Trouble

Johnny Nitro has weathered life-threatening surgery and presented us with a new CD, an impeccably produced, passionately sung album, distinguished by some of the last performances of the late great Stu Blank on keyboards.

Trouble includes some of the best guitar work Johnny "T. for Trouble" Nitro has ever laid down. No one else plays standup electric guitar on this album. No one else could.

Johnny's backed by his regular Johnny Nitro & the Doorslammers band of Silvia "Bride of Nitro" Cicardini on vocals and tenor sax, Burton Winn on bass and Chris Sandoval on drums. Trouble features four Nitro originals and covers running the gamut from Buck Trail's Seven Nights to Rock to Barrett Strong's 1952 Money -- not written by the Beatles.

Johnny's original Nobody Else's Arms is graced by the inimitable Freddie Roulette on lap steel slide guitar. The title track, likewise Johnny's, features Scot Brenton on harmonica and Danny Armstrong on trumpet -- before Johnny lets loose.

I'm Not Giving Up on You, written by Johnny and Silvia, has a gorgeously mixed vocal chorus and a terrific Stu Blank piano solo. Nitro's Flame Out lets him really rip on that old Strat, you might think of Jeff Beck covering Gene Vincent's Cliff Gallup. Mike Peloquin drops in a sax solo and Stu Blank tickles his organ.

Habitué's of San Francisco's Saloon of a Friday night, Sundays too, will recognize Yank Rachel's She Caught the Katie, Jimmy Forest's Night Train and Z.Z. Top's Tush. Johnny and the crew have laid down the best of it here.

Silvia's vocal on Money is amazingly strangely reverbed and absolutely appropriate, and her moving version of the Fenton Robinson slow blues Somebody Loan Me a Dime is offset by a stinging Nitro guitar run with bends you won't believe. Silvia nails James Brown's Try Me, Try Me too.

Trouble was produced by Mike Drew with help from Lee Parvin, Johnny Nitro and Silvia Cicardini. Recorded at Parvin Studios in Pacifica, CA, where Johnny used a Fender Vibro King amp miked to the max by Lee (Nitro looked like a damn astronaut). Mixed by Lee Parvin, Mike Drew and Johnny Nitro, mastered and edited by Mark S. Willsher (who also mastered Ron Hacker's new CD, Burnin')

August 21, 2003

Scott Palmer photo Who loves ya Baby?