Bullet from a Gun
The Nightshift Blues Band
NSBB Productions
1997
10 tracks
The Nightshift Blues Band is competent. George K. Tirpko, Gary Storin, and Jerry Salfi put out a tight, professional sound. Close your eyes and imagine you are in the most popular local blues club. Now imagine you are listening to the best blues band in your town, the band that has a CD released and everyone in town thinks should go national. The band that may never have more than a regional following, may never be more than local heroes. That's The Nightshift Blues Band.
Don't get me wrong. That's not a bad thing. These local stars often do interesting things with the music that you will only rarely hear from the big stars, who are lock-stepped into what their fans expect. Often, local blues bands tend to not always play pure traditional blues, to not always give blues songs a blues treatment, or to play songs from other genres with a blues style. This variance is always interesting and sometimes quite exciting to hear.
This is the case with The Nightshift Blues Band, at least on Bullet from a Gun.
Bullet from a Gun, while clearly a blues-based release, features a fusion of sounds that echo Motown (By the Book, People Hold On, Eyes on the Prize), pre-Motown Detroit rock (By the Book), rhythm and blues (Wild Man Out of Me, Complication), funk (Bullet from a Gun, What's the Measure of a Man), the R&B style that Alan Freed took to calling rock and roll in the early Fifties (Wild Man Out of Me), Sixties hippy-pop (What Remains is a Whisper), and pop (What's the Measure of a Man, Complication).
While the songs can be categorized as each reflecting a certain genre, each song also borrows a bit from other genres. Looking for some pure blues? "Jump Up Mary" is an up-tempo rocker that starts this session off just right.
There is a nice variety in singing styles as well. George K. Tirpko belts out "By the Book" in a hoarse voiced, hard rocking style. His singing has an edgy feel that suits the lyric perfectly. All three members of the band are credited as doing vocals, but except for "By the Book" no song is attributed to a particular singer. Some songs feature a very good fake-old-blues-singer-from-the-south presentation. There is a guttural feel to this voice, a deep throated growl reminiscent of early acoustic blues artists or of the young Louis Armstrong. Other songs feature the stylings of a sweet voiced pop balladeer, and yet others feature a mellow presentation reminiscent of Jim Morrison. It's an interesting and effective blend of styles.
Over all, this is clearly a blues-based release, but the sum of the cuts gives it more of a rhythm and blues sensibility. Because this impression is created, a number of the cuts tend to sound as though something is missing. It would be interesting to hear what would happen if The Nightshift Blues Band added a piano and a horn section to some of these cuts. Having more members in the band may make it harder to get local gigs (club owners being so frugal these days), but also may make for a stronger, fuller sound.
What makes this release unique and interesting is the songs themselves. Unlike most blues releases, Bullet from a Gun is not filled with covers of old favourites. Every song was written by the group's guitarist, George K. Tirpko. The lyrics are included in the liner, always a good idea with new original songs.
Tirpko is a skilled lyricist, his writing tight and evocative, his stories rich and involving. As might be expected in a release that includes ten new songs, some of the lyrics are weaker than others, but over all the writing is of the highest quality. "Eyes on the Prize" is the only lyric I would have left out, simply because it seems too derivative.
For the listener, Bullet from a Gun is an interesting release worth the price of admission. For The Nightshift Blues Band, it could serve well as a demo toward picking up a record deal that allows them a broader range of instrumentation. For George K Tirpko, it can certainly serve as a demo toward selling songs to other artists.|
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Review Written: March 7, 1999
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