The Fullertones Spread the Blues with Gritty Debut LP ‘Stay Electric'

The Tuscany band present total riffage across the nine-track album

- DAVID BRITTO

It was at Italy’s Torrita Blues Festival while watching American musician Doyle Bramhall II in 2017 when vocalist-guitarist Francesco Bellia and guitarist Lou Leonardi decided to band together and form a blues outfit called The Fullerton. “I made a bet with Francesco that we were going to be on that same stage pretty soon,” says Leonardi. The guitarist walked away as the winner from the bet and The Fullertones – now joined by drummer Matteo D’Alessandro and bassist Lorenzo Alderighi – found themselves opening for English rockers the Animals at the festival the following year.

After impressing across Italy’s club circuit over the past three years, the Tuscany-based band felt the time had arrived to release their debut full-length nine-track album Stay Electric, which dropped at the end of June. Plans for the album initially began while Leonardi was on vacation in California where he played a few songs for the likes of guitarist Volker Strifler (of Ford Blues Band) and Irish-American singer-songwriter Shana Morrison (the daughter of musician Van Morrison) for feedback. He says, “They liked my ideas, so I started trusting myself more.”