Rob Smith, Hayley Oliver & Richard Anderson present:
- “Something To Remember” (Released 2009)
Produced by Rob Smith @ Polar Music New Zealand Studio’s, Ratapiko, Taranaki, New Zealand

1. Drifting Away (R.Smith) (4:07)
2. I Can’t Help But Feel The Way I Do (R. Anderson, R. Smith) (4:03)
3. Something To Remember (R. Anderson, R. Smith) (3:36)
4. The Silence Of It All (R. Smith) (5:00)
5. Let’s Get To The Heart Of The Matter (R. Anderson, R. Smith) (4:33)
6. Love You Forever (R. Anderson, R Smith) (4:05)
7. Through The Heart (R. Anderson, R Smith) (4:09)
8. How Many Ways (R. Smith) (4:23)
9. I Believe In Angels (R. Smith) (4:06)
10. The Simple Things In Life (R. Anderson, R. Smith) (4:13)
11. You Might Think (R. Anderson, R. Smith) (3:23)
12. Days Gone By (R. Anderson, R. Smith) (5:29)

All music composed and produced by Rob Smith
Lyrics on all songs except “The Silence Of It All”, “How Many Ways Can I Cry” & “I Believe In Angels” by Richard Anderson
All Guitars, Keyboards & Programming by Rob Smith
Lead & Backing Vocals by Rob Smith & Hayley Oliver
Saxaphone by Robin Wellaway
Project Consultation by Richard Anderson courtesy of Polar Music New Zealand
Album Cover Art by Lucretia (Cousin Lucy) Dorey
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Song By Song: Writers Thoughts
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1. Let’s Get To The Heart Of The Matter
(R. Anderson, R. Smith)

Richard:
This was the first song that we wrote with Hayley in mind, well before there were any plans for an album. It instantly hit me how wonderful that Hayley and Rob’s voices blended together, this has gone on to be a favourite of a few people close to us…In fact my mother and Rob’s wife both love this song which is a nice thing I think. I’d not long returned from my first jaunt north to US when we got the idea to work on this song and was staying with my grandparents where I wrote this lyric in their spare room, It’s a nice thing for me personally to think of them when I hear this song…Grandad really fell for both Rob and Hayley’s musical talents too.
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2. I Can’t Help But Feel The Way I Do
(R. Anderson, R. Smith)

Richard:
Rob came up with the title and told me to write something with this title in mind, he’ll do that on occasion without an actual theme, just to trick me I am sure (laughs). Lyrically this one came to me pretty quickly, at the time I was going through a patch in my life that was quite blissful which was the complete opposite to what the song was about…but I have definitely lived this song. Once again the blending of the vocals really worked for me, I can tell you that Hayley’s vocal talent far exeeded many people I have worked with just on this song alone.
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3. The Silence Of It All
(R.Smith)

Richard:
I’d told Rob that if he had anything in his back catalogue that he would like to contribute to this collection then by all means feel free to go there. What he did instead was write this delightful song especially with Hayley in mind. The theme of the song is something pretty special, hearing Hayley sing this song it for me was one of those moments where I sat in awe. If I hadn’t have known better I could have sworn that Hayley wrote the song herself due to the fact that her vocal performance was so believeable, that takes a lot of talent to put across someone elses words as if you had written them. I think that also is a credit to Rob’s writing ability to be able to have written something to get that out. Sometimes some things are just meant to be, this is one of those songs that tells me that about this whole experience of working together with Hayley from afar.
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4. Love You Forever
(R. Anderson, R. Smith)

Richard:
Initially the lyric for this song was a bit different and in fact intended for another project, but as often happens we move things around a bit…Rob added some changes to the lyric that really sealed it for me. It was always intended to be a sweet and honest in intent, I love the harmonies on this track, it is a sweet song and for me one of my favourites on this album. After we had finished with this tune it was then that I got the nerve to suggest a whole albums worth of songs, it was then a matter of talking Rob and Hayley into it…which I wouldn’t have done had I any reservations about the quality of the material we would go on to write for this project.
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5. Something To Remember
(R. Anderson, R. Smith)

Richard:
We were thinking of a name for this project, baring in mind that it is different stylewise to what both Rob and Hayley had been working on. Seeing how everything was coming together I thought to myself how we would look back on this experience of working together as something pretty special…something to remember. Thankfully Rob and Hayley both felt the same way about things, there was a real connection there as far as the pooling of their talents was concerned. With that all in mind the title of the song was born, as was the name for the project. Once again I knew we were onto a winner for sure.
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6. You Might Think
(R. Anderson, R. Smith)

