It’s been a decade, but good friends and musical collaborators Gary Pihl, Robert Berry and David Lauser have finally been able to complete work on the long-awaited sixth studio album, Fire And Grace, (Escape Records) under the banner of their more than three-decades long project, Alliance.
Fire And Grace was released at the end of May and sees the veteran musicians and songwriters at their best. Pihl and Lauser spent many years playing in Sammy Hagar’s solo band throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with Lauser going ever farther back, playing with Hagar in Montrose. Pihl has since gone on to be an integral part of Boston for three and a half decades, while Berry is currently part of Greg Kihn’s band, but has also worked alongside prog rock legends Carl Palmer and Keith Emerson as 3.
Alliance began when Pihl and drummer Lauser found themselves without a gig after their long-time boss Sammy Hagar put aside his solo career to replace David Lee Roth as lead vocalist in rock superpower Van Halen, although it also led soon thereafter to Pihl joining Boston – that was 34 years ago.
“Interestingly, when I first joined Sammy almost one of the first gigs we did was opening for Boston on their first tour. We liked them, they liked us and when it came around to them having an opening act for their second tour, they had Sammy open the whole tour. So, we got to know the guys over time. When Sammy got the call to join Van Halen, Tom Scholz from Boston heard about it and called me up and said, ‘hey, I heard you’re out of a gig. Would you come back here and play on the Third Stage album, there’s one more song to be recorded, would you come here and work on it with me.’ Absolutely, for sure, I have always loved Boston, and I am out of a job, so sure. I left directly from the last gig with Sammy which was Farm Aid 1 out in Champagne, Illinois, flew directly from there to Boston and started working with Tom. While I was there Tom said, ‘I think we work well together, why don’t you move back here, join the band, we’ll put out this album, do a tour and take it from there.’ Thirty-plus years later I am still here,” Pihl said.
“But before that the David Lauser and I were trying to find another singer. Sammy actually said, ‘you know, you guys are a great band. Just try to find another singer, plug him in and keep going.’ To that end our record label at the time, Geffen, introduced us to Robert Berry. As it turned out, I got the gig with Boston and kept going with that, but after Third Stage came out, Tom came to us and said the next album was going to be a few years down the road and said if we wanted to do a solo project or something else, now was the time. So, I called up Dave and Alan Fitzgerald, who was in Sammy’s band with us for a while and was then with Night Ranger. He was in between albums for them, and Dave had been doing some other session work and we decided to see if it would work. I told Dave that I had met this Robert Berry guy and suggested we all get together.
“Robert had been working with Carl Palmer and Keith Emerson on the ‘3’ project too. We actually got together in Sammy Hagar’s recording studio and we showed each other all our song ideas and we could definitely see we were on the same page. Of course, I had worked with Dave and Fitz all those years, and Robert fit in like a brother, like we’d known him all our lives. So, it was like, ‘wow, this is going to work.’”
Their first album, Bond of Union came out in 1996, and it was just a year before they reconvened for their second, and self-titled album in 1997. Striking while the creative iron was hot, they issued album number three, Missing Piece in 1999, before Alliance went dormant forr eight years as other projects beckoned. Again, the creativity bubbled over as the group released back to back albums, Destination Known in 2007 and Road to Heaven in 2008.
Another decade would pass before ¾ of Alliance would reconvene for sessions that would lead to Fire And Grace, with only Fitzgerald missing because of other commitments.
“We have all be busy with our other bands. Boston toured every year from 2014 through 2017 and before that we had also toured throughout 2012 and 2008. And Dave Lauser and Robert Berry were busy with their bands, so we didn’t have a lot of time to get together. Although every once in a while, we would get together and always in Robert’s studio out in California. One thing about our band that we wanted to keep the same and that is we don’t want to just send files back and forth, emailing somebody some song tracks or whatever. We like being in the same room at the same time, turn the amps up and just play. For us, that’s when the magic happens,” Pihl explained.
