All the way from Long Beach, California, my buddy and rock nyc writer Edward Huerta plays drums for this classic rock band with a lotta lotta punch and a way with a sound that straddles somewhere between a classicists coolness and a guitarists ambitions, and never more so than on the sterling guitar break on their latest song guitarist and lead singer Jeff Beal’s “I Tried”
I asked Edward to write something about the band for me and this is what he sent: “Jeff Beals guitar/vox/..Jon Melkerson lead guitar/vox..John Kelly bass..Scott dibble keyboards/vox..Ed Huerta drums/vox…we all write songs..ex members of Eggplant/OO Soul/The Lazy cowgirls…been together about 2 years..record in the back of a pawn shop with engineering by Martin Beal..all of us went to the same high school, Westminster, in CA..all of us surf still except me..we have been on the scene in many bands for over a century hahaha..blue collar stiffs that need to get music out of their souls to survive life..have many more tracks to come..issuing one file at a time.”
“I Tried” is a big time blues rocker which sounds like the way cali blues should, a deep bass and a very strong guitarist with a straight ahead beat, the song is about as good as rock gets in 2014, there is nowhere else for it to go. I love Jeff’s voice and here he nails it dead. I am not sure what is on Beals mind here, it could be a cold turkey with a sunswept sky in Cali with Monkeys sitting on shoulders and the sort of harsh blues that suggests maybe a lady is the problem, between satanism and heroin and heroine. romance as very big problems…
One complaint: it should be three times as long. This is a supersonic riff and you want to hear Rockford jamming on this time for a long long long time, five minutes isn’t enough. The band is so tightly wound and you can hear em waiting to break through and break loose and they have the structure set to do it in. Maybe live on stage is the place it happens
Grade: A-