Richard:
We decided to try something a little different with this song, we’re all fans of Shania Twain so I guess in some ways this is a bit of a tip of the hat to her and her ex-husband who is a musical hero of mine. I like the fact that we were able to add in a bit of humour to this project, and full credit to Hayley for endulging my wim to have something a little sassy into the mix. This song always puts a smile on the face, both the album version and Rob’s demo.
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7. Through The Heart
(R. Anderson, R Smith)

Richard:
This one was actually a bit of an insight to an emotional experience of my own, the title was inspired by something that Rob had written to me in an email during a very trying time in my life…he had a point and was right about it too. It was nice to be able to put some of my real emotions into the lyrical content here…Rob and Hayley more than fulfilled their end of the deal with regards to bringing this track to life.
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8. Drifting Away
(R.Smith)

Richard:
“Drifting Away” by name and nature, this is the 2nd track that Rob penned for this album solely. Every now and then I will need to mellow out after a hard day rocking out with GONE WILD tunes (during the making of “Something To Remember” we have been working on our 2nd album), and what better song to calm the soul with?
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9. How Many Ways Can I Cry
(R.Smith)

Richard:
Having Robin play sax on this tune was something that Rob and I had discussed, we thought it was a nice way of tying in some of the sounds of what we capture with GW and also with some of Rob’s solo material to this project. We liked the idea of trying to take this away from being just a country album and more of a meeting of minds and styles. I know Rob is particularly pleased with this song.
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10. I Believe In Angels
(R.Smith)

Richard:
Rob and I have both written songs about angels previously with other projects,the fact of the matter is that we’re both believers in them. This is another one of those songs that really does it for me.
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11. The Simple Things In Life
(R. Anderson, R Smith)

Richard:
Life can often be so hectic that we go about living far too fast and don’t get to the point of saviouring all the good simple things. I’m one of those people that is quite content with the simple things in life as opposed to having the need to be a part of the in-crowd. My thought was to incorporate some of that into this project as I know Rob is like that as well. Musically i think there is a bit of a tip of the hat to Roger Hodgson (Supertramp), I know Rob has been enjoying his “Live In Montreal” DVD, it seems to have rubbed off…which is a fine thing!
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12. Days Gone By (A Song For A Friend)
(R. Anderson, R Smith)

Richard:
I’m sure we have all had moments in our lives where longtime friendships have changed for all manner of reasons without our really wanting them to. This song is all about reflection…I’m quite proud of what I wrote here actually.
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One On One with Richard Anderson:
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1. How did this project come about?

Richard:
At one point I was getting online to check out a lot of new and interesting artists that I thought might be worthy of contributing to another project that we have planned for a little down the track.

One night I stumbled across Hayley’s site and heard a couple of her songs, I thought that Rob’s father would really like the sound of her voice so sent Rob an email telling him to check her out and pass on a song or two to his father.

Lo and behold Rob really tripped out over her voice and commented that we should ask her if she wanted to work on a song or two….well a song or two quickly became an album, a real no brainer, it was only really seeing weither all 3 of us had the time to be able to dedicate to an album that really was of concern. I knew Rob was keen on the idea, and had said so…If I remember correctly his words were “If Hayley wanted to work on an album’s worth then I’d be up for that – But It’d have to be her idea”. I played the middle man on that one (laughs).

2. Have you enjoyed the processes of putting “Something To Remember” together?

Richard:
Oh yeah, It’s been a case of each song that is completed being meant to be I think. I’m sure both Rob and Hayley are pretty happy with their efforts, as well they should be. They’ve both been gracious in their working on this album, which is a bit of a bonus because quite often there will be moments where I’ll scratch my head where other collaborations are concerned and think that something might not quite be 100% in a team situation, In this case I’ve not had any complaints at all. It’s been a relaxed association, which I think having approached things a song at a time has helped keep it that way.

3. What expectations do you have for this album?

Richard:
Well all my expectations have already been fulfilled, 12 times over (laughs). The intention for us was to deliberately create an album where any one of the songs could be classed as a favourite, of course there are always going to be stand-out tracks for the other people that might hear this material, but the reality from where I sit is that each song stands up on it’s own and there are no duds.

From a label perspective, remembering that Rob and I run Polar Music New Zealand it would be nice to be able to get a bit more airplay for not only the songs on this album, but also for both Rob and Hayley’s back-catalogues to be acknowledged more.

However that all aside, I just look forward to being an old fart and remembering working with these 2 exceptional folk on a really nice album.

