Interview by Paul Salfen
Silverplanes debut album, Airbus was released on Make Records and Universal Music Group. Helmed by singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Aaron Smart, drummer and backing vocalist, Jesse Kramer (son of Aerosmith’s Joey Kramer) and bassist / keyboardist, Ian Baca, the band previously released the highly acclaimed EP series, Gulfstream and Bombardier in 2017 and 2018. Now, the band is returning with a full-length project of their own brand of psychedelic-tinged alt rock.
Silverplanes’ announcement is accompanied by the release of their single, “Down The Drain”, which comes alongside a futuristic and slightly ominous music video. The track offers introspective reflections on life’s fleeting moments and the search for meaning in a chaotic world. The video features Aaron Smart’s own father and son, along with mentor and producer Jack Douglas.
“Down the Drain is about life passing by so quickly and one day looking back thinking, how did I get here? What happened to all the things we were going to do?” says Smart. “Realizing you have changed but you’re still the same deep inside, and finally coming to terms with all the crazy things that have happened and resolving to carry on. The video captures various stages of myself visiting past and future.”
Produced by the legendary Jack Douglas (John Lennon, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick) and mixed by the late, great Geoff Emerick (The Beatles, Badfinger, Elvis Costello) Airbus is helmed by classic rock royalty. It strikes a balance between nostalgic and fresh, with timeless melodies that are ethereal yet grounded – melodic 90s alt meets ‘70s California rock.
“Silverplanes hits all the harmonics,” says producer Jack Douglas. “Musically and lyrically they strike the right notes. It’s driven by Aaron Smart’s keen sense of pop music history, in particular melodic British rock. Silverplanes makes the familiar sound new.”
About Aaron Smart: Aaron Smart is an entrepreneur, musician, and bon vivant. At Confidential, Aaron oversees strategy and creative. And when he’s not in the studio or doing business, he’s jetsetting overseas with a reservation at one of the world’s best restaurants. He’s an owner of Bar Henry, a well-loved drinking hole in Echo Park, Los Angeles, known for its ultra-curated, eclectic playlist and unique craft cocktails. He also owns Bar Supply, Inc. which sources and distributes rare and artisan-made glassware and bar supplies.
A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, Aaron has lived and breathed music from the time he could talk. He has played with rock bands in San Francisco and Los Angeles, including Paloalto, Supreme Love Gods, and Hayes. With his advance on a record in 1999, he started investing in vintage recording gear and eventually launched a recording studio, MAKE Records Studios, where the equipment is as unique as the artists who record there. Inspired to establish a record label for artists by artists, Aaron then co-founded the record label MAKE Records, focused on indie artists with unconventional sounds: psych rock, avant-garde jazz rock, and beyond. The distinctive artist roster includes Butch Vig’s band 5 Billion in Diamonds, The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, and Aaron’s own band, SILVERPLANES. SILVERPLANES is a space rock outfit crafting psychedelic-tinged alt pop rock gems, with Aaron on lead vocals and guitar, Ian Baca on bass and keys, and Jesse Kramer (son of Aerosmith’s Joey Kramer) on drums.
Aaron met Jack Douglas through friends in the industry in the early 2000s. Jack was taken by Aaron’s music and went on to become his record producer. In 2020, Jack joined on as a co-owner of MAKE Records, and in 2022, the two founded Confidential Records together.
About Jack Douglas: Starting out as a folk musician and performer, he worked on Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 senatorial campaign as a songwriter. Douglas then moved to England and joined a succession of bands before returning to New York to attend the Institute of Audio Research.
His first professional job was at the then-new Record Plant, not as a producer or engineer, but as a studio janitor. Soon he was working at the recording desk, as a recording engineer, contributing to projects by Miles Davis, The James Gang, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, Montrose, Rough Cutt, Artful Dodger, Moxy, Flipp, and Mountain.
A chance encounter with a group member led Douglas to help engineer the Who’s 1971 Record Plant sessions for the aborted Lifehouse project. Songs developed from these sessions were later included on Who’s Next (1971). Douglas was then given the opportunity to engineer John Lennon’s classic Imagine album in 1971. Douglas and Lennon formed a close bond and worked together for the remainder of Lennon’s life.
As a Record Plant staff engineer, Douglas also forged working relationships with Patti Smith, Blue Öyster Cult, the New York Dolls, Cheap Trick, Starz, and most notably Aerosmith. It was during the recording of the New York Dolls’ first album that Douglas was encouraged by producer Bob Ezrin to also consider becoming a record producer.
Douglas engineered and produced many of Aerosmith’s albums in the 1970s, including Get Your Wings (1974), Toys in the Attic (1975), Rocks (1976) and Draw the Line (1977), all of which have gone multi-platinum. Toys in the Attic and Rocks broke Aerosmith into the mainstream and have become highly influential, with both albums ranking among Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The close relationship between Douglas and Aerosmith extended beyond producing and engineering, as Douglas was also a musical contributor to the group when they came up short of material on their projects. For example, Douglas helped write the band’s 1978 hit “Kings and Queens”. He was often given the nickname of “the sixth member” of Aerosmith, due to his close relationship with the band. Douglas was replaced as producer by the band for the 1979 release Night in the Ruts, but Douglas was to again work with the group on 1982’s Rock in a Hard Place and several of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry’s solo albums. For much of the late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, Aerosmith worked with other producers, but in the mid-2000s, they re-united with Douglas on the 2004 blues cover album Honkin’ on Bobo. Douglas also produced the band’s album Music from Another Dimension! in 2012, himself providing the narration on the album’s opening track “LUV XXX”, parodying the style of narration from The Outer Limits.
In 1980, Douglas was working as producer with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on their Double Fantasy album (for which he shared a Grammy Award for Album of the Year). During the same sessions he worked on a follow-up Lennon/Ono album, Milk and Honey, but Lennon’s murder on December 8, 1980 cut that project short. An unfinished version of the album was released in 1984. Also in 1984, Douglas opened litigation with Ono over unpaid royalties from Double Fantasy. A jury ruled that Ono had wrongfully withheld royalty payments from Douglas and that he was entitled to $2.5 million from revenues for Double Fantasy and an undetermined share of revenues from Milk and Honey.
Since then he has kept working as an engineer and producer, reuniting with Aerosmith for three more albums and producing albums for artists such as Supertramp, Zebra, Clutch, Local H, Slash’s Snakepit and, in 2006, the return of the New York Dolls.
Douglas also taught a studio etiquette class at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts.
