Mike Zito Debut 'Blue Room' Celebrates Two Decades
20th Anniversary Edition Re Released Nov 16th
on Ruf Records
It’s
back. The debut album that blew up the ’90s blues scene. The songs that
announced the touchdown of a major new talent. In modern times, as an
established solo star and former member of the globally acclaimed Royal
Southern Brotherhood, Mike Zito’s reputation precedes him. But turn back the
clocks. Rewind the film reels. Slip through the wormhole to 1998, when a
27-year-old punk kid took his first shot in the studio. “Blue Room,” he
reflects, “is the beginning of me becoming an artist.”
By
1998, Zito had been around the block. Raised at the sharp end in St. Louis,
Missouri, he’d witnessed the lean years of the ’70s, as his father – a union
employee at the local Anheuser-Busch brewery – grafted to support five kids in
a cramped apartment. Music was a way out, with Zito learning his craft at a
downtown guitar store, then seizing any live work that fell his way. As he told
the Blues Mag: “I’ve played with country bands, dance bands, rock bands,
alternative bands…”
Blue
Room
was the moment of clarity, when Zito realised he was burning to be more than a
roadhouse-filling covers band. In 1997, he assembled a dedicated lineup and
announced his new mission statement: original songs written from the heart. But
artistic integrity didn’t come cheap. With just $1000 for studio bills, the
entire Blue Room tracklisting was captured in a single day, and you can
still feel the urgency flood through the speakers. “We’d played the night
before until 6am at an all-night club in St. Louis,” recalls Zito, “and went to
the studio at 9am. We brought beer with us and basically did not sleep. The
vibe is total bravado, full of honesty.”
Blue
Room
changed everything. As the album sold, the songs began to be requested live –
displacing the Cream and Hendrix covers – and Zito was heralded as an artist of
rare potential. Back then, he didn’t anticipate the bitter-sweet future about
to unfold – the lost years of alcoholism in the post-millennium, the salvation
offered by his wife, Laura, the plaudits of Royal Southern Brotherhood in 2012
and the rising trajectory of his solo career since he picked it back up with
2015’s Keep Coming Back. But when Zito looks back now at Blue Room,
he wouldn’t change a thing: “I find such joy in listening to the young man on
this recording. I’m so proud that it’s finally being released by Ruf Records
after twenty years…”
Blue Room out
on Ruf Records Nov 16, 2018
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