4. How do the songs compare to your solo endeavours?

Richard:
Well compared to my solo endeavours the guitar playing is a whole lot better (laughs). Actually at the moment I am not working on anything solo, I’m far too busy with GONE WILD and my work behind the scenes with Polar Music New Zealand. I’m sure that Rob and Hayley will answer this question differently however, but I do think there is a lot of nice melody type things going on that are very much a part of what Rob writes for his own material and indeed for GW as well, that’s always a consistant really because the fact is we like our music to have a nice melody, even the hard rock material has to have a good hook, listen to this album and those things are all there in spades.

5. What is it about Hayley’s vocals that inspired you guys to write with her in mind?

Richard:
For me the most important thing I heard was a clarity, you can tell every word that she is singing. Which as a lyricist is actually very important, there’s no use having lots of clever words and feelings in a song if it can’t be heard properly. I heard a lot of emotion in the songs she sang, they made me believe in what she was singing.

We also liked the idea of hearing what Hayley would sound like doing less traditional country sounding music, we encorporated some country things into this project and were never totally against it popping up, but given that Hayley has her solo material that leans towards the traditional material, we felt it best to try something different and see how that would go thus keeping it a seperate entity to both Hayley’s solo material and it also had to be different to other country-related projects that Rob has worked on with his father.

6. Whilst working on this album, you said you took it a song at a time…

Richard:
What Rob and I tend to do is wear a few hats at a time, we’ll be working on several projects at once and are often jumping from one project to another. During the making of this album we’ve been working on the new GW album, Rob’s also produced quite a bit of his fathers material and also worked on his wife Carol’s album. Whenever we’ve needed a breather from the hard rock material we’ve thought “right time to work on an STR song”. It’s been like coming down after a good night on the tiles to a nice wake-up…or something like that (laughs).

7. What has feedback been like to the songs that people have heard?

Richard:
The feedback has been great actually, I’ve had people of all ages marvel at how nice the blending of Rob and Hayley’s voices sound. We knew that it worked, but sometimes it’s nice to have other people realise that too. It’s been an interesting experience in this regards because even people that might not be into the lighter kind of music that is represented here, have expressed to me that they really like what they’ve heard. I think Rob and Hayley have both made a few more fans through having worked on this album.

8. How hard was it for you to lyrically put your head into the frame of mind that someone else was going to be singing your words?

Richard:
That’s never really a huge problem for me personally, as quite often I’ll write something just for the sake of writing it, never knowing where it might wind up and weither it will have music written at all.

With this project however I was mindful of the fact that in some instances I had to put myself into a different headspace, I would just relate to how women I know would react to different situations…at least in the instances where there were obvious female-intended sentiments to a song.

I was pretty relaxed about the prospect of where we were headed songwise, having worked closely with Rob for a while now on a few different things I knew that trusting him with one or two of these things was going to be alright…and yes there were cases where some trust had to be involved (laughs).

There were one or two challenges along the way, for instance when we were reaching the end of the album, Rob asked me to conjur up 2 new lyrics to put to music. At the time I wasn’t really in the frame of mind to be writing ballad-y type musical themes…but thankfully I had a technique that I knew would work for me, the muse was indeed kind in this regards (laughs). Thanks have to go out to Vince Gill for getting me in the mood!

As a whole it was really just an honour for me to be involved with this project, Rob could quite easily have written an albums worth of songs himself but was gracious enough to keep me involved and not just in the way of co-writing songs.

As a producer Rob was great about listening to different ideas that Hayley and I both had as well. We approached this album I think in a way that was a bit different too in that it was never a case of worrying too much about who wrote what or who got to sing what, I really liked that aspect of it all.

9. Will you 3 be working together again?

Richard:
There are some plans for some other songs to be tended to for another couple of projects where Hayley will be guesting on a track or two.

But as for a 2nd STR album, that’s not something we’re planning at this stage. We really want to saviour this album before thoughts of that happening are ever conjured up (laughs). We all have unfinished business where other projects are concerned that we want to finish up, then if we feel that making another album such as this is down the track then we’ll do it. Anytime Hayley needs a song for any of her solo albums then I am sure Rob would agree to lending his skills, as would I.

10. Just before we finish here, name one song on this album that you most personally relate to…

Richard:
I can’t name just one, I can relate to them all in some way…even those I didn’t co-write.
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Rob Smith & Friends – Co-Writes & Collaborations 2: Songbirds

- This upcoming project for 2009-2010 will feature Rob Smith performing songs co-written with other songwriters – all songs to be sung by female vocalists all hand picked specifically for this collection.

As yet we haven’t finalised the talent who will be involved with this project but songwriters/artists we can confirm as taking part:

- Hayley Oliver – an english country singer, most recently having collaborated with Rob and Richard Anderson on the “Something To Remember” collection. Hayley is also currently completing work on her 2nd solo album, and will also be heard on the “Co-Writes & Collaborations 1: Moments In Time” collection.

