Product Description
In 2004 Michigan guitarists Rusty and Laurie Wright put together the first incarnation of the group that would become the Rusty Wright Band. It was only the band's second show together when they opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd, a performance which garnered them a standing ovation and prompted Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke to exclaim "Dude - where the hell did YOU come from?" Fast forward eight years: Two acclaimed studio albums, an album of live cuts culled from several years of live concert mixes, successful international tours, headliner status on well over half of their concert and festival performances, a syndicated PBS concert performance for 2012, and an updated band lineup that includes former Grand Funk Railroad bassist Dennis Bellinger. The Rusty Wright Band made the leap from regional favorite to enjoying international recognition and performing at music events on three continents, and in 2012 the band made their national TV debut on an hour-long syndicated PBS program called Backstage Pass. The show was broadcast repeatedly across the country throughout 2012. Legendary recording engineer Al Hurschman (Nugent, Grand Funk Railroad, Heavy Metal soundtrack, Big Walter Horton, Mark Farner, The Romantics) figured prominently in the recording of both 'Playin' with Fire' [Sadson Music 2009] and 'This, That & the Other Thing' [Sadson Music 2013] which was recorded at Alliance Recording Co., a world-class studio hidden down a two-track road in a patch of woods near Ann Arbor, Michigan which started out as the Grand Funk Railroad studio formerly dubbed 'The Swamp.' For This, That & the Other Thing, Rusty Wright purposefully defies musical profiling, preferring to pay homage to the recording artists he revered in his youth - bands who were concerned more with creating memorable music than with creating the formulaic 3-minute pop tunes demanded by the major labels. The album is filled with various textures and vibes. Songs like 'Alarm Clock Blues' (Zappa meets Thorogood), Whole Lotta Rosie, a surprisingly hip and swingy re-working of the AC/DC classic; 'High Price Woman,' a straight-ahead blues shuffle; a monumentally cool rendition of Mississippi Queen with a Delta-style intro and groove-laden breakdown added to the middle; Baby Roll On, a joyful roller coaster of a song; and Handyman, a tongue-in-cheek Candye Kane-inspired swing ditty sung by Wright's wife, Laurie who co-fronts the band with him.
