Blues Rocker Lance Lopez’s new album “Handmade Music,” will make it’s long-awaited U.S. debut on MIG Music on March 6th.
The sessions that created Handmade Music took place in late June at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. For Handmade, Lance worked with legendary producer Jim Gaines (Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughn, George Thorogood), engineer Pete Matthews (Evanesence, ZZ Top), and assistant engineer Adam Hill (The White Stripes, Raconteurs).
“Working with Jim Gaines again and also working at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee again has been amazing!” said Lance about his recording stint. “Ardent is a very special place, where ZZ Top recorded about 5 records and Jimmy Page mixed Led Zeppelin 3. As a matter of fact we recorded in the same room ZZ Top recorded ‘Sharp Dressed Man’, ‘Cheap Sunglasses’ and most of their biggest hits. George Thorogood also recorded ‘Bad to the Bone’ in there!
Putting that together with legendary producer/engineer Jim Gaines and other great engineers like Pete Matthews and Adam Hill, it’s a magical combination!! There is such a vibe there and Memphis has its own vibe as well. We finished the last album “Salvation From Sundown” at Ardent and I knew when it came time to do the follow up, which will be called “Handmade Music” we had to do it all at Ardent.
“Handmade Music” has more of a good old rockin’ vibe and we had a lot of fun cutting the tracks. It’s also some of the best guitar tones I’ve ever recorded! The band sounds amazing on the new record as well, Bass player Chris Gipson played some amazing bass lines and sings background vocals on a couple of cuts as well. Drummer Jimmy Dereta played with amazing power and force, the engineers at Ardent were saying they haven’t gotten drum sounds there that good in a long time! We have been playing a lot of the material the last 6 months but after getting in the studio with Jim, who took and shaped and molded the songs even more, they are almost like completely new songs. We will be playing a majority of the material live now so if people come to a show they will be able to hear a lot of it firsthand!”
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I’ve listened to this record front to back about a dozen times over the last month and I can honestly say that it is for sure an early contender for Blues-Rock Album of the Year. With 2011 came alot of strong releases from alot of great blues-rock artists, Eric Gales, Chris Duarte, Joe Bonamassa, etc….but “Handmade Music” is kind of a cut above in my opinion. There are some SERIOUS fat tones on here, a handful of great covers and some DAMN good originals (thats a rare treat from alot of acts in this genre)…some guys just lick to spray you with licks and solos…but Lance has the material and songs to back up his mind-numbing playing – 4/5…Killer!