CinderallaTom Keifer, best known as front man to blues rock outfit Cinderella, has been working on a solo record for what seems like forever. While many critics and fans alike mused the work wasn't done, Keifer sets the record straight. In fact, his solo album is ready for release and includes some songs originally written for the ill-fated, turn-of-the-millennium Cinderella record that never saw the light of day, thanks to legal problems. For now, the solo release is all a matter of right place, right time logistics.

"I had the record pretty much ready to go back in '05 or '06 -- or I had a version of it I thought I liked -- then I had this voice problem kind of set in on me on the last tour we did in '06 and it's taken me three years to regain my voice," Keifer tells Noisecreep.

The 'voice problem' is something that's famously plagued the singer for years. With the downtime of retraining his singing voice, Keifer worked and reworked his solo album to perfection, getting the songs to a point that just felt right. Of course, tours usually accompany new records and when you can't sing ... how can you hit the road?

"During that period of not having a voice, it just felt wrong to go and get a label involved and release a record that I couldn't tour behind to support so I just shelved the record," Keifer admits.

Ever positive, Keifer used his downtime to learn patience and to become a better musician. "I'm much happier where it is now than where it was three years ago," he said. It's another one of those things where a lot of positive things came out of a negative thing. The downtime with my voice gave me perspective about the record I was working on, so that is kinda of cool."

For now, Keifer is gearing up for a summer run with Cinderella and is making plans to finally release that solo record. "I gotta find a label and get some money to release it. We produced it independently and we'll be looking to do something with that in the near future," he said.

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