Fans of classic blues based hard rock music might remember guitar player extraordinaire Stuart Smith, who unleashed two brilliant studio albums under the moniker of Heaven + Earth at the end of the previous century. Now Stuart is back with a brand new record called Dig, which is a must have for every fans of the previous efforts and for also those who miss the vibe of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow these days...
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| Heaven + Earth 2013 (left to right): Chuck Wright (bass), Arlan Schierbaum (keyboards), Joe Retta (vocals), Richie Onori (drums), Stuart Smith (guitar) |
Heaven &
Earth was on a long hiatus during the past decade. What was the reason you
stopped making H&E records after two critically acclaimed studio albums?
After we lost Kelly Hansen to Foreigner
it sort of took the wind out of our sails and we lost momentum. I couldn’t find the right singer to replace
him and in 2008 Steve Priest called me up and asked me if I wanted to help him
reform Sweet so I focused on that. It was just something I needed to do at the
time.
What was your main musical priority in the meantime?
Survival. Heaven & Earth was not a going financial
concern as record companies couldn’t offer me enough to record a first class
album and Sweet was an established name so I didn’t have to starve to do what I
love doing which is play the guitar.
What was the driving force behind the reformation of the band?
It
would have to be meeting Bruce Quarto who’s now the head of our record
company. He originally offered to back a
new Sweet album but when Steve Priest didn’t want to do one he was more than
happy to get behind Heaven & Earth.
It all started with us just talking for hours about the idea of a new
Heaven & Earth album and then we started writing for it and it became an
actuality.
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| Cover art by Glen Wexler |
Was it obvious for you that Chuck Wright and Richie Onori will join H&E
once again?
Richie
Onori, of course, we’ve been in this together for years. I asked Chuck to join
because I really wanted someone who could seriously contribute to the writing
of the music. Chuck’s great at
that. I can throw a riff at him and he
instinctually knows the next place to go to make it work.
After such brilliant singers such as Kelly Hansen and Kelly Keeling you've found yet another amazing vocalist in Joe Retta. How did you meet him?
After such brilliant singers such as Kelly Hansen and Kelly Keeling you've found yet another amazing vocalist in Joe Retta. How did you meet him?
I’m
a big fan of really good singers and there are not a lot of them out
there. Joe I’d known from around LA and
had jammed with him on a few occasions.
When Steve Priest asked me to reform Sweet with him I first took him to
see Joe perform and we thought he’d be ideal so we offered him the gig. After working with him in Sweet I knew he’d
be ideal for Heaven & Earth and like me, he wanted to write new material.
As far as the new record called "Dig", what was your main musical concept when you started to write the new material?
There
was no real plan, just to bring out the best album we possibly could. Everyone
is saying that we’ve pulled off a 70’s concept album but that was never on our
minds when we started writing. It’s just
the musical time period that we all came from and love.
There are some interesting guest appearances on the record, Richie Sambora, Howard Leese and David Paich all layed down cool things. How did you put together this stellar guest line up?
We hadn’t
really planned to have any guests on this album except Howard. He’s a great guy and a superb musician. I’ve known Howard since the early 90’s and
it’s sort of a longstanding tradition with us that whenever we do an acoustic
song, Howard and I play it together. He
generally plays the 12 string guitar and I play the 6 so we had him come in and
join me on a couple of songs. He’s also
a phenomenal string player/arranger, so we had him play strings on a track as
well.
David Paich
has been a great friend of mine for many years and I always try to attend his
Christmas Eve parties, at which David and I play Christmas carols together.
Generally, we never have anyone to sing them, so in 2011 I took Joe Retta with
me. After the party Joe and I went into
David’s studio with him and we played the rough track to “I Don’t Know What
Love Is” and he absolutely loved it. He
thought it was a definite hit and said he’d like to play some strings on it… so
we brought it over and he did his thing. His pieces are amazing and obviously
added depth and warmth to an already great song.
Richie is the nicest guy in the
business. He’s my ex brother in law and
when he was recording his latest solo album, “Aftermath of a Lowdown” in East
West Studios, I went down to have a listen and borrow a Gibson SG off him as I
didn’t have one at the time and we needed that particular guitar sound for one
of our songs. While I was down there we
both signed a guitar to be auctioned off at a charity event and his producer
Luke Ebins, took a photo of us both with the guitar. The picture soon got out on the Internet and
I had hundreds of requests from fans who asked if we were going to do something
together again as they loved “When a Blind Man Cries” which we did together on
the first album. One day, I asked Richie what he thought about the idea and he
said, Yes, let’s do it. We set a day to
come down to East West but on that particular day there were some technical
issues there so we couldn’t do it. Then Richie got extremely busy as his solo
album was just released and he was flying all over the country promoting it. He
then began playing with Bon Jovi and also started touring to support his solo
album. On his first and only day off in
3 months he came into a local studio with us and spent 6 hours adding all sorts
of guitars and even his signature talk box on “Man & Machine”… so he has my
undying love and respect for that.
Is it exciting for you when you got the chance to trade riffs and solos with such renowned players like Richie and Howard?
Of
course, it’s always great to play with great players and I always learn a lot
from Howard and Richie as well as it being a lot of fun.
On your first record there were some really great instrumental tunes. Was it conscious decision this time you'd rather focus on blues based melodic hard rock with catchy as hell vocals than shred guitar stuff?
Not
really. If I’d had anything to offer in
the instrumental department we would have done them.
The previous H&E album was released via Frontiers Records and I'm a little bit surprised this new effort does not supported by that particular label. Weren't they interested in this project?
I
don’t know, we haven’t even gotten around to thinking about releasing it in
Europe yet. The people at Quarto Valley
Records are concentrating on the States release at the moment but we’ll
definitely get around to it.
Do you have any plan to tour with this record in the foreseeable future?
Definitely. We’ve been in constant rehearsals for the
last four weeks at Third Encore in Burbank and are playing a showcase at the
Fonda Theater in Hollywood on April 10th to get an agent sorted out
for us. The band is sounding great and I
can’t wait to get it out on tour.
Check out the first video from Dig:
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