Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We are all but stories in the end; it is how they are told and who by that defines us long after we have found a way to accept the great beyond and the next adventure awaiting us. If we are fortunate a good story-teller will take up our song and make us heroic; if we are privileged they will sing songs and craft tunes on fine instruments to make us sound unique.

At an age where many perhaps ponder life with security, Mike Zito reaffirms what it means to live with fascination, to take the fight to the limit and no matter what, no matter the breaks and punches thrown; to always Keep Coming Back like a man possessed by the thought of music being all.

Mike Zito and the Wheel, a band that really keeps giving back to the audience, represents the will in each return to the studio that the next album they make will do its assured best to top the last one and steer from the desire to sit upon laurels that in others become comfortable, that become content to wither and die. Keep Coming Back is the maxim of the indestructible, of the unyielding and resistant to the staid threshold that the beige and dull cling to and Mr. Zito does the unyielding so well.

The Blues infects the air between the artist and the listener; it grabs with great sincerity the heart and punishes it with a determined single-minded smile that ricochets across the abyss like a shooting star caught travelling the vast emptiness of space. With wonderful contributions from those that make up The Wheel and even the individual spokes on the album, Jimmy Carpenter, Lewis Stephens, Scott Sutherland, Rob Lee, Trina Shoemaker, Anders Osborne, Suzie Simms, Riley Zito and David Farrell, the collection of songs make for tremendous listening.

Songs such as Get Busy Living, I Was Drunk, the excellent Girl From Liberty and a very cool version of Bob Seger’s Get Out Of Denver place the musician in the realms of sincere appreciation, of being seen and respected as a vision of Blues and country glory. It can only be hoped that Mike Zito, in which ever form, does Keep Coming Back for it can only be good for the genre and for music as a whole if he does maintain that strength of purpose and song-writing guile.

Ian D. Hall