A big-hearted, big guitar album that will leave a smile on your face.
Andrew Thomas Trongone has chosen to record and release his debut album after a couple of years away from music, having realised he had to get away and deal with his addictions before they killed him. A committed road dog with spells trying to get his own band off the ground, and as a sideman in americana jam band Yarn, he had returned to working in construction in South Florida. He began to get his love for music back, and lyrics and riffs started to work their way into his consciousness so that he was spending up to 2 hours a night writing songs. Luckily, he had a friend in Dave Schools, bassist in Widespread Panic; as his bio records, “Pulling into a Home Depot parking lot one day to grab some supplies for a renovation job, I paused for a moment, sat in my work truck and decided to call Schools.”
Schools quickly signed up to the project and have provided a professional and muscular production to match Thomas’ songs. It would be good to clear up a couple of the cliches that might come to mind at this point. Yes, this is a guitarist’s album, and there are guitars all over it, but this is not an ego trip; the guitar tracks vary in style and absolutely serve the needs of the song. He has a tight band supporting him with Josh Shilling on Hammond B3 being given space to balance and counterpoint the guitar work. There are swampy country honky tonks, grinding riffs on Dirty Work, the heaviest track on the album and a paean against the grind of blue collar working, and Runaway sees a mellow Hammond and slide guitar intro build into a satisfying Allman Brothers-style guitar solo coda to the song that fades too early.
This is Thomas’s debut solo album and his first fully sober. There are numerous albums out there where this would be the opportunity for some cathartic angst-based soul-baring in a couple of tracks or more. Not that I have anything against that, but this is not one of those. This is a loud, proud, grateful-for-this-life album full of positive moments of joy and exuberance. His vocals are also a very pleasant surprise, being more than capable of supporting the various styles throughout the album, from ballads to rockers, a whisper to a scream.
It would be entirely true to say that the listener will not find much they haven’t encountered before. Song titles like Freedom Song, Dirty Work, Little Love Machine and Down the Line will tell anyone around since the 70’s exactly what they are getting, but rarely has it been done better. The pleasure of this album is the singing and musicianship, the commitment and the sheer joy of playing. Thomas has taken his opportunity and grabbed it with both hands, and many guitars. The title track, apparently the first one written, is based on the revelatory realisation that he is not built for the blue-collar life; he is absolutely built for the road and playing live for people. The opening lines “Getting pretty tired of this old blue collar, day after day” ˋleading to the chorus “Cause I’m a highway junkie, not your ordinary honky, I like flying down the byway, yeah, and I like doing it my way”. Set against a rock’n’roll backing with layers of guitar culminating in a scorching solo, this track opens and sets up the album as well as giving it a title.
On the last track, Last One Standing, he does slow things down for a moody ballad with tasteful slide playing. This is the only track where he does pick over his previous addictions with the realisation that, as he was often the last one standing at the party or in the barroom, he was “Fighting myself, digging my grave.” The first verse, though, finishes with “but I can’t go back there, heading for a new life now.”
If you like your americana laced with country, rock’n’roll and southern boogie, played straight but with commitment and joy, and with some of the best guitar playing you may have heard in a while, then this album will put a smile on your face.
