Billy
Alexander From Singing Hits To Producing Future Stars
Billy
Alexander From Singing Hits To Producing Future Stars
Billy Alexander who makes his home in Lake Forest,
California knows what it takes both in the studio and on stage to be a good
performer and to build a solid career in the music industry. The Fairfax,
Virginia native, who grew up in Maryland and Massachusetts was lead guitarist,
keyboardist and sang vocals with the late nineties and early 2000s with the band
FEEL, which also consisted of Scot Sax (guitar, lead vocalist), bassist Mark
Getten and drummer Dave Schaffer. FEEL was formed after the band Wanderlust
broke up. Getten and Sax were both members of Wanderlust, a band that toured
with The Who and Collective Soul and which had their own hit single, “I Walk.”
Getten and Sax then collaborated for a song “Summertime,” that became part of
the American Pie soundtrack and they recorded it under the name Bachelor Number
One. The duo expanded into FEEL and had two memorable hit songs, “Won’t
Stand In Your Way,” (# 18 National Radio Charts) and “Got Your Name
On It,” (# 28 on Billboard).
We will revisit FEEL in a few minutes, but when the band
eventually went separate ways and amicably Billy Alexander says, “I started
doing a lot more writing and co-writing and one particular co-writing session
was with a girl called Ginger Reyes (now Ginger Pooley) who later became the
bassist for Smashing Pumpkins. She
was an Orange County gal. People were telling me that a lot of my writing was
reminding them of what was called then, New Country. Bands like Sugarland and
Keith Urban were coming on the scene. It was Country Music, but it had a lot of
Rock and Pop fused into it. I think “Mutt” Lange and Shania Twain really helped
fuel that, because they took the whole Pop Rock thing and brought it into
Nashville. They did a real fusion number and that opened the door. That was
great for me, because I had never really been (traditional country). I listened
to Johnny Cash and a lot of the Rolling Stones records that were influenced by
some Country music and I loved that stuff. I just liked that some of the ear
candy Pop melodies and cool guitar riffs were allowed to happen in Country. I
dove into the world of writing, producing, doing demos and making trips to
Nashville.”
Fast forward and Billy Alexander is now producing
emerging artists such as
Alaina Blair,
Keesha Scott Hogan and Melanie Joe Marron.
Alexander says, “Keesha hadn’t done any writing and she
asked me if I wanted to co-write with her so I did. We wrote a few songs, one of
them being “Where The Wild Flowers Grow.” I said, why don’t we write a song that
introduces you to the public? We will use the song as your back story, who you
are and where you come from. I interviewed her a bit about where she grew up in
Indiana. I already had that title in my head. I had the music and the guitar
riffs. She covered another one of my songs “Feeling Good I’m In The Mood For
Whatever.” I had done it as a male vocal and I wondered how it would work if we
did it as a female vocalist. We went into the studio and I produced the record.
She had expressed the desire not to do just Nashville cookie cutter demos. I
like to do something that has a unique sound and for better or worse that stands
out from the pack.”
During one of his first co-writing sessions with Alaina
Blair, Billy Alexander says, “I started busting out on the guitar a riff and a
rhythm,” that became the song “Just Belong,” recorded by Blair.
What
is the approach that Billy Alexander takes when he puts on his producer’s hat?
“When
working on a lead vocal I make sure their personality is getting across, as well
as the delivery of the song and the lyric, which can be challenging sometimes,
because musicians, singers and artists can hear it through the microphone, but
they may be thinking their way through the technical part of their singing and
not necessarily feeling the lyric they are delivering. That is the biggest thing
that I keep an ear out for and I work with them through the song and throughout
the production. Whatever it is, it continually points back to who you are as an
artist and it points back to the song you are singing, so that it doesn’t lose
touch with either of those things. It can go off of the rails pretty easily if
you aren’t careful,” he says.
