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"... the rustic blues/jug/rag hustle..." -
Good Times Weekly, Santa Cruz
"...rizorkestra has a deep appreciation for the American music tradition. I respect that. I appreciate the fact he is out there spreading the word..." Sir Hodge / Oracles Music Network
"...worth a listen. not just for the fact that most of the CD is a history lesson in american music, but also for the fact that there ain’t many cats doing this stuff no more, and the more who listen, the more players can learn and carry it on. precisely the way folk music has always worked."
- Dirk Wissbaum / Bluessource.com
"...it's american music that celebrates pioneer spirit and yankee ingenuity, the kind of thing that brings people together:
jugband tunes, rags, jumps and shuffles, gospel tunes, folk tunes, some real gut-bucket blues."" - New Times Weekly, San Luis Obispo
"...the one-man band is something you seldom see or hear these days. for all it mattered, the very notion could have faded into history, to be revived only by old films. if you doubt the existence of one-man bands, you should give los angeles multi-instrumentalist rizorkestra a listen..."american guitar" was recorded without the use of studio overdubs - another art that has almost been made extinct in this modern age. to listen to the album only makes this meat all the more credible. "drunkard's special" is pure bar-room blues, and being honest, almost every song on the album could go by that description. the reworking of hendrix's "voodoo child" is well worth hearing. it's almost as if this recording predates the original. instrumental tracks like "st. thomas" wouldn't sound too out of place on a latter day Beefheart album."
Peter McGee / Bluesbunny Independent Music Review
"..as an avid amateur musicologist, i try to dig up the earliest american popular music. lots of interesting cats...think leadbelly and woody guthrie. then think of two generations before that...1890s to 1929-ish. that's some of what i search for to listen to...lots of good stuff from back there!" -
Santa Barbara Independent
"...a nice break from the over-processed, over-produced shit we hear everyday. it is true, bluesy, folksie and unpretentious. while it provides no angst or punkiness, I would recommend taking a listen. you may be surprised to learn that somewhere out there, people are still “paying respect to the roots”.
Krystal Tolle / Upstarter Punk CD Reviews
"...riz is not after nostalgia, he says. instead, it's immediacy, which is the same spirit his oldest songs were written in—persistors and resistors from the last years before radio erased the regional accent.
"it's a young country," he says. "the tradition is essentially non-tradition. if we went back 150 years and i'm a musician and you're a journalist, there'd be a German guy in my band playing an accordion because that's what he brought with him, and someone from Mexico, and another guy from New Orleans. we're all out of our traditional context here in the new world, and we have each other to reach out to, so when we're making music, we bring what we have. the beauty of being American is that we're bastards, and we can take whatever we want and include it. that's really the definition of the free world. that's the American deal."
Chris Zeigler / Long Beach District Weekly
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