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Emerson Hart to headline Hard Rock benefit
Tonic frontman performs Tuesday

Preview by Joshua Maloni
Niagara Frontier Publications, March 6, 2008


Emerson Hart

If you could only hear Emerson Hart talk about music, then maybe you would understand why he feels this way about his love and what he must do.

He is determined to not become “that guy”: the uncreative, overpriced musician currently headlining in local arenas; the “superstar” who bounces from town to town in a souped-up super-bus, exiting just long enough to deliver the exact same set he’s delivered every other night. Hart refuses to be a robot in front of fans shelling out money to watch him perform.

As the antithesis of a prepackaged pop star, Hart, Tonic’s lead singer, has become a poster child for all that’s good about music. In fact, for someone who sings, “When will you learn just to give me/What I want, what I want,” Hart may be today’s least selfish mainstream solo artist.

Consider:

•He plays old songs. How many times has a frontman refused to play his former band’s songs? Sure, it can be annoying to sing old tracks when you’re trying to shill your new stuff. But, that’s what fans want to hear.

Hart doesn’t mind performing his old hits. “It’s not all about me; it’s about what people want to hear. That’s my job as a musician,” he said last week in a phone interview. “I wrote them and they’re still important to me.

“I’m proud of it. I lived it. I earned it.”

•He changes up his shows. One of the perks of going solo: “I can drive the show the way I want to drive the show,” Hart, 38, said. He’s even open to taking a request or two from the audience – anything to avoid falling into a rut.

•He is driven by the lyric. If Hart was in it for money, he’d just keep pumping out Tonic records. Since he’s not, he has to go where the music leads.

“The music lets me know what it should be,” Hart said.

Honest lyrics, many of which deal with painful childhood memories, characterize “Cigarettes.” While songs retain some of Tonic’s pop sensibilities, the album offers a more mature Hart reflecting on his father’s unsolved mystery. As he draws on memories of sitting in his dad’s Cadillac, smelling lit Marlboro Reds and stopping for gas in Jersey, he looks to the day when he himself will become a father.

“I can’t really control what I write,” Hart said, explaining the songs he wrote while on tour with his band just “didn’t sound like a Tonic record.” To be fair to his band, his fans, and himself, he took the material and transformed it into “Cigarettes & Gasoline,” his first solo album.

  
DID YOU KNOW?

As a member of the Grammy-nominated band Tonic, Emerson Hart was responsible for songs including “If You Could Only See,” “Open Up Your Eyes,” “You Wanted More” and “Take Me As I Am.”

“There’s a lot of stuff that I haven’t dealt with in the last 10 years,” Hart said. The resulting subject matter is material, “I wasn’t thinking about when I was 22.”

Performing these songs live has been a “great experience; very cathartic,” Hart said.

While the singer is enjoying his time alone, he doesn’t rule out returning to his band.

“I look fondly on the 10 years of touring and recording with Tonic.” Hart said, adding the next time he sits down to journal, “I could write songs that are the next Tonic album.”

In the immediate future, Hart has teamed with Hard Rock International to headline the music venue’s “March on Stage” concert series. The promotion, which recently kicked off in Universal City, Calif., comes to the Hard Rock Café in Niagara Falls on Tuesday, March 11.

The 21-and-over show begins at 8 p.m. Those in attendance can enter a raffle to win a Hart-autographed Epiphone guitar. Moreover, proceeds from the event will be donated to Musicians on Call, an organization that brings artists to the bedside of sick patients.

“I thought it would be cool to have a tour that would do that,” Hart said. Plus, this organization, “is hands-on; you feel like you’re doing something.”

The Hard Rock Café is located at 333 Prospect St. For more information, or for tickets, call 282-0007 or visit www.ticketweb.com.

“Cigarettes & Gasoline” is in stores and available on iTunes.