HIRSH GARDNER is best known as the drummer for American AOR band NEW ENGLAND, who burst on to the rock scene in the late ’70s, releasing their classic AOR debut album in ’79. That album, co-produced by Paul Stanley and Mike Stone featured the hit “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya”, as well as favorites “Alone Tonight” and “Nothing To Fear”. New England released 2 further albums – Explorer Suite (1980) and Walking Wild (81), before splitting up. Hirsh Gardner moved on to produce other artists and has just released his third solo album Third Time’s A Charm (Deko ent.), which features a mix of Hirsh’s new songs and revisits of some classic New England songs. An excellent disc of hard-rock and AOR, and a ‘must’ for any fans of New England. In our conversation a few weeks back Hirsh talks about the making of his new album, and a bit about his past, influences, and old days in Toronto, as the first thing i learned was Hirsh was born in Ontario, and grew up in the Toronto scene of the late ’60s, before moving to the US for school in 1969.

*To order ‘Third Time’s A Charm’ (CD & LP) – https://www.dekoentertainment.com/hirsh-gardner

Are you in Boston?

I’m just a little north of Boston. Boston has been my basic hometown for many, many years. I came here in 1969 from Toronto.

You must have caught a good part of the Toronto scene back then!?

Oh man, big time. Basically, when I was in high school, I used to sneak out at night and go down to Yorkville and just hang out in all the clubs – The Purple Onion, the Minor Bird, the Riverboat, the Avenue Road Club, all those guys are peers of mine. All the musicians, Luke and The Apostles, Mandala, Edward Bear.

I was born in 1969, but through all the Canadian groups that I’m on on Facebook, I’ve heard all these names.

Yeah, I mean Crowbar – Sonnie Bernardi and I basically grew up together. We played hockey, and on Sunday afternoons, his parents ran the coat check down at the Concord Tavern.

So, Sonnie and I would just say, we both became drummers and Sonnie and I would go down on the Sunday afternoon matinee at the Concord and we’d see everybody play down there. That was amazing. It was a great time to be a rock and roll musician in Toronto.

Were you born in Toronto?

I was born in Toronto, yeah, and went to school there and then in ’69 decided to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston. So that’s what brought me down here.

So, Third Time’s A Charm is half new songs and half New England songs that you’ve redone. The new songs, which very much fit the mold of New England, got a little bit more bite and the drums sound great on this album. I’m wondering how you came about to do this like half and half type thing.

Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s one that a lot of people are getting inquisitive. So I had between 9 and 11 songs that were completely done. And a few years back New England was doing a gig in LA and Jimmy Waldo and I arrived at the rehearsal studio slash recording studio first. So we set up the drums and set up Jimmy’s keyboards and just to try things out; we figured ‘well, let’s run down a couple songs’.

So obviously, “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya” was our biggest hit song, so we decided to record the keyboard tracks and the drum tracks just to see how everything sounded. It was nothing that we were planning on releasing. And then in the last year or so, year and a half, as I was recording the new album, I came across the old files of the drum tracks and the keyboards and I listened to it in my studio and I’m going ‘holy shit, this sounds amazing!’ So, what I did is I grabbed my guitar, and I played a little bit of the guitar tracks. Of course, I was nowhere near as good as John Fannon, but I was able to outline the song with the guitar, put a little bass on it and then I just decided to sing the lead vocal and put in all the background vocals and it just started to sound so amazing.

And I’ve heard a lot of covers of the song, “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya”, over the years. I mean, BRONZ, a band from England did it and a band called HOUSTON did it. It just seemed to me that nobody really did this song the justice that I think it deserved. I mean, the song definitely deserves to be hard again because it’s such a classic song and judging from the responses that I’m getting on social media, most people agree with that. So as I was recording the new album and the nine to 11 songs, I sent the version of “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya” to Chris Laney. Chris Laney is the co-producer on the album. Chris is also the guitar player, keyboard player for the band PRETTY MAIDS, and I’ve been a huge fan of theirs for years. Chris and I hooked up a few years back and became fast friends. So, Chris laid down all the guitar tracks, and ff course, he erased all mine because they sucked (lol). And when I got the song back, it just sounded incredible. Chris did such an amazing job. So, I thought at that point, let’s take four or five more New England songs, especially the songs that I’m either singing lead on or songs that I wrote in New England, or co-wrote in New England.

