Product Description
MITCH RYDER - WITH LOVE
COMING FEBRUARY 21, 2025, RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY!
"With Love" was recorded at Rustbelt Studios in Royal Oak, Michigan between August and October 2024 and produced by Don Was.
Mitch Ryder - Vocals
Luis Resto - Keyboards
Brian “Roscoe” White - Guitar
Laura Chavez - Guitar
Dave McMurray - Sax and Flute
Jeff Canady - Drums
Mahindi Masai - Percussion
Chuck Bartels - Bass
Video edited by: Tino Sieland
When an artist of Mitch Ryder’s looks back over their storied six-decade career and tells you their latest album is essential listening, you should take that statement seriously. Ryder, as anyone who has followed the roots and branches of American music will attest, is one of the faces carved onto rock ‘n’ roll’s Mount Rushmore, and the spiritual forefather to every blue-collar firebrand – from Bruce Springsteen to Ted Nugent – who ever turned up their amp and hollered their truth. He’s the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer who was there at the flashpoint in the late -’50s. He’s the hitmaker who tore up the charts in the mid-’60s with Detroit Wheels cuts like Jenny Take A Ride and his reworking of Devil With A Blue Dress On. Amongst his myriad claims to fame, Ryder was both the last man to play with Otis Redding (in 1967), and the first living white artist inducted into the R&B Hall Of Fame (in 2017).
For many musicians of Ryder’s vintage and status, age heralds a creative slowdown and reliance on the hits. But as he broaches his eighth decade, the Michigan-born singer-songwriter remains in constant motion, his backstory only rivalled by what is yet to come. It’s an attitude epitomised by the new Don Was (Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Iggy Pop) -produced studio album With Love, released February 2025 on Ruf, and packed with tough, tender, personal songs that stand alongside anything in his catalogue. “Out of the 21 studio albums that I have recorded, this one is in the top two,” considers Ryder, reflecting on a catalogue that began with 1966’s Take A Ride with The Detroit Wheels. “It is one of the most honest albums I’ve ever made. Not that the other ones were lies, but I was able to access previously hidden feelings.”
The stellar musicianship was certainly a catalyst, but no doubt the real driving force behind With Love are Ryder’s ten new originals: as smart, satirical, witty and wry a collection of songs as the veteran songwriter has ever gathered on an album. From the woozy Latin-rock grooves of Oh What A Night and Pass It To The Right (an ode to joint etiquette at a hedonistic party) to Sanguine’s playful soul and the Stonesy chop of Wrong Hands, there is still no second-guessing Ryder’s songcraft. “Everything on the album is autobiographical,” he explains of a tracklisting that plays out with The Artist’s ghostly self-analysis and the joyous-sounding but morbid R&B of Just The Way It Is, exploring the inevitability of life and death. “One Monkey is about my drug addiction and how I overcame it. Fly is about my career and being happy about it, the trajectory and body of work I was able to produce.”
Incredibly, more than a half-century since Mitch Ryder first lit up the rock ‘n’ roll radar, With Love proves this lifelong visionary still has creative gas in the tank. “Practice makes perfect,” he smiles of a growing discography that is plainly the work of a man still reaching for something greater. “I haven’t gotten there yet but I’m working on it…”
MITCH RYDER
With Love
Ruf Records
Mitch Ryder is an old rocker who makes records as if he were a middle-aged blues man. In Germany, he’s a contemporary rock star who fills large venues when he tours. In the United States, he’s remembered as the leader of the Detroit Wheels whose mid-60s hits were “Devil With A Blue Dress On,” Jenny Take A Ride” and “Sock It To Me, Baby.”
This is his second album for Ruf Records, a German label that last year put out his double live album both in Europe and the United States called The Roof Is On Fire. The question then as it is now is why doesn’t he catch fire in the United States.
The ten cuts range from rockers “Lilli May” and “Too Damn Slow” to “Sanguine” which is – uh – sanguine with a guitar solo that punctuates and pricks. It was produced by six-time Grammy winner Don Was whose credits include The Stones, Dylan, and the B-52s. For blues creds there’s Laura Chavez on guitar.
In the album’s press release, Ryder says this is in the top two of the 21 records he’s recorded over eight decades and that the songs are all autobiographical, but he reconciles his see saw sequence of fame and obscurity with songs we can all relate to.
He’s been way up and way down and the lyrics take us there. “Fall in love with a worn-out clown/maybe it’s you/maybe it’s me” he sings in the opening rocker “Lilli May”; “Faster, faster, hormone disaster” on “Too Damned Slow”; “Now is the time to take a nap/just call me fly” on “Fly”; and “Once we’re old, no one needs us anymore” on “Just The Way It Is.”
I listened to this in the car many times before I wrote this review and realized this is not for casual cruising. Each song is self-contained, mature, and obviously the product of an artist and producer with decades of experience in the fast lane. So, the big question is will this release be an American breakout for a guy who broke the British Invasion’s hold on the American pop charts in 1965? If the Stones can cross over in both Germany and The United States, not to mention around the world, why doesn’t Mitch Ryder?
– Don Wilcock