Album Review: Head Over Heels

There is a deja vu familiarity to Eric Hill's songs. Every time I play the CD, I wonder, "Weren't these hits when I was growing up?" Of course that's impossible since he only released his first album in '03.

In a parallel universe, Hill has been a rock & roll superstar for more than 20 years. I must've plugged into some kind of multidimensional transmission, finding familiarity in the vintage words and chords utilized here, or maybe he has found the elusive formula of rock & roll immortalism, producing track after track of classic rock/pop like a "Greatest Hits" compilation, summarizing a long career.

Too many independent acts follow a pretentious avant-garde blueprint to achieve hipster cred. But wouldn't that go against the idea of being independent in the first place? Hill is following his own muse here - and he doesn't trip over his own ambitions even once. It us the listeners who are left head over heels.

Kirby Raine

Bio

This incredible journey on the path of music started for real only 4 years ago when I recorded the first album, Mended Again, at Millbrook Sound Studios. My plan was for it to be a personal project, a collection of my songs I could listen to.

But those songs had other plans. Mick Jones, founder of Foreigner, encouraged me to keep going forward. Mick gave me a quote for my early website as did Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels, bassist for Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Mick said: "Eric got it right the 'first time', his many new listeners will appeciate his fresh rock attitude." When Fuzzy heard some of the tracks and found out that I was a teacher, he looked at me and said, "Mon, you been in d'wrong business." That was cool.

So 4 years later things have come so far and in directions I never could have imagined. The return tour this August '06 in Scotland for the Benefit of the Cairn Mhor Childcare Partnership of Fife is the best example of how far the songs have taken me on the path they seem to have chosen. We went to Fife to play for Cairn Mhor in August 2005, and it was like living in a beautiful dream the entire time. This year it was like a double dose of dream land...and some single malt doses too.

My second album titled "Head Over Heels" was recorded and released in 2005, The album had an incredibly warm and present feel to it right from the start. The sessions were magical.

Now the project is on to the next level in so many ways. Drummer Ron Thaler, www.ronthaler.com, joined me for the Scotland tour and is now the official drummer. Bob Kaus has been the bassist for exactly a year now. Oscar Rodriguez has stepped in on lead guitar somehow balancing it off with the busy schedule of his own project www.nakatomiplaza.com. I have more than enough songs for a third album which I will record in January.

A partnership with The Duallist Drum Pedal company in Scotland is now in place, www.theduallist.com, and many other important relationships are in development. I am grateful to everyone who has believed in me.

But the most thanks go to the listeners and fans from California to New York and all the way to Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Scotland, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro...who have heard the songs, taken them to heart and brought them into their lives.

This is the path the songs have taken me on, and I can only thank everyone, including you reading this right now, for listening to them, and by so doing encouraging me to stay true to the songs and continue on this path. Thank you. Eric