By Robert Gray

The February 2009 reunion announcement from Los Angeles hard rock sensation MR. BIG marked the end of a seven-year hiatus, the band performing a slew of Japanese shows in June of that year to mark the twentieth anniversary of their self-titled outing. Immediately questions regarding a new full-length circulated, as bassist Billy Sheehan explains.

“We just wanted to play” Sheehan stresses. “We didn’t think about making a record, but people kept asking us 'Are you writing a new record?' over and over and over. It wouldn’t stop, and it actually started to be annoying. I just said 'You know what? We’re just playing – we don’t have any plans. We just wanted to get together, play and enjoy ourselves. If we wanna do a new record – which we can easily do – we’ll decide when we decide.' Towards the end of the tour, our manager got us together and said 'What do you guys think? You wanna do a record?' I said 'I’d like to do it, but I’m not doing it like we did the old records; I’d like to do it like we did the first and second Mr. Big records where we got together in a room and we wrote songs together.' It was fun, enjoyable and everybody contributed. Everybody else agreed, so at that point everybody said 'Ok, let’s do a new record.' We had no intention of doing a new record when we first got together – we just wanted to play. Once we played and it was enjoyable, then we decided to do a record.”

Mr. Big’s seventh studio outing was cut in the space of three weeks at The Village in Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, recording having commenced in September 2010. Mixing occurred at the hands of Kevin Shirley at The Cave Studios in Malibu, California. Reportedly, its material will be in the vein of April 1991’s Lean Into It. “We wrote very similarly to when we wrote Lean Into It and the new album was put together the same way” confirms Sheehan. “There’s mostly uptempo songs. There’s almost no slow songs, and a lot of the songs have a good sense of humour and fun to them too. It’s a fun record and will be really fun to listen to – there’s definitely some entertainment on there.”

Studio reports posted on Facebook by Kevin Shirley spoke of a “killer ballad”. “It has some slower songs but doesn’t have any songs like 'To Be With You', acoustic ballads” clarifies the bassist. “It’s a pretty heavy record, and of the ballad that Eric did – he’s a master at that – it’s just a beautiful piece of music, but it’s got some impact too. It’s a very strong song.”

Given the fact that Mr. Big’s last studio album (Actual Size) was released in August 2001, it’d be fair to expect heavier material from the quartet. “They’re heavier than anything we’ve ever done” assures Sheehan. “It’s as heavy as some of the stuff we did on Bump Ahead, certainly as heavy as 'Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy', and as heavy as some of the stuff on the first record. It’s cool, and there’s a lot of impact to it. I don’t think there’s anything in there that isn’t similar to other Mr. Big tracks, but it’s different in that it’s new and alive. It feels fresh, and the couple of people that we’ve had in the studio so far say it feels like it was made today. It’s a very modern record, not a retrospective.”

Mr. Big’s seventh studio full-length is slated for issue in January 2011 through Frontiers Records. Billy Sheehan’s Signature Set, a stainless steel roundwound bass string set which uses 43-110 gauges, is available for purchase through RotoSound, the man having endorsed the company’s strings for roughly 25 years.