Every now and again a ‘Supergroup’ emerges that really hits the spot on paper and you just hope and pray that scheduling doesn’t get in the way of things progressing out of the studio. A New Revenge – made up of guitarist Keri Kelli (Slash’s Snake Pit, Alice Cooper, Vince Neil Band); singer Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens ( Judas Priest, Iced Earth, Yngwie Malmsteen); drummer James Kottak (Scorpions, Kingdom Come, Montrose, Warrant) and bassist Rudy Sarzo (Ozzy Osbourne, Dio, Whitesnake) are on the verge of their debut release – ‘Enemies and Lies’ (out March 29th on Golden Robot records). Now with the pedigree of the players you might be expecting something good, but prepare yourself – this is going to be huge! We caught up with Keri Kelli to talk all about the project and so much more…
Mark: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit today Keri.
Keri: Thank you. It’s bright and early in the morning for you Mark right?
Mark: Just hit 5 a.m. here!
Keri: Oh man (laughs) it’s afternoon here, anyway good day to you and great to hear from you brother.
Mark: No problem at all, it’s great to get the chance to talk. What can we say? ‘Enemies and Lovers’ has to be one of the biggest debuts we’ve heard in a long time, people are gonna love this.
Keri: I hope so!
Mark: I know you’ve probably been asked this a million times but just to give your Australian fans an insight into how ‘A New Revenge’ came together?
Keri: Sure, I’ll try to make a long story short. Probably six or seven years ago we were doing a tour, I was playing with Alice Cooper at the time and James was in Scorpions and we did a month long Russian Tour – all the way from St Petersburg on the West Coast to Vladivostok which is literally all the way on the East Coast. Soon a month long tour you have a lot of down time and I’d known James a long tie so we thought “Let’s do something for fun” outside of our other bands. And the promoter who was doing that tour who is one of the biggest promoters over there, who’s been doing it over 30 years, said “Hey if you guys get something together I’ll bring you over here”. So I called up Tim and he said “I’d love to jam, let’s do it”; I called up Rudi who knew the promoter Ed from a Dio tour, so he was in, and that’s how it started, it was that simple. At that point though the band was kinda like a ‘jam’ band as we call it where we played songs from the bands that we were involved in – Priest, Scorpions, Ozzy stuff and some Alice: but then it kinda evolved into where we are now. It’s been a process and it’s been a few years to get it to this point but we’re here. So that’s how it started – just getting together to have some fun and jam on songs with a bunch of coo guys who have known each other for years but never really played in a band together.
Mark: One of the things I guess that a lot of people don’t realise is that a there is a lot of down time involved in being in a band, a lot of airports, lots of waiting to do things, lobby calls, it all adds up.
Keri: Yeah the travel time usually! I always say you can pay me for the show, but I’d do that for free! Pay me for the other 22 hours of downtime and travel and all the nonsense you know!
Mark: So when you took the plunge and started to work on new original material, how did that happen, did everyone bring their own ideas?
Keri: Well how it started was when we did that first little tour, a two week run that was wildly successful, which took us by surprise. I mean we weren’t playing Arenas or anything like that, but we had thought we were just going to be playing clubs to 300 people maybe, but we were playing to maybe 1000 or 1500 each night and the biggest show we did was to 3000 people. So we were shocked, we did that run, then we did another and I think after that we started thinking “Man maybe we should write some songs” and we did, I think we wrote two or three songs in the beginning, we wrote one called ‘Here’s To Us’ which is on the album, that was the first song we wrote. But the process was that we took it very slow we were relaxed, we didn’t jump in and write 15 songs in a month, we wrote a couple then a month or two later another couple of songs. And everyone has hoe studios these days, I’ve got one at my house with a drum room and the whole nine, so it’s very easy to record. So I would just write some music, with either drum machine or the drum loops they have on the Pro Tools software, and I’d send them to Tim, Tim’s in Ohio, I’m in California, and he’d work on some vocal ideas or grooves that he kinda liked. He’d then send them back to me and I’d put them into the ‘sessions ’I had, and then once we kinda thought that they were coming along cool and developing nicely the we’d bring the other guys in and James would come down and cut the drums and things like that. So it was just a step by step process, but that’s how it kinda started with a few little riffs and ideas that I sent over to Tim, and we’d build like that.
