56deluxe Band

56 Deluxe Productions American Music Jazz and Blues

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BlueNotes is not know for being an impulsive guy. Just the addition of a shirt to the wardrobe can bring sweaty palms and intense anxiety: The black shirt, or the other black shirt? Lawdy Miss Clawdy, what to do?

But a new and bluesy CD is another matter. A new album arrived recently, by AZ Kenny Tsak, an artist previously unknown to the entire BlueNotes staff (me and HoneyBoy). About 30 seconds into the first track, I impulsively realized that this fine and rocking, rollicking bluesy music just had to be shared.

Tsak is some kind of roadhouse-flavored bluesy rock and country guy, with a tough little band around him that swings behind sharp guitar work, driving bass, keyboards that roll like the river, and sax that's lusty to the point of embarassment. What more could BlueNotes ask? Well ... there is that. But let me not digress too much here.

The album, "Like I Do," is the first venture of Tsak and his band, 56 Deluxe (a 56 Deluxe Production). It's not the first music they've ever made -- Tsak was a D.C. area player, but gave up music in 1981, until he re-emerged in 2005 as 56 Deluxe, performing in Arizona and Florida, which seems to be his home base now.

Tsak plays tough guitar, writes tough songs, sings with an even tougher voice, and the band plays fine and tough music that gives you rock, blues and some country all with passion and abandon.

The title track, which is also the first track (why doesn't everybody do that?) kicks off with a raw sax intro that keeps on backing the vocal with call-and-response fervor, then takes a soaring solo that leads into crisp, mean guitar, that flows back into the tough vocal. Nothing profound here (other than the profoundness of intensely pleasurable music) The piano asserts itself on "Full Time Lover," (which has a killer guitar solo), but really kicks in alongside raunchy sax on "Walkin' Shoes." "12 Step Boogie," a rye lament about a booze-less life shuffles along, and then "Stoop Down Baby" adds raunchy lyrics to the raunchy music mix -- something for everybody here. It rocks from start to finish.

Read the entire article online at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

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