“So, here’s the deal, Robert, David and I are also in another band called December People. It’s a charity band and we play traditional holiday Christmas songs but in the style of our favourite bands. So, we do Santa Claus Is Coming to Town like ZZ Top for instance. They play throughout November and December and every show is a benefit for a local charity, usually a food bank. This past December, we did those shows and we were already out in California, so we decided to hunker down and finish songs for the next album. And that’s what we did. It took only about a week to nail everything down. In general, things go fast once we’re all together.
“We had recorded a few previously over the last 10 years, so we already had about half the songs done, half a dozen or so, and then we wrote or completed the other half dozen while we were there at Robert’s place in December. Part of the reason why it works so quickly is because we don’t have a whole lot of overdubs or extra instrumentation to worry about. It’s just guitar, bass, drums and keys. It’s pretty simple and straight forward.”
Musically, Pihl said Alliance is more than just an amalgam of each member’s pedigree, as the band gives everyone the freedom to push their own personal creative envelopes and express themselves in a way that they might not otherwise be able to in their other projects.
“We all pretty much know what we want it to sound like, and by this point in our career with this band, we know what Alliance should sound like. When we first started, we were searching for that sound. We all have our influences of course, and the songs and styles that we each like, and we were kind of searching. But between Road to Heaven, the previous album, and this one we said to ourselves, ‘we know what we’re doing now, and we know what Alliance sounds like.’ If you give us three chords, we will turn it into an Alliance song,” he said.
“It is a combination of all our influences and more. Again, I am in the band Boston, but I don’t want to sound like Boston, as much as I love the sound of Boston – I don’t want that for Alliance. I want my own sound. In fact, I built a couple of tube amps that I used on this album because I wanted my own sound. These are amps that nobody else in the world has, because I built them just for me. And that’s my starting point. And I have to say my sound on this record is like a cross between the Americana, songwriter rock acts like John Mellencamp or Springsteen or even Tom Petty, and the English sounds that I grew up loving by the likes of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. They’re not heavy metal, so I am not going for a full metal, full distortion kind of sound. Again, it’s gritty but still very identifiable; you can hear all the notes in the chord. You can hear the strings when I strum the guitar. So, there’s that and of course Robert’s terrific voice and the grooves that Dave Lauser comes up with, and that makes up the Alliance sound.”
All members of Alliance believe that music can play a positive role in people’s lives, especially in the sort of discombobulated and increasingly dark and stressful times in which we’re currently living.
“We all do appreciate songs with a positive message. These days there is so much negativity in the world, we appreciate trying to be a little more positive with our stuff. I am proud of the fact that we’ve been able to achieve that. With the title track Fire And Grace, the fire is the passion that you have for life and work and being on the planet. And the grace is to love your fellow man, as corny as that sounds; just help other people and, gosh if we all did that, I think the world would be a better place,” he said.
“The song Raise Your Glass is a real simple song of celebration. People have noted that it’s more like one of those old-school pub drinking songs. It’s our version of a summer party anthem. And then you have the song Uncertain, which is kind of introspective and thoughtful. As the name implies, you’re trying to do the best you can in the world and you sometimes second guess yourself. Is this the right thing to do, or not? And I am sure we have all been in that position. ‘I think I am going down the right path here, and I hope I am.’ Again, all you can do is the best you can.”
Pihl said he, Berry and Lauser are doing the best they can to string some concert appearances together for Alliance to showcase songs from Fire And Grace as well as from their back catalogue.
“We did a weekend at one of Sammy’s clubs in St. Louis and it was a lot of fun. I am hoping we can do something like that this summer. We would love to do some more gigs and we were saying it would be great to get on some festivals, because they have 10 to 20 bands or more over a couple of days. And a festival is usually a place where, as an audience member, you go there and assume there is going to be some bands you have never hear of before, so that would be a good place to introduce ourselves to fans,” he said.
As for Boston, Pihl said there is nothing in the works, but knowing how the mad musical genius Tom Scholz works, he wouldn’t be surprised if there was some activity in that camp sooner rather than later.
“I hope we go out on tour next year, but there has been no official word at this point. Tom is always coming up with great song ideas too so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s got a dozen or so that we could put on a record. Again, there’s nothing official at the moment,” he said.
For more information, visit www.robertberry.com/alliance.html, or http://garypihl.com.
- 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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