MySpace Site:
http://www.myspace.com/sixhourslive
Official Website:
http://www.sixhoursonline.com (coming soon)
Band Bio:
Formed in early 2006 out of the ashes of Australian rockers Stand, vocalist Ben Walton and guitarist Paul Drennan have just released their debut self titled album Six Hours. A founding member of Stand, Paul Drennan released three albums with that band and toured around Australia on bills featuring acts like Alice Cooper, Collective Soul, 3 Doors Down, Peter Frampton, Sweet, Suzi Quatro and many others.
With his Stand bandmates, he also performed lead guitar in Mike Tramp’s Australian solo band for 3 years and performs with Bruce Kulick in his solo band since his first solo tour in 2002. Ben Walton joined Stand in 2004 and quickly settled into his role as frontman and Rhythm Guitarist. Forging a solid writing partnership with Paul the two penned a large and varied bunch of new tunes for Stand pushing new sounds and styles into the fold. With the band becoming inactive in early 2006, Paul and Ben entered the studio to cut those songs that have now surfaced as Six Hours.
Ben Walton
What was the inspiration behind the band name?
“Six Hours” name came from the Alice Cooper album Dirty Diamonds, loved the track, the drama of it and it suited in some ways the type of songs we hopefully do best too. And we’re all big Alice fans!
How would you best describe your sound and who are your influences?
Straight ahead rock with a little drama and pomp. We are all very much influenced by the 70’s rock of Queen, Thin Lizzy, The Babys, Cheap Trick but also are right into bands like Collective Soul, Live, Goo Goo Dolls and Tea Party so maybe it’s an amalgam of that. For me personally its Queen, Kiss (anything pre 1996!), Cheap Trick, Sweet, Alice Cooper and John Waite but combined and in addition to the above acts, we’d be adding in Springsteen, Neil Young, Aerosmith, The Cult and Bowie.
In the past few years, you have supported and played with some of rocks biggest names such as Bruce Kulick, Eric Singer, John Corabi, 3 Doors Down, Mike Tramp, Collective Soul, Suzi Quattro, Peter Frampton, The Sweet. What have been some of your favourite memories from these tours?
We have been totally honoured playing with people like Bruce Kulick and Mike Tramp in their respective bands, not only do you learn a lot you develop good friendships as well. Bruce played on our new disc and I have written a couple of things with Mike that when he is done with his new album we will get back to completing hopefully. Some of the best memories are touring Indonesia with Mike and playing to some really big and passionate crowds and doing some TV shows there. We have had some proud moments onstage and some great Spinal Tap moments offstage (including getting our selves locked out of a venue right before our encore one night!). Opening for many of our idols like Alice Cooper, Sweet and Peter Frampton and finding out that they are really kind and generous people never trying to restrict or make life for the support band hard. Playing with Bruce we have had a stack of great memories the first show, we nearly melted onstage due to a heat-wave, a sold out club and no air-con and too many songs in the set list and right through to simply sitting on a lounge together jamming on songs that we both love and probably the fact that after all the years we have known each other we are very close friends.
Matt and Paul Live
What are your thoughts on the current state of the music industry, particularly here in Australia?
The music industry frustrates me sometimes! Having worked in it outside of playing guitar for many years I have seen things change not just in the live scene with venues disappearing (as well as the crowds that used to flock to see original bands) but also the ‘human’ passion for music seem to be zapped out of most of the record company people I know. There was a time when staff COULD make a hit even if a release wasn’t necessarily a priority release – someone with passion could turn an also ran into a hero and you just don’t see that happening much anymore. From the lack of creativity on promotional campaigns through to the lack of new music on most commercial radio stations I think it is so sad that music becomes just another commodity to hawk between advertisements on radio… I remember the days when you would be glued to it to hear a new song by your favourite band, whereas now in many cases you may never know an album is out…. Thank god for the internet!!
Where do you see Six Hours fitting in the music zoo?
Hopefully not in the reptile section!! Not only do we not want to be considered dinosaurs playing rock I’m terrified of snakes and when we opened for Alice, I wouldn’t leave the dressing room til after the snake had left Alice’s room!! Seriously, I hope that we can bridge a gap for people who like modern rock with old school rock, we like melodies, lots of energy onstage and playing with as much passion as we put into the lyrics.
Six Hours Live
Anything else you would like to add for the prospective fans out there??
Six Hours is really what should have been the next Stand album and anyone who liked what that band was will hopefully like what Six Hours has become. After 10 years it was time for a change and I think that the change can be heard in the music, its refreshing and the diversity in the songs we picked for the final track listing is reflective of the various styles and music that made us want to play in the first place. We had some very talented people help produce the album and what we achieved in 7 days of recording has made us pretty proud. If you like Bon Jovi you will probably like what we do, if you like Goo Goo Dolls we hope you’ll like us too!
