I love Joey Kramer’s drumming. The perfect arena rock drummer, with his signature ride bell cutting through the wall of guitars (that 21" A mega bell bell ride sound...), has - almost exclusively - recorded with Aerosmith. Almost.
Has Joey ever recorded outside Aerosmith? It turns out, he did it a couple of times, and the songs are face-melting good ‘ol hard rock.
1981: “Renegade” - Renegade
In 1981 Aerosmith was falling apart. Joey Perry had left the band and Steven Tyler was hospitalized after a motorcycle accident and was unable to tour. When they were able to start recording again, Brad Whitford left after recording one song and joined the Joe Perry Project. Things were looking grim.
So Joey recruited his bandmate Tom Hamilton on bass, Jimmy Crespo on lead guitar, Bobby Mayo on rhythm guitar, and Marge Raymond (of Jimmy Crespo's former band "The Flame") on vocals and formed Renegade.
Renegade recorded seven songs in "SIR Studios" in New York City. At one point "Renegade" had a record deal, but Tom and Joey had to finish Aerosmith’s "Rock In A Hard Place" first, so the whole project got put on hold, and eventually dropped.
But the some of the songs made it out, and they're awesome:
1989: ‘Trash” - Alice Cooper
For his 1989 album “Trash”, Alice picked up his phonebook and decided that, in addition to his house band, he would have some friends over to record. Those friends being: Jon Bon Jovi, Ritchie Sambora, Kip Winger, 4 members of Aerosmith (Brad Whitford wasn’t in the sessions), Steve Lukather, among others.
Joey plays drums on the title song, along with Tom Hamilton and Jon Bon Jovi. A straight Kramer-type backbeat, with some mega bell here and there.
These are the only 2 I could find. Am I missing something?