While growing up Billy Alexander says, “I had two older
sisters who took piano lessons. When it came time for me to go to piano lessons
I asked to not go back to them, because I just liked making my own music on the
piano. The structured form of lessons didn’t do it for me. When my mom saw two
of her kids go through it, she kind of checked that box and when it got to me I
was able to weasel out of it. (At ten) I was already into bands like Kiss and
Elton John and playing air guitar on tennis racquets. The kid up the street had
an acoustic guitar that he sold to me for thirty bucks, which was all of the
money I had in the world. I gave him the thirty bucks and I started teaching
myself on this very hard cheap guitar and then I started taking some lessons
about a year after that. I was playing nonstop.
The ambition was burning from the very first day. It was the desire of doing it
and the enjoyment of doing it. I felt ambition from the very beginning about it
and it never wavered. I had my own band as a kid and I guess I would have been
about twelve. It was really just a drummer and I and we would get some lights
and put on performances in the basement for neighborhood kids and at one point
for our parents we did a little showcase. We played songs by Rush and other hard
Rock stuff, Ted Nugent or whatever. I was playing electric and acoustic guitar.
I always liked to do both and I always liked the players like Jimmy Page who was
versatile and played different textures on the guitar. My next band was as a
freshman in high school. It was with seniors. I would have been fourteen then
and then at sixteen I was already playing out in clubs with people twice my age.
I remember not having to worry about it (his age and playing in clubs) unless
the older guys were worried about it. I guess, because they were so much older
they were my chaperones. Of course I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the bar for
drinks or anything like that.
I was on a little four track recorder at fifteen years old. I was putting the
tracks together and I was teaching myself how to make music in terms of
recording and producing demos. It (producing) was really out of necessity.
I was teaching guitar at a music store at seventeen.
I busted out of Maryland pretty quickly. I cut a demo in
’85 in Columbus, Ohio. My dad was living there at the time. I was trying to move
to L.A. and I inched my way west. I got to know some local musicians (in
Columbus) and I got into a studio and cut the demo. Once I had the demo in hand
I thought that was my license and my passport to head out to L.A.
I bought a broken down Vega that was painted flat black. It looked like
it had been spray painted. I had six hundred bucks and I piled in the Marshall
amplifiers and keyboards. I loaded up everything that I had. I drove all the way
out to California with six hundred bucks in my pocket. I landed in Burbank and
the first day that I was there I got ripped off. My keyboards were stolen out of
my car. It was sort of a welcome to L.A.
My demo had made it into the hands of a band and this
was before cell phones and they were trying to get in touch with me. The only
number that they had was my number back in Maryland. When I (talked to) my mom
on the phone she said this band in L.A. is trying to get hold of you.
She gave me the information and they (the band) let me live in their
rehearsal studio. I was trying to get up on my feet and to earn my own way. I
quickly realized that you can’t make six hundred bucks last for very long. I
just thought I was going to land, someone was going to hear me and boom there
would be a record deal and there you go. I
had no idea. I was nineteen, had a chip on the shoulder and I was as cocky as
could be. It didn’t quite pan out and I had to go back to Maryland. I got with
one of the bands back there that was touring the east coast and making money. I
was living in Hagerstown, Maryland, which is halfway between Baltimore and
Washington D.C. The band was called
Cracked Actor. I think they were named after the David Bowie song “Cracked
Actor.” It was a cover band, but they were really popular. I was playing guitar,
vocals and keyboards, mostly lead guitar. They played from Fort Lauderdale to
North Carolina and all the way up to Watertown New York. I was with them long
enough to save up more money and to get a better car. While I was doing that I
was writing songs and recording.
The first song that I wrote that I thought was any good
was a song called “Enemy Within,” when I was twenty. It was a little more in a
Progressive Hard Rock style. Lyrically it was me trying to be real in-depth and
almost mystical. The music that I was listening to at the time was like that. I
was listening to a pretty crazy mix, anything from Journey to Queensrÿche to Don
Henley (about 1986 – 1987). It was a strange mix of music and I was even
listening to some Jazz fusion players, as well as a lot of Classical music like
Bach and Vivaldi. I was really
wrapped up in trying to be a sponge musically. I wasn’t thinking about style. I
just wanted to soak up anything that seemed very intense and that seemed like it
was going to push me technically as a musician and something that I could grow
into.
