Doug Aldrich, one the most prolific, talented and well respected of today’s rock guitarists, has rekindled his dynamic and creatively potent relationship with long-time musical pal Keith St. John under the banner of their band Burning Rain to release a gritty, hard-rockin’ musical masterpiece that channels the best of 1970s, 1980s and 21st century hard rock into one exceptional artistic statement – the new album Face The Music.
Set to be released on March 22 through Frontiers Music, the album sees the axe master Aldrich (Dead Daisies, Revolution Saints, Whitesnake, Dio) coming together once again with the extraordinary vocalist St. John (Montrose, Kingdom Come) on a collection of 11 songs that are fresh and heavy sounding, but with enough melodic virtuosity to please the most ardent of rock music fans of any era.
Aldrich said wanted to take a different approach both thematically and musically with St. John for what would become Face the Music, focusing on more mature subject matter, while adding a gritty, 1970s rock veneer to the songs.
“From my end, I asked Keith if we could try to hit some different subjects and just try some new things. I really love what he did with songs like Revolution and Lorelei. I wanted more of a fantasy type thing or something that is very deep. And then there’s a great, really pissed off song like Nasty Hustle. So, I think he did a great job trying some new things. It’s not all about sex and partying and stuff like that, so that made me feel good being able to move in some new directions with Burning Rain, while still keeping the core of what the band is all about,” he said.
“And then what I did was I tried to simplify some stuff. I started doing that on the last Dead Daisies record [2018’s Burn It Down] at the request of David Lowy and the management. They wanted to make a really heavy, 1970s style record and some of the riffs that I had contributed to them were really simple and it seemed like people liked that. So, for Burning Rain I don’t want to have it be so busy with the arrangements and the tempos and drum beats and everything. Some of our earlier stuff is pretty intense and the kind of fans that we have are classic rock fans for the most part, so I just wanted to keep it simple and make the rhythms easier to digest. There was some stuff on our last record that was crazy intricate. But don’t get me wrong, there is still some cool and interesting stuff on this record, but I am just trying to grow and make the material more straightforward.”
Even though Aldrich and St. John had only worked sporadically together since Burning Rain went on hiatus in 2000, their musical connection took little to be reignited when the pair decided it was finally time to do a new album.
“It had been five years and back then I was super busy with Whitesnake and couldn’t really focus on anything else, and Keith was focused on other things too. So last year was the first time that we had been able to do anything. He and I, we always work together in the same room. When I was able to be in town last year, he would come over and I would prepare some ideas and we would go through them and see what we liked. Little by little we came up with the majority of the record and at the end of the process we filled in a couple of extra songs we thought the album could use right as we were getting set to record,” he said.
“It’s a good thing how it all worked out. Honestly, we have been working together for a long time. We know each other and we have a sound that is interesting together – something that is a little different than everything else I do and definitely different from what he is doing as well at the moment.”
Burning Rain began in 1998 when mutual friends brought Aldrich together with St. John, the pair quickly forming a solid friendship and exceptionally prolific working relationship right out of the gate. The band released two albums in quick succession, primarily in Japan: a self-titled record in 1999 followed by Pleasure to Burn in 2000. While enjoying this burgeoning success, hugely significant musical opportunities beckoned for both St. John and Aldrich at the dawn of the new millennium, leading them down divergent paths that did not come back together again for more than a dozen years.
“I was working in a band with the singer from Lion called Bad Moon Rising and at one point the singer felt it had kind of run it’s course. He was getting burned out from the heavy rock thing and wanted to get into doing his own thing. This was the mid-1990s and there was some stuff on the radio that was more mellow, and I think he wanted to head in that direction,” Aldrich said of Burning Rain’s serendipitous formation.