Then I decided to do “She’s Gonna Tear You Apart”, which was on the third New England album. I sent that basic track to Chris and he just recorded some more amazing guitar tracks and then “Hello, Hello, Hello” was next, which I think that was our second hit single. And then, I don’t know if you know, Ron Bumblefoot Tahl; Ron’s an amazing, amazing guitar player and a pretty good friend of mine. I found out that Ron was a big New England fan from way back when, so we hooked up, he’s actually playing on my second album, and I sent him “Nothing To Fear” because I knew he loved New England songs and he could play anything. So, I asked him if he would record all the guitar tracks for “Nothing To Fear”. So, what you’re listening to on the new album is Ron Bumblefoot Tahl on guitar, Jimmy Waldo on keys, Gary Shea on bass, and me on drums and vocals. That song turned out amazingly well. And then, (of course) I wanted to get all the guys in New England on one of the songs, so “Holding Out On Me” was a great choice because that’s definitely a diehard heavy metal AC/DC type of song, I had John Fannon play guitar on that, Jimmy Waldo on keys, Gary Shea on bass, and I have a guest drummer on that, Allan Sorensen. Allan is the drummer in Pretty Maids. I asked Chris Laney if Alan would be interested, and he loved it. Listen to the drums on that song, they are just stellar!

How much of the album does Chris Laney play on?

Well, he’s playing on, he’s playing on “Faith In Your Heart”, which is one of the originals, “Angel In The Sky”, which is a co-write with me and Chris. And he’s playing on “Never Gonna Lose You, “Tear You Apart”, and I think that’s it. He contributed a lot of guitar and he’s just such a talented young man. He really is great.

The original songs you wrote, have they been songs that you’ve written in recent years or things you’ve kind of had over the years?

No, I think most of them are pretty new. I’m looking at my song list here, “Lover’s Lullaby” was written in the last few years and “Reach Out For Love” is the most current song. Maybe “Faith In Your Heart” has been around for about four years. “Angel In The Sky” was a co-write with Chris Laney, so most of these are pretty new. Yeah. I’d say within the last year to two years at the most.

Wasteland For Broken Hearts was your first solo album. How did that do? I’m just looking into this stuff the last couple weeks now.

Yeah. I mean, all the albums that I’ve put out, definitely have some rabid fans out there. So Wasteland was released worldwide, on MTM in Europe.

Yeah, I think the first album. Yeah, I don’t know where I dropped out, but Wasteland For Broken Hearts was the first solo album that I did. Yeah.

And that was released worldwide on MTM Records in Europe and Marquee Avalon in Japan. And of course, it was released on GB Music, which was our own label here in the States. Still getting great response from a lot of the songs on that album from folks on social media, which is pretty cool.

How does it compare to your new album? Is it still in that same mold, that AOR hard rock?

I think that the best way to describe my music is it’s definitely AOR. But one of the things that I love doing is I love mixing it up. On the first album, you’ve got even a ballad that’s in acappella, which is just all voices. And then you’ve got some, just piano and voice. And you’ve got some hard rock stuff.

I like to put a diversity in there. I mean, a lot of albums that I listen to, a lot of heavy metal,… It starts with heavy metal and it ends with heavy metal, which is fine. I prefer to mix it up a little bit and show people a little bit of a different taste on my songwriting abilities. And that seems to have been working for me, so I’ll keep doing that.

From the first New England album, and the second, you guys had a very hard rock – AOR sound, very catchy, very memorable. What influenced you guys and influenced you as far as where you went?

