Cleveland’s Brian Alan Hager Releases First Segment of New 'Rock and Soul' Album

Local singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brian Alan Hager began playing guitar and keyboards at the age of 7, shortly after his mom passed away from diabetes and heart disease.

“My dad bought an organ, and I played that,” says Brian Alan Hager via phone. The veteran musician just released his new EP, Rock and Soul (Side A), today. Part of a new album he’ll release in phases throughout the year, the disc serves as a tribute to the rock, blues and soul music that has influenced him over the years. The music represents a departure from the "exploratory" and mostly acoustic and synth-based sound of his 2022 release, The Condition of Things.

After dabbling on organ as a youth, Hager gravitated to guitar. His friend had one, and Hager would play it every time they hung out. Then, his father bought him his own guitar, and he began seriously studying how to play the instrument.

“Music provided an escape, and I got some attention from playing it, and I just loved how the instrument sounded,” Hagar explains. “I remember just plucking the string on the guitar when it was still on the stand, and it just drew me in.”

Hager studied music at Tri-C with instructor Rich Holsworth and even went to Berklee College of Music in Boston for a year (a recommendation from Holsworth helped him get into the prestigious program) before starting to write songs and recording them on portable cassette players. He gave up music briefly to study computer programming and has held several IT jobs since.

“I went back to school for computers, but I never stopped trying the music thing,” he says.

In 2003, Hager joined the local glam band Vanity Crash and stayed with them for several years before forming his own glam rock band, the Chromes, in 2012. That band lasted for four years. Hager has also performed, toured and recorded with local blues artist Travis Haddix, serving as producer on several of Haddix's albums.

Looking to his lyric journal for inspiration, he decided to write an album at the end of 2022. He had been through a divorce and several of his older songs were angry, but he hoped the new songs would reflect his newfound positive thinking.

The EP certainly delivers on those emotions. “New Shoes” has a vibrant, power-pop feel to it and comes off as a whimsical ode to keeping grounded and feeling good.

“That was the first song I wrote, and it announces the new way of thinking and the new attitude,” Hager says of the track. “It's opposed to writing about how bad your life is. Playing out for the past few years, I got a sense of what people like. People don’t want to hear depressing songs all the time.”

“Tell Me What I Can Do” is much mellower but still has an edge to it.

“The whole record I was trying to stay in the vein of rock and soul,” says Hager. “[The blues-rock act] Tedeschi Trucks is like that. I want to do a neo-soul thing — but my artistic take on that concept.”

“Free” features a garage blues feel to it thanks to its grungy guitar riff that effectively starts and stops before slipping into a good groove.

Hager's unique live performances mix acoustic guitar with electric guitar as Hager records loops on the fly while playing additional guitar and singing over those loops.

“I like that everything is in time,” says Hager, who currently performs regionally as a solo artist at wineries, breweries, festivals and other venues in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. “I do like the creativity behind it, and each song is a little different each time, and I do a lot of guitar improv. I do each song a little differently every time. Almost every time I do a guitar solo, it’s off the cuff.”

Hager plans to release four additional tunes as a Side B this summer. A full 12-song Rock and Soul release, which will feature four additional songs, will follow in the fall.

Hager has booked more than 40 shows for 2023 and plans to assemble a full band later this year. He performs every second Wednesday of the month at the Winery at Wolf Creek in Barberton, and his current show schedule can be found at his website.

Rock and Soul is available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. The album will be available on vinyl too.

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