- Carol Smith – Rob’s lovely wife, Carol is currently working on her debut solo album “Tranquility” which is being produced by Rob, and will also be heard on the “Co-Writes & Collaborations 1: Moments In Time” collection.

Note from Richard Anderson (Polar Music New Zealand):
Over the years we have been lucky enough to have come into contact with some amazing female vocalists/songwriters who we had wanted to work with, it continues to amaze me all the talent out there. From time to time there will be those ladies with a voice just that much more amazing that’ll set them apart from others – what you’ll hear here are some of our favourites, all the tracks on this album will be specifically written for each singer. I’ll be working closely with Rob on this project once again and look forward to helping co-ordinate the talent and co-writing some of the songs. For us, Polar Music New Zealand has always been a sharing of (and learning) experience so it will be a nice thing to share our talents and experience with other likeminded people from all over the world – I think we’ll look back on these collaborations and be pretty proud of having taken on these projects, artistically we like to try and make each project we work on a unique experience. One thing that this will also allow us to do is to help the artists involved to promote their solo endeavours as well, something important to us is to help spread the word of anyone we work with.

GONE WILD – GONE WILD (Released 2007)
Produced by Rob Smith

1. Don’t Wanna Be A Star (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess)
2. Escape (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
3. The Good Ole Boys (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
4. Gone Wild (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
5. Heavens Above (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
6. Achilles (Instrumental) (R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
7. War Of Words (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
8. Don’t Need Them Blues (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
9. Montage (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
10. El Pronto Mofo (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
11. Ditto (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
12. Comfort Within (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
13. Introspective / Outrospective (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)
14. Turn Out The Lights (R.Anderson/R.Smith/M.Sturgess/N.Finbak)

Rob Smith – Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards and Programming
Richard Anderson – Vocals, Narration and Lyrics
Matt Sturgess – Bass
Nils-Ole Finbak – Piano, Keyboards, 12-String Guitar, WILD Guitars

Guest Guitar on “Montage”
- Chris Szkup (courtesy of Chrisca Music)

Sax on “Heavens Above”, “Don’t Need Them Blues” and “The Good Ole Boys”
- Robin Wellaway (courtesy of Quadraphonic Music)

Harmonica on “Don’t Need Them Blues”
- Carol Smith (courtesy of Polar Music New Zealand)

All vocal arrangements by Rob Smith & Richard Anderson

Released in 2007 by Polar Music New Zealand

for more info:
http://www.myspace.com/gonewildnz
http://www.soundclick.com/gonewild/
http://www.geocities.com/robsmithmuso/
http://www.myspace.com/robsmithmuso
http://www.soundclick.com/robsmith/
http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/robsmith

Rob Smith – Actions Speak Louder Than Words (Released 2006)
Produced by Rob Smith

1. My Sanity (R.Smith)
2. Why Did We Fall So Far? (R.Smith)
3. Actions Speak Louder Than Words (R.Anderson/R.Smith)
4. What Don’t Kill Me Will Just Make Me Strong (D.Sinclair/R.Smith)
5. An Angel Flies (R.Anderson/R.Smith)
6. What I Would Do For You (Solo Version)(R.Anderson/R.Smith)
7. Lets Get To The Heart Of The Matter (Solo Version)(R.Anderson/R.Smith)
8. In The Bottom Of A Bottle (R.Anderson/R.Smith)
9. I’m Gonna Miss You Baby (R.Smith)
10. Forget Yesterday (D.Sinclair/R.Smith)
11. Can’t Stop Loving You (R.Smith)
12. Inside Me (R.Smith)
13. How Do You Feel? (R.Smith)
14. The Woman I Never Knew (R.Anderson/R.Smith)
15. When The Wind Blows (R.Smith)

All vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards and programming by Rob Smith

except:
Backing Vocals on “An Angel Flies” by Catherine Smith & Laura Smith

All songs written by Rob Smith except:

“Actions Speak Louder Than Words”, “An Angel Flies”, “What I Would Do For You (Solo Version)”, “Let’s Get To The Heart Of The Matter (Solo Version)”, “In The Bottom Of A Bottle”, “The Woman I Never Knew” – lyrics by Richard Anderson, music by Rob Smith

“What Don’t Kill Me Will Just Make Me Strong”, “Forget Yesterday” – lyrics by Dawn Sinclair, music by Rob Smith

Released in 2006 by Polar Music New Zealand

for more info:
http://www.geocities.com/robsmithmuso/
http://www.myspace.com/robsmithmuso
http://www.myspace.com/gonewildnz
http://www.soundclick.com/robsmith/
http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/robsmith