The official lyric/visualizer video for the song “Life Was Here” from Tom Keifer‘s #keiferband can be seen below. The track is taken from #keiferband‘s second album, “Rise”, which came out in September 2019.
In addition to Tom, #keiferband consists of Savannah Keifer, Tony Higbee, Billy Mercer, Kendra Chantelle, Jarred Pope and Kory Myers.
Produced by Tom, Savannah and Kyle O’Connor, “Rise” scales renewed sonic heights. From the tasty slide work that stamps “Touching The Divine”, the non-traditionally arranged, heavy, dark jam of “Untitled”, the breakneck thrust of “All Amped Up” to the tender coda of “You Believe In Me”, “Rise” signifies the ongoing evolution of the CINDERELLA frontman as a person, songwriter, and bandleader. It’s the aural portrait of an artist who, to borrow a phrase, is still climbing
“When this band came together, we all felt a bit like broken souls, each with our own unique story,” Tom explains. “If you ask anyone in the band, they would all say this band came along at just the right time. Every human who walks this planet faces challenges and extreme adversity they have to overcome. As a band, we feel fortunate to be able to face those things together. There is a piece of every band member in the ‘The Death Of Me’ as well as throughout the entire ‘Rise’ album.”
The common thread to each song on “Rise” is the intuitive interplay between each member of #keiferband, a tight but loose collective that’s spent the last six-plus years on the road honing their live craft together in support of Keifer‘s critically acclaimed 2013 solo debut, “The Way Life Goes”. “Rise” is the studio-bred equivalent of a band just now realizing the full scope of its powers.
“We were trying to capture the feeling of what people have witnessed live with this band,” Keifer explains. “There’s an off-the-rails, real live feel to ‘Rise’ — and that’s what we were going for. It shows a real kind of angst and reckless abandon that we tried not to polish too much. And when we pull it back on the ballads, it’s more about the emotion, the soul, and making people feel something in a different way.”
“To me, the perfect rock and roll record is perfectly fucked up,” Keifer says with a hearty laugh. “You try to make each record interesting and different. I don’t ever want to make the same record twice, even though there’s a common thread between them. Everything doesn’t have to be perfectly in place, but there is a balance you try to strike. Sometimes there may be something about it that’s technically not ‘right,’ but there’s a vibe, an energy and an attitude to it that I always try to preserve.”
Tom was scheduled to join forces with RATT, SKID ROW and SLAUGHTER for “The Big Rock Summer Tour” this past summer, but the trek was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic which is sweeping the globe.
Although CINDERELLA hasn’t released a new studio album since 1994’s “Still Climbing”, the band started playing sporadic shows again in 2010 but has been largely inactive for the last few years while Keifer has toured as a solo artist.
Photo credit: Tammy Vega
