Hey San Pedro is the debut album from L.A. singer/songwriter Xander Smith. It’s a gentle, pensive indie folk pop record that falls somewhere between Gary Jules, George Harrison and Elliot Smith. With ten original tracks, HSP also includes one cover, a wistful take on Tegan and Sara’s “Walking With A Ghost.” It is available on iTunes as well as most digital sites, and will be made available in digipak CD form through his website and live shows.
In 2012 Smith launched a fan-driven kickstarter campaign to fund this project and quickly exceeded its goal – pulling in 5 times as much as originally projected. Thanks to his mentor Herb Alpert, he and co-producer/engineer Mike Harrison (Kinky/Bangles) borrowed the famous analog API console originally housed at A&M studios and began to record these eleven tracks. The resulting sound is very much that warm analog sound records had prior to 1972.
Smith sings and plays most of the parts, but gets help in the studio and on stage from current members/collaborators of Foo Fighters, Brazil ’66, and Madonna’s 2012 touring band.
HSP is a very different record than you might have heard from Xander Smith. Since 2003, Xander Smith has fronted L.A.’s shoegaze indie rock band, Run Run Run (RunRunRunMusic.com). RRR has released three albums in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Russia. The band can be heard on radio stations like KROQ, KCRW and KEXP, and have toured throughout the world with bands such as the Strokes, X, The Walkmen, Psychedelic Furs, Zombies and Mumiy Troll. They even co-headlined Red Square in Moscow in 2010. As a guitarist/multi-instrumentalist, Smith has both written with and/or shared the stage with Linda Perry, Rickie Lee Jones, Steve Perry, Monte Pittman, The Runaways, Adam Lambert, Dee Dee Ramone, The Violent Femmes and the Nymphs. Eclectic? You don’t know the half of it.
In 2012, Smith began to tour as a solo artist, and thanks to fan support and promoters across the globe, managed to play shows on 3 different continents, stretching from Los Angeles to New York City to Manchester, UK to Siberia, making up his band with musicians in each new town just like Chuck Berry has done for decades. Today, Smith has logged some serious miles as a singer/songwriter—both writing and recording songs that are reminiscent of his earliest influences like the folksy Big Sur sound of the early 1970s mixed with modern indie folk. Now, in the second half of 2013 he is ready to return to the road.