{"id":16351,"date":"2019-04-10T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T09:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16351"},"modified":"2019-03-15T11:14:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T15:14:16","slug":"album-review-mike-zito-blue-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/10\/album-review-mike-zito-blue-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Mike Zito &#8212; Blue Room"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-16352\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/mike_zito_br.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/mike_zito_br.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/mike_zito_br-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/mike_zito_br-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Blues-rock guitarist Mike Zito\u2019s career has gone through a number of phases: currently recording for Ruf Records, he\u2019s near the peak of his powers. From 2010 to 2014 he was part of supergroup Royal Southern Brotherhood with Cyril Neville and Devon Allman. In the later part of the previous decade, Zito released three highly-regarded records on Eclecto Groove. And in the early part of the 21st century he self-released a string of albums as he sought to build his fan base.<\/p>\n<p>But before all of that \u2013 back in 1998, he released his debut recording, <i>Blue Room<\/i>. All of 27 at the time, Zito had just made the leap from crowd-pleasing covers musician playing roadhouses to an artist who wrote and performed his own material. Fronting a power trio that featured bassist Doug Byrkit and drummer Brian Zielle, Zito cut the ten tracks that make up <i>Blue Room<\/i> in a single session; he ponied up the $1000 for the session \u2013 in a St. Louis basement studio \u2013 out of his own pocket.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a pleasingly busy vibe to the songs on <i>Blue Room<\/i>; Zito\u2019s distorted yet precise guitar lines often engage in dialogue with Byrkit\u2019s rubbery bass figures. The song structures hew fairly close to blues conventions, but the arrangements lean in more of a rock and (occasionally) jam-band direction. Yet Zito\u2019s economical writing style means that the tunes never meander or wear out their welcome.<\/p>\n<p>When Zito tears out a solo \u2013 as on <i>Pull the Trigger<\/i> \u2013 his rhythm section makes sure to fill the midrange sonic space; the intensity never lets up. An occasional pig-squeal lick sneaks in here and there, and the songs display brief flashes of rock-star pyrotechnics, but for the most part, <i>Blue Room<\/i> is a song-focused collection. Zito\u2019s raspy vocals convey the grit and sweat that went into developing the tunes, and there\u2019s a swaggering, good-timing feel to the entire disc. Both by design and necessity, <i>Blue Room<\/i> is the rawest document of Zito\u2019s talents, and the album\u2019s first proper reissue lets current-day fans hear what the guitarist sounded like near the beginning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blues-rock guitarist Mike Zito\u2019s career has gone through a number of phases: currently recording for Ruf Records, he\u2019s near the peak of his powers. From 2010 to 2014 he was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,62,64,65],"tags":[3429],"class_list":["post-16351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","tag-mike-zito","cat-9-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16353,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16351\/revisions\/16353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}