We Speak Music
Mike Zito Returns to His Roots on Outside On The Eastside
Mike Zito has never been the type to romanticise where he came from. He has always been more interested in telling the truth about it. On Outside On The Eastside, his fourth solo album for Gulf Coast Records, he goes back to St. Louis, the city that made him and makes the kind of record that could only come from someone who left, lived a whole life, and came back with clear eyes and something real to say.
Recorded at Shock City Studios, the album does not waste time setting the scene. It drops you straight into it. The title track pulses with the energy of a city after dark, all temptation and choice and the knowledge that every night has to end somewhere. It is the kind of opener that tells you immediately what kind of record this is going to be direct, street level, no filler.
“Downtown At Midnight” is where Zito gets uncomfortably honest. Addiction, broken trust, the wreckage of choices made in the wrong hours he does not dress any of it up. The writing here is blunt in the best way, the kind of blunt that comes from having actually been through it rather than observed it from a safe distance. “Grand Avenue” does something slightly different, capturing the texture of everyday St. Louis life with the kind of specificity that makes a song feel like a photograph. The grit is there, but so is the humour, and so is the love for the place underneath all of it.
Zito recorded this one differently to his usual approach. By his own account he pushed himself harder on guitar than he normally allows, stepping back from restraint and letting himself go further in the takes. You can hear it. The playing has an urgency to it that feels less like a studio decision and more like someone remembering what it felt like to have something to prove.
What keeps the album from tipping into heaviness is the warmth running through it. This is a record made by someone who has come out the other side of the hard years and knows it. The dedication to family, friendship, and the small daily joys is not sentimental it is earned. Thirteen years after Gone To Texas, Outside On The Eastside feels like the natural completion of a long arc. Zito left, found himself, built something worth coming back to, and then came back.
The band, featuring Scot Sutherland on bass, Lewis Stephens on keys, and Matthew R. Johnson on drums, plays with the kind of loose, locked-in confidence that only comes from musicians who trust each other completely. Nobody is showing off. Everyone is serving the song.
Outside On The Eastside is out worldwide via Gulf Coast Records in partnership with Proper Music Group, SoNo Recording, and Virgin Music, available on deluxe gatefold CD, electric blue double vinyl, digital download, and all major streaming platforms.
This is blues music made by someone who has earned every note of it. Play it loud.
We Speak Music
SCARECROW’s John Blaze Delivers a Career Milestone With “Twisted” and Earns Josie Music Awards Song of the Year Nomination
John Blaze has spent nearly four decades fronting SCARECROW, the New York hard-rock outfit he founded in 1989, and in 2026 he delivered one of the most ambitious releases of his career with “Twisted.” Now, the song has reached another major milestone: “Twisted” has been nominated for Song of the Year in the Metal/Alternative category at the Josie Music Awards.
The nomination places Blaze and SCARECROW among this year’s recognized independent artists and songwriters at the Josie Music Awards, with the awards ceremony set to take place at Nashville’s legendary Grand Ole Opry. For an artist whose career has been built on persistence, independence and decades of hard-rock storytelling, the recognition gives “Twisted” an entirely new chapter.
Written by John Blaze and Chaffin, “Twisted” pulls together a lineup of guest players that reads like a rock family reunion, built around Blaze’s long-standing friendship with Dee Snider and the legacy of Twisted Sister, a band woven into SCARECROW’s story from its earliest days.
That connection goes all the way back to the beginning. SCARECROW’s original lineup featured guitarist Eddie Ojeda, best known for his work in Twisted Sister, and the two camps have remained connected ever since. “Twisted” makes that history explicit: Dee Snider appears on the record with guest vocals during the track’s climactic second verse and chorus, lending the song an instantly recognizable jolt of arena-rock power.
Snider isn’t the only marquee name in the credits. Mark Wood, founding violinist of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, contributes electrifying violin work that gives “Twisted” a cinematic sweep uncommon in modern hard rock. Rounding out the track are TJ Jordan on lead guitar and Bobby Marks on drums, creating a powerful, road-tested foundation behind Blaze’s signature gritty vocal delivery.
The Josie Music Awards nomination feels particularly fitting because “Twisted” isn’t simply another SCARECROW release. It brings together different eras of Blaze’s musical life while pushing the band’s sound forward. There’s history in the recording, but there’s also urgency. It doesn’t sound like a band looking backward. It sounds like one with unfinished business.
For Blaze, the nomination also represents recognition of a career that has largely been built outside the traditional machinery of the mainstream music business. Independent rock artists rarely survive for decades without a fierce commitment to what they do, and SCARECROW’s longevity speaks for itself. From the band’s early years and its 1991 debut, through the Blood, Sweat and 20 Years retrospective and the theatrical production I Am SCARECROW, Blaze has continued developing a world around the music rather than simply releasing songs.
That makes the Song of the Year nomination especially meaningful. After nearly four decades of building SCARECROW, Blaze now heads to the Josie Music Awards at the Grand Ole Opry with one of his most ambitious songs recognized in the Metal/Alternative category.
And there’s something wonderfully appropriate about the song that got him there.
“Twisted” connects SCARECROW’s beginnings to its present, reunites Blaze musically with figures tied to the band’s history, and demonstrates just how much fire remains in the project. With Snider and Wood contributing to the record and Blaze still driving the band he created from the ground up, the track feels less like a nostalgic reunion than a statement of survival.
Now it’s also an award-nominated song.
For John Blaze and SCARECROW, nearly four decades into the journey, “Twisted” has become more than another entry in the catalog. It’s a career milestone — and this September, that milestone is taking SCARECROW all the way to the Grand Ole Opry.
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