The latest effort from Rod Piazza and The Mighty Flyers will compel any listener to dance and perhaps even grab a harmonica or guitar.
Keepin' it Real combines great harmonica solos with equally well-crafted piano and guitar compositions. This dynamic blues quintet is driven by powerful drumming and ranges from walking bass lines to funk-style, slapping riffs on a few tracks.
Keepin' it Real draws listeners into a world where blues is still the most popular music in America. Envision a time when sitting at a bustling train stop in Chicago or New Orleans and a group of blues musicians jamming on the platform would not seem out of place.
Piazza's harmonica and band create this world. With energetic piano solos reminiscent of Thelonious Monk and creative melodies flowing from guitarist Henry Carvajal's amplifier, blues has woken from her hibernation and she's hungry.
Rod and Honey Piazza add the perfect amount of vocals to these 13 tracks and turn their voices into musical instruments playing passionately about a lover who just caught the last train to New Orleans or the night of a big blues party on the West Coast.
Drummer Paul Vincent Fasulo never drops the beat, even when playing some of his seemingly out-of-control solos. Bassist Bill Stuve backs Fasulo and the rest of the Flyers with his walking bass lines, but has a wide range of bass-playing technique available which is heard in tracks such as "Good Morning Little School Girl" and "Pretty Thing" as well as solos on almost every track.
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"Baby Please Don't Go" is probably the best track of the album. It combines a perfectly dirty guitar sound during the first solos and throughout, playing along with the piano and trading calls and responses with the harmonica.
Just because the Flyers are a blues band doesn't mean they're entirely behind the times in production effects. In the call and response, Piazza's vocals and harmonica have an impeccably dirty, fuzzy sound that gives "Pretty Thing" a feeling of being recorded in a smoky speakeasy during prohibition years. Then in "West Coast Midnight Blues," listeners are put into a mental state of someone leaving the speakeasy after a good night of blues with friends.
It isn't just about blues on the Flyers album. "Tick Tock" is a nicely performed '50s-style rock song with melodic, harmonizing vocals.
Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers will perform at the El Rey Theatre on Dec. 4. Tickets can be purchased by calling 800-585-3737.
Keepin' it real
Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers
Grade:A-
