Boston News

Boston leader Tom Scholz tells Billboard.com that he hopes to finish recording the band's next studio album after its summer tour and release it "just after the first of the year."

Scholz says the album -- Boston's first since 2002's "Corporate America" -- is a mix of "really straightforward rock 'n' roll songs and some things that are pretty esoteric.

"When I first started," he continues, "I was doing music that had pretty simple themes. Then as I got into (the Boston albums) 'Third Stage' and 'Walk On,' I got a little more technical and a little more involved, more complicated. In this one I'm trying to do both."

The new album will also include several songs from the 2002 release "Corporate America" that Scholz is remixing, rearranging and, in some cases, completely re-recording -- including the title track, "You Gave Up on Love" and "Someone."

"'Corporate America' was a really poor seller," Scholz acknowledges. "Very few people have heard it. I'd like to give some of these songs another chance to be heard."

Band member Brad Delp, whose March 2007 suicide "completely derailed" Scholz, appears on a couple of tracks on the new album.

Scholz says that at a tribute show in August 2007, he felt "very weird" about playing Boston music without singer/guitarist Delp. But he has grown more comfortable with the idea during rehearsals for the summer tour with former Stryper singer Michael Sweet and Tommy DeCarlo, a fan Scholz discovered via a Delp tribute DeCarlo posted to YouTube.

"Brad was the most amazing musician (and) singer I've ever known. There's nobody on the face of this Earth that could replace him and do what he did," Scholz says. "But I have to say that these two guys, Michael and Tommy, do a really impressive job of performing these songs live.

"So it seemed wrong not to take it back out, and there were an awful lot of people out there that don't want to hear Boston go away," he adds.

Boston's tour kicks off June 6 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Scholz has prepared a revised version of the group's "Greatest Hits" album to coincide with the tour.

Reuters/Billboard