MIKE ZITO "PEARL RIVER Source: JazzTimes.com Date: 10/2009 Writer: Susan Frances

Guitarist Mike Zito radiates the strength and agility of a matador on his latest recording Pearl River from Eclecto Groove Music. The spiraling chutes and piercing spires in his chord movements are smoking with bluesy vibrations that resonate an Americana intonation relatable to Johnny Lang and gritty, swamp-blues tints in the brush strokes akin to Susan Tedeschi. Zito fires up all four burners in these tracks to create flames that tingle listeners nerve endings from the tips of their toes to the tops of their heads. The album is a full body experience that will spur howls and hoots from audiences.

There is a fierceness in Zito’s playing that displays a gritty, heartland rock brawn in tracks like “39 Days” and “Shoes Blues.” The porch folk grooves of “Big Mouth” have a hop-scotch bounce liken to G. Love And Special Sauce, and the country blues brittles of ”One Step At A Time” have an Americana tint that gives it a cheerful rustling. The showtunes stylizing of the chord dynamics graphing “The Dead Of Night” are powered by the grassroots coloring of the accordion keys played by Jumpin’ Johnny Sansone, while the funky jolts in the rhythmic patterns of “Sugar Sweet” are showered In burly flurries and feisty keyboard swizzles from Reese Wynans. The snaking lines of Lynwood Slim’s harmonica in “All Last Night” are cradled in soul-inspired sweeps, and then turns into a taffeta of softly lit embers caressing “Change My Ways” and foddered by rhythmic strokes swaying with a leisurely gait.

Mike Zito’s Pearl River is an ideal blues album with streaks of country, folk, Americana, funk, and grassroots rock that deploys uplifting vibes from every corner. It’s an album that never strays from its wiring of bluesy foliage. He may drizzle his bluesy chords with flecks of soul and funk, and attach gaskets of porch folk to its piping, but the bottom line is that Mike Zito is an exceptional blues guitarist whose music stirs audiences to get into the grooves. His music flows into the veins and moves the body in ways that can only be described as free and wild, and that is so sweet.