For those unaware, Neal Smith’s newest album, KillSmith Goes West, the fourth in his KillSmith solo series, is heading in a whole new direction partner.

Neal’s percussive, musical and songwriting contributions and influence to the world of rock are undisputed. From the ground breaking shock rock direction of the multi gold, multi-platinum legendary band Alice Cooper, until the present, Neal has always taken on the challenge of exploring new musical directions.

Neal’s early music influences were not only rock, big band swing, theater and movie music, but also country western. Growing up in Ohio, his mother, who loved live music, would often take Neal and his sister Cindy to Fixler’s Ballroom in nearby Sharon Township.

Neal would often dance the “Mash Potatoes” solo with a clapping crown encircled around him, to the live band’s rousing version of “The Orange Blossom Special.”

That band consisted of a drummer, guitarist, fiddle player, upright bassist and a blind piano player named Clarence. Now any band with a blind piano player named Clarence has to be a great band and this was a great country band.

In the story-telling spirit and tradition of great singer songwriter legends like Franke Lane, Johnny Horton, Jimmy Dean, Tennesee Ernie Ford, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Neal continues in that Western spirit with KillSmith Goes West and his ten new Outlaw Country Rock songs!

1) Shaughnessy Highway
2) Tequila, Tamales & A Woman
3) Big Wheels Rollin’ West
4) Coffee, Beer & Borrowed Time
5) Pull It Out Smokin’
6) Sunsets Of Gold
7) If Jesus Was A Gunfighter
8) Jukebox Rose
9) Evil Wind
10) Tattooed Cowgirl

This emotively-charged, rhythmically-organic new album opens on the gorgeously lackadaisical Shaughnessy Highway and the harder Deep South blues rock of Tequila, Tamales & A Woman and then we get the furiously frenetic Big Wheels Rollin’ West, the laid back, porch-swinging balladry within Coffee, Beer & Borrowed Time and then comes the Killsmith foot to the floor rocker Pull It Out Smokin’.

Along next is the mid-tempo, fiddle-hued balladry of the softly sung Sunsets Of Gold and that is in turn backed by the dirty guitar blues of If Jesus Was A Gunfighter, the jaunty love song Jukebox Rose, the album rounding out on the atmospherically-imbued, countrified rocker Evil Wind, closing on the cultured guitar work that threads through the brilliant ZZ Top-esque Tattooed Cowgirl (She’s never settle down, she not the marrying kind. She’ll drive a sane man right out of his mind).

Featuring:
Neal Smith (rhythm guitar, keys, drums, percussion & lead vocals)
Rick Tedesco (lead, slide, rhythm, bass guitar, keys & backing vocals)
Peter Catucci (bass guitar & backing vocals)
Pete Hickey (keyboards)
Stu Daye (slide guitar, rhythm guitar & backing vocals, on Tattooed Cowgirl)
Arlen Roth (lead guitar)
Gary Oleyar (fiddle)

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