Press | Toronto Star Article: ''Here's Bad News''

The Sardinas sound is particularly nasty, no-quarter, full pedal-to-the-metal wailing with angry voice spliced by shrieking yelps and a few nuggets of old-style straightahead blues, country cackles and bluegrass licks.

He writes his own stuff nowadays, words high on the hostility index. It adds up to a giddying experience, since his approach is over-the-top and then some. So eat your heart out lovers of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Allman Brothers, George Thorogood plus his Destroyers and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Sardinas is ready to take over.

With henchmen Paul Loranger on bass and Mike Dupke on drums, he'll be flailing his way through songs from his new release on the Favored Nations label, like "Flames Of Love," "Same Old Game" and "Bittersweet" as well as delivering the murderously swirling guitar lines on "Ain't No Crime" and the title track.

His axe work is extraordinary, and so is his intense way with rage-fuelled lyrics that reach an intimidating level.

Sardinas occasionally abandons the thrashing, exhilarating and turbulent mood he's created to present a rural meditation or an aching slow burner like "Liar's Dice Blues." His previous albums on Evidence (Treat Me Right, Devil's Train) were both stormy guitar outings sprinkled with gems from black bluesmen Hubert Sumlin and Honeyboy Edwards, but now he's breaking into new territory, seeking a sound that can be mistaken for no other. He actually claims that in those first two albums he was holding back rhythmically and lyrically.

So what's the mean monster of acoustic Dobro and electric slide like when he's not frightening your children with snarling-raw, she-done-me-wrong songs into his house of horrors?

Reached on the phone in Hartford, Conn. during a lengthy North American tour (he does 300 live dates a year) his tame alter ego -- the quiet-spoken 30something from Fort Lauderdale who believes he's doing nothing extraordinary -- takes over, ignoring pleas to reveal the source of his dark lyrics for "Sorrow's Kitchen" and "Four Roses."

"I just love playing. I began when I was 5 or 6 and I listened to Motown and rock and traditional blues. I learned by ear with the instrument my parents gave me," said the lefty who plays it backward as a right hander. It's unorthodox but it works.

"Ever since then I've been playing nonstop. I picked up aspects of traditional blues from hearing Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James and giants of the South like Charley Patton and Fred McDowell and rural blues singer Blind Willie McTell. They all had something to say, and so did people like Ray Charles and Elvis and gospel singers.

"But then I liked what I heard from the '60s and '70s, very organic rock infused with blues. I always liked hard rock and roll so what I'm doing now is pushing the blues envelope, trying to enrich it -- after all, it's the main ingredient of rock. My sound tries to tie it all together and it's obviously been filtered through the blues." With furious energy and passion.

Sardinas says he was never really involved in anyone else's band, although he's sucked up influences from all over.

"I used to play slide guitar a lot and some rock, I jammed too but now I'm discovering more about myself within the blues. You have to have something to say or else you won't go deep. I really want to open up musically and lyrically, shake the confines of the 12-bar thing and put it in the light, in the spirit of what was done in the past.

"I'm really glad I never followed anybody in music, I'm determined to be myself. As for my songwriting, I have always had a well of ideas and they're constantly changing.

"Hey, and I am just the way I look. I'm not a jeans and t-shirt guy. I'm comfortable with myself."

You have been warned.

Additional articles by Geoff Chapman

Reprinted with Permission.