Band: E.Z. Riders
Album title: Experienced Zydeco Riders
Label: band (own release)
Distributor: band
Release date: 2008
Release: CD-R

Although E.Z. Riders may be considered a relatively young band its members are already seasoned musicians in the Italian Rock music scene!

Take frontman Alessandro Alessandrini (guitar, lead vocals) for instance. He began writing music and performing it in clubs at the beginning of the ’90 with the trio Poison Whiskey, after which he joined (in 1998) the locally popular British Rock-inspired Blues Rock act Old Tennis Shoes (with whom  he’d stay on for 6 years, years during which stages would be shared with the likes of Nine Below Zero and Tolo Marton, and leaving also a full-length album for history). In 2003 he forms Tony & The Southern Rockers which, as the name implies, plays a Southern Rock heavily influenced by Lynyrd Skynyrd. A band which again overcomes the purely local to enjoy more national popularity. In 2006 he also takes part in the reunion of Blues Dogs, the official Italian Allman Brothers Band covers act which would play with reasonable success at the 2007 Ameno Blues Festival. The gig is consequently reviewed by Buscadero (Italian magazine of rather importance) and put onto a live CD. The band then gets promotion from Milano’s Curtis Loewe, and the band is enabled to bring their music all over Italy.

Bassist/ backing singer Luigi Ridolfi is a Blues musician of considerable Italian repute, having started playing at the end of the ‘70s. During the ‘80s, he disstingwished himself in Rock Band Magazine, where he was joined by his brother Rodolfo on drums. In the second half of the ‘80s, Luigi joins Old Tennis Shoes, playing a determinating role in the success of the local band. When Alessandrini joins that band in the late ‘90s, the two start a lasting friendship and artistic partnership that continues with Tony & The Southern Rockers.

Based in Macerata, the twosome forms E.Z. Riders in 2007, convincing Luigi’s brother Rodolfo to come back into the music scene after an absence of almost 20 years. Their aim is to relive the legacy of the golden age of the American and British Rock and Blues bands of the ‘70s, playing original music that also explores in the fields of Psychedelic, “Southern harmonies”, even incorporates the occasional Latin and Country influences…and a certain worship for jamming in live situations.

Well, the jamming is something we would have to witness live to confirm, but meanwhile the trio has composed (penned for the most part by Alessandrini, with two songs coming from Luigi) and recorded 12 songs onto a full-length (just under 62 minutes long) album, recorded and released during 2008. The album’s already gotten positive feedback from many European and American magazines, and radio stations scattered around the world have played songs of it. In the UK, the album even gets an extra push from the Two Side Moon Promotion agency and, as you can see, it eventually ended up in Belgium…and on the to-do desc of Concrete Web! What I found is great Blues Rock with the occasional Psychedelic or Country infusion …music which definitely lends itself to lengthy jamming in the form of freak-out guitar solos! If I can nevertheless make one somewhat negative observation, it’s that one can hear from the lead singer’s vocal inclinations that he’s not really English or American born. Also, I would suggest he sings in a somewhat lower range on thhe octave scale, as to let his voice contradict Luigi’s rather high-pitched backings. By trying to flow together too much as they do now, I’m afraid Alessandro’s voice gets a slight nasal, heady quality…which may work somewhat annoying on some listeners. The guys alternate more Rocking Blues tracks with calmer semi-ballads (“The Way To The Heart”, “I Wish I Could Be Free”) and ballads (“Jeremiah Johnson”, album closing “Still Blows The Wind”) but then the mood of the album is overall on the laid-back side of things anyway, you know!?!

To get an idea of what the trio sounds like, you can either surf to myspace.com/ezridersband (where you’ll find no less than 6 songs off the album, enough for you to get acquainted with the band’s music, and for me to make my point about the vocals! Regretfully for the band, it’s those vocals which get a fair deal of points cut in the final rating of the album. Oh…before I forget, the band is apparently already writing & recording their follow-up album! I guess they have a home studio then, eh?

78/100

Tony.