Mike Zito & The Wheel
Album: Gone To Texas
Label: Ruf
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.mikezito.com

As Mike Zito points out, "Gone To Texas" was once used as a description for people who chose to run away from their problems and debts. The irony is that once there many of them confronted those problems and returned to their families better for the experience. Zito makes no secret that he considers that doing exactly that saved his life, taking him away from well documented drug problems and other issues.

Those drug problems and issues were barriers to getting his act together and sort out a way of getting his blues rock out there to a wider audience. Cleaned up and with a new band, The Wheel, Zito has found a label, Ruf, on which to release the album dedicated to the state that saved his life and gave birth to "Gone To Texas"

Quite simply the album fuses together blues and country rock and done so with a real panache. The silver lining in the cloud of desperation that drove Zito to East Texas is that both the events that lead to it and the recovery from those events provided some pretty deep moments and is there a better genre than the blues for expressing that?

There are genuine moments of despair and redemption captured within the words and riffs that make up the album, in places it becomes almost spiritual. In The Wheel, Zito has found a band that helps him to express to feelings and consequently "Gone To Texas" is an album that may well be one of the defining moments in the music of Mike Zito.

Neil King