“I had been offered the chance to do a new band and just needed to find some players. The bass played I was working with at the time, Ian Mayo [who joined an early incarnation of Burning Rain] Introduced me to Keith and he and I just sat down right away and wrote some songs, and I was really blown away by his tone and the he is just a killer vocalist. We made our first record and I was really proud of it, and then we made our second record and then we kind of fell off. He went and joined Montrose [where is stayed for the better part of the next 16 years] and now he is doing stuff with Kingdom Come as well. I went and joined Dio and later Whitesnake, and now the Dead Daisies is my main day job. So that’s why it was 13 years before we did Epic Obsession.”
“And that album came about when we had a bit of time. I had been working with Frontiers through Whitesnake and when I left, they asked if I wanted to do a record and I thought it was a good idea. The said they wanted to re-release the older Burning Rain stuff and that they wanted a new record. So, Keith and I managed to get together, wrote some great songs that became Epic Obsession in 2013.”
Aldrich admitted that at the time of the release of that album, things got busy again and that neither he nor St. John were able to promote the record as well as they would have liked, nor was there even a faint hope of touring in support of it. Thanks to a break taken by the Daisies, Aldrich has the time, and he and St. John and new bandmates Blas Elias (former Slaughter bassist) and drummer Brad Lang (ex-Y&T) are committed to playing shows as schedules and booker demand permit.
“When I signed the deal for this record with Frontiers it was back in 2015. It got to the point where it was like, ‘guys when are you going to deliver this record?’ I said I didn’t know because I was tied up with the Dead Daisies and just for the record, the Dead Daisies is my main gig, and it’s a priority and I couldn’t screw with that. Frontiers understood and was cool with that. But at a certain point they did say they really needed the record. At the time, it was good news because Dead Daisies were taking off a few months at the beginning of 2019, and we were going to have the record ready and told them they could put it out then,” he explained.
“I actually asked the Dead Daisies guys if it was okay for me to release this record at this time, because I really wanted to promote it. They said for me to get it out as early as I could and Frontiers came back with the March 22 date, so it’s all working out finally. And I am really happy to be able to promote it a little bit. We did some phoners and stuff like that for Epic Obsession, but this time we’re really going for it. We’re going to do an acoustic promo tour and then we’re doing the Frontiers Festival in Milan, Italy at the end of April, which will be really fun. We will probably go back to Europe for a month in September or October. We’re going to try and do weekend warrior stuff whenever we can, working around everybody’s schedule this summer in the U.S. and hopefully we will visit Japan because we didn’t get to last time, even though we have a really good following there.”
The songs from Face The Music are perfect for live scenarios, which is why Aldrich is so keen on getting Burning Road on stage. There is a real slinky groove to the material which, as mentioned above, hearkens back to the band’s influences as younger musicians.
“There have been some people who said they can definitely hear an Aerosmith influence, which is definitely there. And there is an obvious Led Zeppelin influence too, because I absolutely love Zeppelin – I just can’t help it. As long as the music is coming naturally and you’re not trying to force it, not trying to deliberately write like someone else, it comes across as authentic, and I think that’s what we’ve managed to do,” Aldrich explained.
“The song Lorelei is one of Keith and I’s favourites. The rhythm guitar part and the lead vocal and lead melody definitely have a Kings and Queens kind of thing to it, but on steroids, because it’s pretty heavy. Keith said that’s what he is hearing on it and I love that. It’s not like we’re trying to rewrite Aerosmith’s Kings and Queens, it just kind of happened. It’s a killer song.
“Another person thought the ballad If It’s Love kind of reminds them of a ZZ Top song. I asked which one and they said Jesus Just Left Chicago and I was like, wow, that’s awesome. I don’t necessarily hear that myself, but it’s killer that he said that. To me if you’re bringing up a ZZ Top song it sounds more like Rough Boy, but I am not going to complain if that’s what they guy is hearing. The bottom line is you just try to do stuff that you like, and you hope that people who like you, who are fans or friends of you will like it. It comes down to the fact that you’ve got to live with it. I’ve got to live with it, Keith’s got to live with it. The other guys, Blas and Brad have to as well: everyone’s input is important so that we can all live with it.”
For more information on Burning Rain, the new album Face The Music and tour dates, visit Burning Rain on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or at www.burningrain.net.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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