just blew me away. I became an instant fan. Every time that Deep Purple would come to England, I would go out to see them. I then met Richie at a party. We had so much in common. We were both champion javelin throwers in school, we were both considered ‘bad boys’, and we both loved classical music. We hit it off as friends. He’s the one that got me to move over to the States in 1983. He taught me a hell of a lot. He didn’t just teach me about technique, but the psychology of the guitar, how to get emotion out of the guitar. He made me work. We were sitting in his kitchen one day and he’s walking around with an acoustic guitar. He pulls off this amazing run, and I was like ‘how do you do that one’? He turned around and looked at me and said, ‘practice’.

RIL: What do you think about the Renaissance stuff that he’s been doing with Blackmore’s Knight?
SS: I love it. The acoustic guitar is a complete different animal. Richie has been playing his whole life around Marshall stacks to huge audiences. He’s always loved playing the acoustic. I know he’s really happy doing that. It’s fine with me. He’s still brilliant no matter what he does. I know he picks up the Strat occasionally. For me he’s always been the best guitar player in rock. I know there’s other guys that are really great.

RIL: Are there any plans the re-release the second Heaven and Earth album Windows to the World?
SS: I don’t really think so, but I would never say never. Our concentration right now is on promoting this album and recording the next Heaven and Earth album. I’m really excited about the ideas we’ve got, especially with Kelly’s voice in there. “Don’t Keep Me Waiting” is still one of the best Heaven and Earth tracks ever written. I think the next album is going to be the one that really defines the sound of the band. The first one was really a hodge-podge of ideas, which I like. I remember growing up that the new Led Zeppelin album would have a rock track, a blues track, and a reggae track in there. It made it exciting. I’ve kept that style on the last album, and the new one will have a little of it too.

RIL: Have you had any problems as far as promotion or distribution for the latest album, where you’re on a smaller label and the larger ones dominate the market?
KH: You have to take an attitude that it doesn’t matter. We know that we’re smaller, we know we have less money, but we have all of the emotion and the heart of all these people that aren’t being paid attention to; people of your age, people of our age. The thing is that we’re sending ourselves down a pipeline that no one else is. That makes it challenging, but at the same time offers some off-the-wall opportunities. You have to remember that we have to slowly change people’s minds, and that’s going to take some work. We’re getting great feedback from all the classic rock radio stations about the album; they’re requesting interviews and giveaways, but they’re not sure they’re going to be able to play the record. What’s going to happen is, a single station is going to decide to play the record, it’s going to be a station that’s in a larger market that people look at, and people are going to go ‘hey’. It takes a little click like that to start a new trend. We’re going to be working that for all it’s worth. As we talk to more and more people that we know in the industry, we’re getting more and more support from them.

RIL: Is there a single in mind if it goes to radio?
SS: “Still Got the Blues” is what we have in mind. The thinking behind this is; a lot of the classic rock stations won’t play anything unless the artist is well-well established, like Bruce Springsteen or Brian Adams or something. They’ll occasionally put on a new track by those artists. The thinking behind this is, it’s not our song, it’s a Gary Moore song. I always thought it was a brilliant song. I had been jamming to it live for years. Hopefully the classic rock stations will pick this song up because people already know it. I personally prefer to go with “Don’t Keep Me Waiting” or another track that Kelly was on, because that’s where we’re at now.

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