Night Ranger - Kelly Keagy
Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 9:36AM 
Night Ranger is one of those bands (like a few other bands) from the 80's, that wound up having a hit song, which was not indicative of the band's true sound. For Night Ranger, that song was "Sister Christian," a piano driven ballad, that wasn't even sung by their lead singer (Jack Blades), but to make it even more confusing, was sung by their drummer, Kelly Keagy. It's been 27 years since that song hit the air waves, and while general music fans may still only identify Night Ranger as - 'the band that does "Sister Christian"' - the band's diehard fans know that Night Ranger is a terrific hard rock band, much more capable than only being able to produce a "power ballad." Kelly Keagy still loves singing "Sister Christian" in concert, but more importantly, Keagy provides the solid backbone behind original members - bassist/vocalist Jack Blades, and unsung guitar legend, Brad Gillis. The 2011 lineup of Night Ranger is rounded out by new members - Joel Hoekstra (guitar) and Eric Levy (keyboards), as they are preparing the release of their latest CD, "Somewhere In California." "Somewhere In California" is the group's 10th studio album, and marks a return to the classic Night Ranger sound. RockMusicStar.com interviewed Kelly Keagy as Night Ranger was in the midst of rehearsals for their upcoming tour with Journey and Foreigner. Kelly seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the impending release of "Somewhere In California," as we got down to the nitty gritty on the making of the album.
RockMusicStar: "Somewhere In California" is the follow up to 2008's "Hole In The Sun," and is really a return to the band's classic sound. While "Hole In The Sun" had all of the necessary elements needed to make a strong group effort, it just seemed to fall flat, and doesn't scream 'Night Ranger.' Did you get any negative feedback from that record, and did it inspire the band to go back to it's classic sound on the new CD?
Kelly Keagy: With "Hole In the Sun" and the record prior to it, "Seven" (1998), we were kind of experimenting with whatever we were hearing around us. We were trying to move our creativity forward a little, and making sure that we weren't just being stuck in the past. I think the albums we did in the 90's and also with "Hole In the Sun" as well, we were trying to just experiment a little bit with new sounds and new directions, musically. That's kind of what those records were saying. We did get a lot of that (feedback) from fans, and from websites and interviews, and stuff like that as well.
RMS: When I listened to "Hole In the Sun," I heard the voice (Jack Blades), the high harmonies, Brad Gillis' ripping guitar playing - everything you'd expect from Night Ranger - but one thing there isn't a whole lot of is - keyboards. That was one thing that was kind of 'missing' for me.
KK: Sure. When you're experimenting with different stuff, you don't always go back and go, "Oh yeah. We need this because that's what we did before." We were just trying to do something that we hadn't done before. Some of the older albums, we didn't have that many keyboards either. The "Man In Motion" album had keyboards on it, but we were trying to go in a direction of 'more guitars' at that point - at the end of the 80's. Some of the albums in the 90's, we went with that approach as well. We tried to stay away from having too much keyboards, because we thought that it kind of stopped the creative flow of going forward.
RMS: I'm glad you brought the keyboards back for "Somewhere In California," as I really feel it's an important part of your signature sound. The keyboards sound really cool during the jam parts on the disc. Was it intentional to stray away from a traditional song structure, and have some of the songs jam out, in the way that they do on the CD?
KK: It was kind of, almost by accident. We tend to like to keep the song structure really tight, but on this, we didn't come in with any songs written ahead of time, or ideas formulated solidly - from each individual. The three of us (Jack Blades, Brad Gillis and myself) came in with basically no songs written. So what we did was, we said, "Let's sit down in a room, and jam like we do at sound check." Like we do for a pre-tour rehearsal. So the stuff started to come out that way. Brad, every day, would come in with a guitar lick. And that's not usually what we do. We'd just come in with solid like..."Here's the intro, here's the verse" or "Here's the chorus," and work it out from there. With this, every day Brad would come in with a guitar lick or Jack would come with a chorus or I would do the same. So that's how it came about. We just basically started jamming on stuff. So a lot of that musical ensemble playing came out of looking at it in that kind of mind set. We just stuck on the idea and said, "Wow, that's pretty cool, what else do you got?" (Someone would say) "Oh I got this other lick," and then we'd jam on that. Next thing, we'd have two (licks). This was in December of last year. So it was like, before the holidays, and we had maybe like, six things, that were just musical ideas. There were no choruses or melodies or lyric ideas. We kind of tripped on the idea of "Let's just jam this out." It really started to work for us. So we really got excited about it and kept it going throughout the whole album.
RMS: What type of contributions did new members Joel Hoekstra and Eric Levy make to the new CD?
KK: Joel was involved in writing two or three of the songs, and Eric came in and pulled some of the keyboard things together. They kind of pulled some of their jam band energy into it. Eric is in this band called Garaj Mahal. They're a total funk, jam band. He's been in that band a long time. Joel, he came from the Chicago blues scene and is into jazz fusion as well. He's got a couple of solo albums that he's done.
RMS: I think that it's great that you've incorporated the 'new guys' into the making of the new CD, as so may times when you hear about long time band members being replaced, it's not often that you hear about the 'replacements' being necessarily involved, like the original members.
KK: We really wanted to bring their ideas into the mix, in the early stages, and have them help contribute to the direction. We thought that it would be a really good idea to have them involved.
RMS: To wrap things up, you're about to embark on a huge tour with Journey and Foreigner, which will be coming to our area in August (10th @ Darien Lake). Will you be playing a good amount of the new songs in the set?
KK: We probably have like only one or two songs in the set, from the new album. With Journey and Foreigner, it's a three act show and we'll get about 45 minutes, so we're going to have to cover a lot of our history in a small amount of time.
Thomas