Iron Cowboy’s “Tattoo Of You,” out Sat., May 14 on iTunes, CD Baby, Rhapsody, Napster, ironcowboyband.com. It will also be available Sat., May 21 at Brews Brothers West (75 Main St., Luzerne).
by Alan K. StoutMusic Columnist
The band Iron Cowboy will take a new and exciting step in its career on Saturday, May 14 when it releases its debut CD, “Tattoo of You.” The album, a year in the making, features a mix of Southern-fried county rock, done NEPA style. And for the band, it feels fabulous.
John Davis, who handles lead vocals and plays acoustic guitar and mandolin, says that though Iron Cowboy is primarily known as a country act, its influences range from The Beatles and AC/DC to ZZ Top. And considering the blistering guitars that help anchor the group’s sound, there’s also — not surprisingly — a Southern-rock influence.
“It’s a heavy one,” says Davis. “In today’s age, with all of the genres and subgenres of music, nobody really touts anything as Southern rock anymore. But me personally, I was a huge Southern rock fan as a teenager, and I know a couple of the other guys in the band were the same. Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special, The Allman Brothers, Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet — that was an influence.”
Still, Davis says Iron Cowboy also loves country music, or at least what’s considered modern country. The band’s live show feature tunes by Toby Keith, Trace Adkins, Brooks & Dunn, Gary Allan and Luke Bryan. “All of those guys that are so big in Nashville today,” he says. “But again, if you look at a lot of the stuff they’re playing, especially guys like Jason Aldean, he’s rock. I would consider him more of a Southern-rock artist than a country artist, but we all kind of get looped into that one big genre of country music.”
Iron Cowboy was formed three and a half years ago and also features Fran Czuba on lead guitar and vocals, Mike LaNunziata on drums and vocals, Joe Michaels on guitars and vocals, Scott Wenrich on bass guitar and vocals and Gary Ottaviani on keyboards and vocals. The band will celebrate the May 14 release of “Tattoo of You” with a performance at the “ThunderBash” in Monticello, N.Y. The event is sponsored by a radio station in Liberty, N.Y., that has been very supportive of the band. Locally, the band will perform at Brews Brothers West on Saturday, May 21 along with Big Country & Tony, Cactus Jack and the Tommy Guns Band.
“Tattoo of You” was recorded at JL Studios in Wyoming and was produced by Joe Loftus. In addition to the title track, it also includes the songs “Throw Your Love to the Wind,” “Dead Man Walking,” “There Goes Another Angel” and “Which Girl Tonight.” Some tracks were written by the band’s members while others were penned by friends in Nashville.
“In a word, accomplished,” says Davis, when asked how it feels to be releasing the CD. “It’s been such a huge learning experience. I was in my first band in 1977, and the other guys in the band are all a few years older than me, and so we’ve all been kicking in and out of this business since the ’70s. And until this project, none of us had ever been in the studio before. … Joe’s been absolutely incredible. In a sense, I think it’s made us better musicians. And it’s definitely made us better writers.”
Davis says the band has enjoyed seeing the reaction to the original material, much of which has already been played live.
“It’s been great,” he says. “People have been responding to it really well. You see a bunch of people out on the dance floor, and they’re singing along with you, and it’s not a Toby Keith song, it’s something that you wrote yourself. That’s pretty cool.”
The new CD features everything from old school honky-tonk numbers to power ballads, country and rock. Davis says he hopes people enjoy every track.
“I hope that they feel like they went on a bit of a journey,” he says. “That might be kind of an odd way to describe it, but because there are so many different writers, there are four different writing styles. Each song has its own sound. … It does kind of take them on a little bit of a journey, and I hope that’s what they walk away with.
And of course, I hope they walk away saying, ‘Gee, I can’t wait for the next album.’ We can’t wait to start in the second one. It’s been a lot of fun.”
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