TRAVERS & APPICE
"IT TAKES A LOT OF BALLS"
Release Date: Oct. 04, 2004

Whenever rock icons like guitarist/vocalist Pat Travers and drummer Carmine Appice work together, enlisting the support of the ingenious all-round bassist, T.M. Stevens, into the bargain, the result is bound to be a technically accomplished masterpiece oozing sheer energy and power. The current album by Travers & Appice, It Takes A Lot Of Balls, certainly lives up to its promising title: real men playing rock music for people with guts. Powerful blues rock with gritty guitar riffs, driving drum sounds and intricate bass grooves mark the album’s 13 tracks – be it the compelling opener ‘Better From A Distance’, the ripping ‘I Don’t Care’, the typical Southern rock of ‘Can’t Escape The Fire’, or the tender sounds of ‘Hey You’. Pat Travers proves to be not only an expert when it comes to dynamic power chords and fast solos, he also sprinkles in fantastic slide parts and demonstrates with ‘Stand Up’ that he knows his funk rock. "The recordings were cut in one go, the album was written almost exclusively at the studio," Carmine Appice enthuses. "We’d planned one or two tracks, but the material seemed to almost write itself. I expect that our audience will love the CD. I’ve been a fan of Pat’s for a long time. This collaboration was definitely worth waiting for all those years."

Pat Travers has been one of America’s most renowned blues rock guitarists for over thirty years. His 1977 album, Makin’ Magic, is considered a milestone of the genre, his early shows (frequently performed barefoot and marked by wild gesticulations) were indications of a great career in the making. Travers was born on April 12, 1954, in Toronto, Canada. He saw Jimi Hendrix live, played with rock’n’roll legend Ronnie Hawkins and emigrated to London, where he brought out his first album. Towards the end of the Seventies, Travers had his most successful era in commercial terms, releasing the top sellers Pat Travers Band Live! Go For What You Know and Radio Active, featuring the singles ‘Boom, Boom’ and ‘Is It Love’, before moving to Orlando, Florida, where he concentrated increasingly on the American market. Metal Hammer praised his tracks: "Music that lives off a perceptible live character, and songs that Travers seems to produce off the top of his hat." He enlisted the support of renowned musicians like Jeff Watson (Night Ranger), Rick Derringer and Tim Keiffer (Cinderella) for his tours. 2001 saw Pat Travers participate in the Voices Of Classic Rock tour, which presented to enthusiastic audiences popular musicians from major Seventies and Eighties bands, among them Deep Purple bassist Glenn Hughes and vocalist Joe Lynn Turner, John Cafferty, Spencer Davis and Gary U.S. Bond, to name but a few. Every artist got to play three of his own tracks during this tour, Travers standing out with his classics ‘Boom Boom’, ‘Snorting Whiskey’ and ‘HotShot’.

Drummer Carmine Appice has garnered countless awards and prizes during the course of his long career, having formed the legendary Vanilla Fudge in the Sixties, followed by the all-star troupe, Cactus, a few years later. He went on to play with guitar legend Jeff Beck and bassist Tim Bogert in the trio, Beck, Bogert & Appice, worked for jazz rock bassist Stanley Clarke and played with Rolling Stone Ron Wood. Appice also toured with Rod Stewart and co-wrote world hits like ‘Do You Think I’m Sexy’ or ‘Young Turks’. In the mid-Eighties, he founded the heavy metal band, King Kobra, and later joined Ozzy Osbourne and Ted Nugent, Pink Floyd also being among the bands on Appice’s résumé. He published the textbook, ‘Realistic Rock’, which has sold over 300,000 copies, and his workshops and drum clinics have been breaking attendance records all over the world.

Bassist T. M. Stevens has also played with the most prestigious musicians of the rock scene, recording with James Brown, Nona Hendryx, Joe Cocker (Unchain My Heart, One Night Of Sins, Nightcalls), the Pretenders, Little Steven (Freedom – No Compromise), Tina Turner (Foreign Affairs), Billy Squier (Enough Is Enough), James Brown (Gravity), Billy Joel (River Of Dreams) and Steve Vai (Sex And Religion). In the Nineties, he also substantiated his excellent reputation as a producer. Stevens was responsible for the 1997 tribute album Black Night: Deep Purple Tribute, featuring guests like Joe Lynn Turner, Corey Glover, Will Calhoun or Bernie Worrell, and released three successful solo albums, Boom (1995), Sticky Wicked (1997) and Radioactive (1999), during that same period. His fourth solo recording saw the light of day in 2001.

It Takes A Lot Of Balls highlights the trademarks of these three exceptional musicians, and the result is a timeless, ambitiously recorded, powerful blues rock album that highlights not only the technical competence of each individual musician but also their exquisite songwriting. As Carmine Appice describes It Takes A Lot Of Balls: "These are some of the best songs that I’ve ever written and recorded."

TRACKS
Better From A Distance
Taken (The Iguana Song)
I Don´t Care
Remind Me
Gotta Have Ya
Hey You
Stand Up
Can´t Escape The Fire
I Can´t Let You Go
Rock Me
Never Saw It Comin
Keep On Rockin`
PT Slide