Then I made the permanent
move back to L.A. again. I was a little smarter, I had a little more money in my
pocket and I was a better musician. That was about 1988-89. I started joining
bands in Hollywood. I was in and out of a few bands and I realized they only
really wanted certain things from me. I started putting a little bit more of
myself into these bands and sometimes I think they almost started resenting it
or regretting it or something. That was about the point that I decided I was
going to start my own band and I did. I wrote all of the songs and I had
complete creative control and not because I wanted to, but I felt that it was
easier. Nobody else was a strong writer, so I ended up being the guy. That band
was called King’s Ransom. It was more of a Progressive Rock band, lyrically and
melodically. Musically I had the ability to come up with some challenging riffs
and time signatures. I recruited a drummer and another singer from back in
Maryland to come out and join me in this venture and they had exceptional
musical abilities and chops to pull this off. I was the producer. I was laying
down tracks and boom it sounded like a band.”
That brings us full circle
to the band FEEL, before it was known as FEEL, and at a time when they started
to tour. “Then 9 / 11 happened. We still didn’t have a name, but we had booked
shows in New York for the week after 9 / 11. We were booked to play the Bitter
End in Greenwich Village and some other places. When 9 / 11 happened we all
called each other on the phone and we thought what should we do? Should we just
cancel these shows and not go? Nobody knew what to do. Then we came to a
decision let’s just go anyway. Maybe it is a good thing to still go there,
provided we can still get into the city and get into the shows. We saw Ground
Zero from the Bitter End. We just looked down the street and we saw the plume of
dust and they were still doing recovery. Those gigs had such an amazing feel to
them that we decided to call ourselves FEEL. It was Scot’s idea. He came up with
the name and I loved it. It was short and it was wow. It was a surprise that
nobody else had that band name before. I thought it was great, because you
always talk about the feel of the rhythm and you talk about the mood and the
feel of the song. Let’s be that. We really bonded and we had really good songs
and we had a little bit of heat from those guys and the American Pie thing. We
had some interest and ended up going ahead and making a record with Dusty
Wakeman who produced Lucinda Williams. We went into the studio without having a
record deal. Let’s just make an album and we will find a label that will want to
put it out. That is what happened. When we got hooked up with Curb Records we
were their guinea pig. We were their first Pop / Rock band on basically a
Country label. They were based in Nashville and they had Tim McGraw at the time.
They still do have quite a lineup of top Country artists. They did a great job
of promoting us to radio.
We toured nonstop for
about four months and zigzagging all over the country, north, south, mid-west,
east, west, just all over the place. We did most of (the travel) in a big RV.
When we set out from California it was warm weather and when we were done it was
snowing in Philadelphia. On the last day of the tour we were in Nashville to
stop off for a video showcase and the whole RV with all of the equipment was
stolen. We got through it. We had such an amazing experience. We were doing
things like recording live on the air in Woodstock New York. We played the
country’s only solar powered radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We had these
gorgeous views out the windows of the radio station that was on top of this
crest. We would go on morning shows and we would perform the single live on the
air. I would bring my electric guitar in there and they loved it. We actually
did two, “Won’t Stand In Your Way,” and “Got Your Name On It.”
We did two more records
and I co-produced them. The second one was called
Invisible Train and the third one was
called Steps To Reach A Human. The
band officially disbanded in 2004. Part of that was Scot scored a Grammy with a
song that he co-wrote with John Rich for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. I believe
the song was called “Like We Never Loved At All.” It put some money in his
pocket and he ended up buying a house back in Philly. We tried to stay together
as a bi-coastal band. There was no animosity. We started getting involved in
separate projects on the west coast and he was doing separate projects on the
east coast and it sort of fizzled,” he says.
You can read more about
Billy Alexander and listen to some of the songs he has
written and produced here.
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