KENNY TUDRICK (GATE) (LTD)

Kenny Tudrick's self-titled double-album, now available in limited quantities as a Double LP with 19 tracks of pure unadulterated alt-country-rock bliss. Kenny was drumming by the age of eight, by the age of nine he booked his first gig at the elementary school. By seventeen, it was time to split. Alone in his '78 Chevy big block- a Phillipshead, some duct tape, a razor his only emergency equipment, the teenage Tudrick looked westward, challenging himself to survive and adapt. The youngest son of a Glasgow-native mother and a Canadian father who expatriated to the states to become a United States Marine during the Vietnam War, Tudrick's impulse to see the country that would draw his father from his roots was more than a road trip, it was a pilgrimage. Finding himself a long way from home, he immersed himself in his job, traveling from towns like Lindsey, Oklahoma, Mitchell, South Dakota and Fresno, California. The teenager would spend months living in one-room apartments, many times without a phone. He remained on the road for three years, filling his days with blue collar labor, coming home at night to an empty room and a guitar. 'That's when I manned up,' Tudrick explains. He remembers the seclusion well and how it fed the scary-but-somehow-obvious notion that music was what he had to do with his life. He left Detroit as a drummer, but came back a multi-instrumentalist on a songwriting tear. Upon returning home, Tudrick was aggressively sought after, working with a lion's share of the early aught Detroit garage rock revival outfits. He did studio work on future gold and platinum records while touring and working on his own music. Years of experience with bands, both his own incarnations and those he was a member of, contributed to the ideas, melodies, bridges and refrains that resulted in this loosened freshet that is his double album, each song more beautifully crafted than the last. This debut is a love letter, a look inward, a rally cry and a mea culpa. It's a fully formed recording steeped in high musical tastes, Americana, gorgeous singing, masterful musicianship and deep, low down emotion. The songs range from acoustic finger-style to soaring compositions. Breaking free from ego-centricities with a rarified raw honesty at times, Tudrick is positively Steinbeckian. The whopping 19 tracks are an unusual amalgam of masculine energy and compassion. He is a man who has seen life, for better and for worse, uttering phrases like, 'All I ever wanted was to be fine...,' he is a man who has fallen in love, and you can hear it.