Well, New England’s influences go back to, you know, the melodic prog bands – YES, King Crimson, and then later on, 10CC, Electric Light Orchestra, The Beatles, of course, were a huge influence on all of us, especially with the vocal harmonies and things that you hear. The first New England album, you’ve got a lot of those influences that come through. And even the name of the band. You know, we get a lot of flack for, we came out after Boston. Boston came out in 77, we came out in 79. And people go ‘Oh, they’re just copying Boston!’ And that wasn’t the case at all. Essentially, the name New England, was because (number one), we’re from the area, but we thought we were writing a new English style of music, because those were all our influences. So ‘New England’, that’s what it meant to us. It wasn’t necessarily, because of the area that we lived in, but partially. But there’s a new English sound by an American band. That’s sort of stuck.

Do you consider yourself more of a singer or drummer, or do you like adding the singing, or is that kind of a, something you’d rather somebody else do, or?

Well, that’s a good question. I definitely consider myself a singer now. And, I’m actually playing less drums now than I was even two or three years ago, but… I guess I would say that vocally is kind of where I’m at right now, because I’m always writing, and if I’m coming up with lyrics and melodies, you know, I’ve got to put them down. So, I’ve worked with vocals now more than I have before, and it seems to be working out okay.

The first New England album did well; you had the hit off it, and it’s kind of easily found, and the second one, but the third one never got released up here. What was going on at that point that you guys didn’t have more of a deal?

I think Elektra Records, they had the second album, which is Explorer Suite, and the third album, Walking Wild. And, I’ll be quite honest with you, they just blew it. They just completely blew it for the band. The head of A&R in that record company was pretty lame. And they really didn’t do anything to help us out, and they didn’t distribute it properly. And I think that that was part of the reason that the band met it’s demise, is that it just didn’t get any support from the record company. And years and years later, here we are, I just saw a poll of the top 50 AOR bands ever, and New England was voted number 14! It’s like, okay, if the independent people are telling us that that’s what they thought of the band – unfortunately, the record company didn’t really log on to that program back in the early 80s.

That’s the one album I’ve never seen up here. The third album is a bit of a mystery. Who produced that one?

That was produced by Todd Rundgren, believe it or not. And Todd did an amazing job. I mean, some of the songs on that album are just incredible. “Love is Up In The Air”, “L-5”; there’s “She’s Gonna Tear You Apart”, which is the song I covered on my album. Todd did a great job. It’s unfortunate the record company and the head of the A&R department didn’t do their job.

The first two albums were co-produced with Mike Stone. How did you like working with him? He had a long history, worked with a lot of big bands.

Mike was unbelievable! Rest in peace, Mike Stone. He was a wonderful human being. He was a funny guy. He was great to be in the studio with. But yeah, he produced QUEEN right before he came and produced our band. The vocals, the sounds that he got from us were just amazing. He got great drum sounds.

This is a pretty cool story. So, we were recording, I believe it was at Cherokee or the Record Plant in LA. And, Geoff Workman was in the studio next to us producing the 1979 JOURNEY album (ed: with roy Thomas Baker). Well, I guess…they were just marveling at the sounds that Mike was getting. and low and behold, they hired Mike to record their next album based on what they’d heard from the New England album. And they asked us to go on tour with them. So, I can’t say enough about Mike Stone and his production abilities. I had always been interested in production and, recorded and was producing for many years after New England broke up. And a lot of the things that I do in the studio are just direct copies of what Mike did because it works.

Are you planning on doing any live shows either doing your own thing to promote this album or is there more New England shows in the works?

Well, I think that in the future, there’s a possibility that we’ll be doing live shows. A lot of the live stuff that I have been doing has basically been with myself, my guitar player Joe Filoni and my keyboard player David Sumner. We’ll actually go out as a trio and crank it up just like a regular rock band without drums and bass. And we’ll do like a 45 to an hour set of all of these songs with just the three of us. Because it’s really difficult these days getting a band together, getting people off the road. And everybody’s in a tribute band, so it’s difficult putting five people or six people together in the same room and rehearsing for six months and then going out on the road. So, we have our trio, which we do and I’m looking forward to doing some gigs in the future with that as well.