Mark: So how are you feeling in the lead up, you’ve all lived with these songs for some time, but the album is out on March 29th, do you get nervous at all about releasing new material and how it might be received?
Keri: Yeah sometimes it’s a long time (laughs) but you know I never really get nervous, I’m happy about it. It’s so cool to be able to finally unleash it on the Rock and Roll community because we all worked really hard on the record and we’re all really proud of it. It wasn’t something that was thrown together – it’s been a couple of years coming. I just think it’s really cool. There’s some great guitar riffs, it’s kinda like classic rock, but the production is new and punchy and heavy. So I’m really excited and I hope it really resonates with the people.
Mark: I think now that people have had a chance to listen to the first single ‘The Way’ and they’ll be wanting more. It’s a cool song but there’s so much more great stuff on there. For me at least one of the revelations is Tim’s voice, it’s not screaming like you might imagine him in ‘Priest’, it’s rather melodic, I love it.
Keri: I think that is one thing that some other people who have heard the album have mentioned too. You’ve hit the hammer on the head, some people think just of ‘Priest’ and when he was in the band, and that (Keri does a rather good ‘high sustained note’ at this point) kinda operatic type vocal that obviously he can do but on this record, while there are still moments of that, there’s some great screams and notes still in there, but you’re right he shows a whole different side to his voice. It’s more melodic but it still does have the intensity that he can give in there, but it’s done very tastefully. I think it’s one of the coolest, and not just because it’s our band, but I think it’s one of the coolest records that he’s done even over the Priest stuff. I’m very proud of the record and I’m very proud of what he did. He did an incredible job man it was awesome.
Mark: He did, it certainly had me checking to make sure I’d not missed any of his recent work.
Keli: Absolutely.
Mark: You do have plans to tour which is great to hear, but scheduling is always an issue especially when the players have other projects on the go. I know you had issues with the video and one of the guys not being available, but you got a god stand in!
Keri: Absolutely we got Phil Soussan, who is a great guy who I’ve played together many times. He’s obviously known for his time with Ozzy and he’s got that great new project ‘Last in Line’ with Vivian from Def Leppard. But yeah, it is an issue these days when people have these other bands as well as their primary band I guess you’d call it, and with the record coming out right in the heat of touring season here in the United States, as you know I play with Night Ranger, and tings are in full swing for us, we’ve got a tour with Sammy Hagar coming up, then we have a couple of weeks with Foreigner, then a couple of weeks in Japan as well as one off shows and stuff. So unfortunately I’m gonna be pretty locked up myself through the summer, James who you’ve spoken to has reunited his Kingdom Come band for their 30th Anniversary; Tim is always busy and Phil and Rudy are busy doing their thing so things are very hard, I gotta tell you the truth. But we’re hoping to have some time towards the end of the year, the end of the third quarter, or most likely the fourth quarter, when thigs kinda slow down, at least over here in the United States, the maybe we can get over to see you guys or some of the Asian territories, whatever we can do. We’d love to play for people but it’s all about trying to carve the time out and the logistics of everyone’s schedule.
Mark: Technology is a wonderful thing in making it easier to bring together projects like this, but what upsets me the most is when you hear a great album like this and you never get a chance to hear it live, so I’s wonderful to hear you will get out on the road, and even if you don’t manage it down here, fans somewhere will get a chance to hear ‘A New Revenge’. Not that many bands even these days manage to get over to Australia, even established names like Night Ranger haven’t quite made it, and we’d love to see you over with them too.
Keri: There has been some talk about that, I’ll be honest with you. I know we have Japan I believe at the end of September and I’ve heard some talk about trying to get over there, so they might have some offers from Australia. As you know a lot of bands probably do Australia or New Zealand if they can when they tour Japan, but I’d love to get back man, I haven’t been over since Alice, probably about seven years or so since I’ve been over.
