The Record Company
All of This Life
Concord Records
I was lucky enough to catch The Record Company at the Gasparilla Music Festival in Tampa. The trio didn’t have a wild stage show, but they sure ripped the place up with their straight-ahead blues rock. Chris Vos plays stinging guitar, including some mean slide guitar on lap steel. Alex Stiff plays bass like a rhythm guitar player and Marc Cazorla holds it all together with the drums. I’d never heard The Record Company before seeing them in Tampa and the made a huge impression.
All of This Life is the band’s sophomore release and it delivers on the promise of the live show I witnessed. “Life to Fix” kicks things off with a primal blues thump reminiscent of Ram Jam’s take on “Black Betty”. It’s a song about pushing through hard times. Voss sings “I’ve got this life to fix threw it all out in a ditch, broke it down when I was sick, built it back up brick by brick.” You quickly notice a theme with songs like “I’m Getting Better”, “Goodbye to the Hard Life” and “I’m Changing”. While the Record Company are channeling the blues and southern rock, their focus is on growth, improvement and making things better. It’s a butt-shaking motivational seminar with lacerating slide guitar.
On the “Movie Song”, Voss takes a nostalgic look at his family and friends. Sounding like a wiser Ronnie Van Zant, he observes, “everyone wanna to make a movie, everybody acting like a star, but every time we get together, nothing changed at all.” Desire isn’t enough. Another song on All Of This Life lays it out plain and simple. You got to “Make it Happen”.