I know you did stuff with Warrior with Vinnie Vincent and the other New England guys. There’s that three CD set coming out on Cherry Red of all the recordings. I imagine you’re on that.

Well, I play on all of that stuff. I really didn’t have anything to do with the release of that and, I’ve disavowed myself from being involved with that particular record for a bunch of personal reasons. But all the stuff that’s on there is stuff that I played on and, I’ll tell you what man, WARRIOR was an incredible band and it’s just too bad that it didn’t work out. Vinnie got the offer to join KISS right when we were in the middle of recording all those songs and, obviously he’d be dumb not to take that offer. So, our band Warrior just broke up, and I came back to Boston and Jimmy Waldo and Gary Shea stayed out in L.A. So, that was that story. But yeah, it was fun listening to some of those songs and I’m glad that any fans that are out there of New England and Vinnie’s get a chance to hear this new music – or Old music, as it were.

Going back, who were some of your favorite songwriters, and what were some of your favorite albums growing up?

Obviously The Beatles. They were just such a huge influence on all of us. I think I learned Rubber Soul , it was, I think the first album that I ever bought. And of course I’d been listening to records long, long, long before that. My aunt was a huge Swing era fan so she turned me on to all of these – Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa…So I had a huge record collection of all the Swing era guys and then … I just became a huge Beatles fan. Songwriters(?)…a lot of people ask me, ‘who influenced you on drums?’ and ‘who’s your favorite songwriter? I’ll listen to anything that is quality production and quality songwriting. I don’t care if it’s Taylor Swift or if it’s Chris Laney from Pretty Maids. I love those guys, and I love their songs. So that’s kind of where I’m at with that. I really don’t focus on any individual, particular person for drums or for songwriting. I hope that answers the question but that’s kind of where I’m at. I’ll listen to anything at all that’s out there that has a great hook and quality songwriting.

I was kind of looking for a few of your favorite albums growing up that kind of influenced where you ended up, that type of thing.

All the Deep Purple stuff. Ian Paice is one of my favorite drummers out there as well. Of course the Beatles. I remember watching the Ed Sullivan show when the Rolling Stones came on and played “Get Off My Cloud”, and I remember that drumbeat was so melodic, and Charlie Watts just killed it, because I was transfixed to the TV.

So those are some of the things that hit me early on that were influential. Electric Light Orchestra were amazing! I love the songs, I love the production. Todd Rundgren – the Something / Anything album was something that I lived with. Humble Pie, Steve Marriott, those were the bands that I listened to. A lot of the English rock bands…of course, King Crimson and YES, I mentioned those guys earlier. And Bill Bruford, listening to him play drums was a mindblower! Just amazing.

Have you kept up with any of the Canadian bands from way back?

Not really. I visit my sister up in Toronto every once in a while, and I think about 10-12+ years ago there was this incredible show that featured all the ‘early 60s-70s artists. It was down by the lake front, in some warehouse type of building. Crowbar played, I think The Paupers played, Stichin Time… That was when Domenic Troiano was still alive, he was there. Mike McKenna from Luke & The Apostles. Luke and The Apostles were probably one of my favorite all-time bands out of Toronto. I still keep in touch with Mike McKenna. He was sort of a mentor to my band in Toronto, which was called The Blues Faction. And we played the village, we played all over the place in ’66, ’67, ’68 – right in those glory days, back in Toronto.

Are you doing any more videos for the new album?

Well, we did one for “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya”, I thought it turned out pretty darn good. And we’ve talked about doing a video for “Nothing To Fear”. I’m always doing a bit of video editing and throwing stuff up on my website (www.hirshgardner.com). Right now, there’s 3 or 4 videos up there, plus there’s a lot of blogging and other things, so check it out!

LINKS:

http://www.hirshgardner.com

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063736295524

http://www.newenglandrocks.com

https://www.facebook.com/NewEnglandTheBand