Mark: It would be great to have you back, I’ll put in my request for both bands please Sir!
Keri: (laughs)
Mark: Sadly we’re at the part of the interview where it’s almost time to say goodbye. We have a couple of questions we’ve asked everyone we’ve ever spoken to. The first of them is: If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album just to see how the magic happened what would it be and why? What’s the album that still resonates with you?
Keri: Wow, that’s a great question (laughs). Well, for me when you talk about creating albums I always look back to The Beatles, because they were breaking new ground and creating history literally, not just with their incredible songs but with their recording techniques and everything. So in my opinion ‘Rubber Soul’ is one of my favourite albums of all time, I’d have loved to have been there and seen what they were doing in developing the songs and developing those studio techniques. So I would go with that.
Mark: That’s a great one, so many musicians look to The Beatles but so many look towards those two end of career heavy hitters ones – ‘The White Album’ and ‘Sergeant Pepper’ but I’m with you I think ’Rubber Soul’ is where all of that experimentation really started to come to the fore.
Keri: ‘Rubber Soul’ was incredible in my opinion that was when they were bridging the gap between the old school where they were kinda playing in the studio live to when they were really developing these weird techniques with George Martin. Just from your question I know people are probably going to pick ‘Sergeant Pepper’ and things like that, and I think that any musician that knows anything, I don’t know why they would not. Of course there are some really great records by all the later great Rock bands like Queen, but besides their songs The Beatles were actually ground-breaking in the studio, doing such incredible things, literally making history in recording, not just with the songs. So you gotta go for The Beatles man!
Mark: Very passionately put. Which leads us to the easy one to close: ‘What is the meaning of life?’
Keri: (laughs) Wow, these are big questions man! The meaning of life? Man, I just try to live every day, love people, love my family, and just do the right thing man. So I guess the meaning of life might just simply be do the right thing literally. I might not have the exact meaning, we’re just all trying to chug along through this thing (laughs)
Mark: That’s so true. I think the last person I asked told me that they didn’t know but they were sure that as soon as you got close your time was up!
Keri: (laughs) and maybe the next question could be what you do after this life! Everyone would be stumped on that!
Mark: Exactly!
Mark: I think I’ve probably seen you play live a dozen times over the years with various different bands so it’s been great to finally get a chance to talk today.
Keri: Cool, thank you Mark, no problem brother.
Mark: I also think that this is probably my album of the year so far, there’s just so much on there to love, as soon as you hear the opening notes to ’The Distance Between’ you know you’re in for something special and then when ‘The Way’ cranks up, that sold it for me, but at the moment, and it changes constantly I’m digging ‘Glorious’ and the first song I think you said you wrote: ‘Here’s to Us’.
Keri: Yeah that was the first song we put together literally, it really was, the song is pretty cool the riff is cool and it’s cool in what it says too – talking about the Hard Rock community, you know what I mean.
Mark: As someone who has lived with these songs for quite a while, what are you most looking forward to playing live?
Keri: I’d like to play them all man! I love songs that have a great tempo and a big groove! ‘The Way’ has a great tempo, ‘Never Let You Go’ is a real up-tempo one too, but I kinda like ‘The Distance Between’ which out of the gate goes for the jugular – bam! I think they’ll all go down well but like you I think ‘The Distance…’ will really resonate man, it’s killer.
Mark: The release is still a couple of weeks ago but I can’t wait to see the reaction when we play it on the podcast, this is gonna be huge! Thank you so much for your time Keri and hopefully we’ll see you soon.
Keri: OK cool man, thank you Mark, let me know if you’re coming over and we’ll catch up for sure.
‘Enemies and Lies’ is out March 29th on Golden Robot records.
A New Revenge will hit the road across the U.S. in support ‘Enemies & Lovers’ throughout 2019 and is looking at locking in a European tour later in the year.
