Back to Basics

Mike Zito is himself again.

Guitar, bass, drums and the blues. It’s back to basics for Mike Zito. He’s returned to the riff-fueled blues-rock that inspired him to make music in the first place.

It’s been nearly a decade since Zito previously waved his guitar hero flag. His departure in late 2014 from Royal Southern Brotherhood— the supergroup that originally featured Zito, Cyril Neville, Devon Allman, Yonrico Scott and Charlie Wooton—helped him reclaim his six-string prowess. So did moving away from the singer-songwriter focus he’d pursued through most of the past decade.

And there’s another reason why Zito’s thirteenth album, Make Blues Not War, is a blues-rocking affair: Tom Hambridge, the Grammy winning Nashville producer whose other studio clients include Buddy Guy, Delbert McClinton, Susan Tedeschi and Kenny Neal.

“I was ready to start over, to turn this over to somebody else,” the usually self-produced Zito said. “For the first time in a long time, I wrote riffs. I told Tom what I wanted to do. He understood.” With Hambridge at the helm, Zito recorded Make Blues Not War at the Switchyard Recording Studio in Nashville. Hambridge and Zito cowrote many of the album’s songs, but the producer’s greatest contribution was helping Zito be himself again.

“Tom is into old blues and classic rock,” Zito said. “We grew up on the same stuff. I knew all along, when I decided to a down-and-dirty blues-rock record, he’s the guy.”