FOGHAT Reveal The Family Joules!
by Martin Popoff

Blues metal legends Foghat are out touring summery sheds right now with Alice Cooper and Edgar Winter, but the additional news in the Foghat camp is that their latest album, '03's Family Joules has been relaunched with wider distribution, just in time for the tour.

For those who missed it first time around, now's your chance to get it (see www.foghat.net for more), hear some of it live, along with hits such as 'Slow Ride', 'Fool For The City' and 'I Just Want To Make Love To You'.

Lead singer Charlie Huhn, previously of Ted Nugent fame, had this to say about the record. "Yeah, actually I'm real happy with it. We worked really hard in four weeks to write and record the backing tracks for this. And I think we did really well under the circumstances, as far as putting together the whole thing from bare bones nothing to finish. I like quite a few tracks on there. It was unique for me working with old pros, and I had to recall that they are blues-rooted and groove-type players. And I had heavy metal influence in my career, so I didn't want that to clash with what they were doing. So there was a real education going on."

But the album most definitely celebrates the band's mix of roots 'n' riffs. "Actually, it's about half and half," affirms Charlie. "It's not real roots blues, but you can tell the influence, especially when you listen to Tony Stevens' (ed. classic era bassist) songs, 'Looking For You' and 'Hero To Zero'. They're really cool; it's like Savoy Brown all of a sudden pops into your mind. And I contributed songs like 'I'm A Rock 'n Roller' which is more of a metal influence. But when Tony played the bass to it, he smoothed it out so it's kind of like, wow! And that's the freedom we allowed everybody to have, and it made it so much more congenial. So it's kind of an interesting sound. I didn't want to go in there and say, no, you've got to play this. And Bryan (ed. Bassett; guitarist) has a few songs that have great riffs. We all kind of worked on the lyrics. Roger came in with the lyrics for a tribute to Dave called 'Thames Delta Blues', which I really think is my favourite, because it has acoustic slide guitar, it has electric slide guitar, it has electric normal tuned guitar and good dynamics, and the lyrics really lend well to a tribute to Lonesome Dave. It really describes well who he was and what he did. And I'm really proud to be able to do something like that."

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