Today TBelly announces that the new album ‘I Never Want To See Me Again’ will be released on 8th October 2021. All twelve tracks are masterfully written, harmonically rich and flawlessly performed with Russell Keefe’s stunning voice and keyboard playing being indisputably world-class throughout.
Russell Keefe, who is also the joint lead singer and keyboard player of Slade, began his career playing for recording artists signed to Polygram and United Artists. Russell then joined Les Mckeown’s legendary Bay City Rollers and toured the world with the band for 16 years. With Mckeown, he also played on and wrote songs for two studio albums and a live album which was recorded in Japan. Russell also toured on keyboards with The Pretty Things.
‘I Never Want To See Me Again’ features the three singles which have been released over the last year each of which has rightly gained international airplay and attention.
Featuring guest performances from Denis Dunaway (the original bass player of the Alice Cooper group) Will Wilde on harmonica and Mike Ross on slide guitar the eagerly anticipated ‘I Never Want To See Me Again’ is certain to please fans of both blues and rock alike.
Russell says:
“This album has been a long time coming. I started writing for it about 4 years ago. We started recording in January 2020 and it was mastered by Tim Debney at Fluid in May 2021. I have been lucky enough to have had some very fine musicians and singers on the album. Connor Baxter on guitar, Giulio Granchelli on Bass and Pip Mailing on the drums were all amazing and played on the bulk of the tracks. I also had three great singers from Brighton, Liva Steinberga, Ariella Steinberg and Annie Dorrett singing backing vocals.
We also had the very excellent Mike Ross playing slide guitar on “I Know You’re Mine” and one of the best harmonica players in Europe in Will Wilde playing on “I Know You’re Mine” and “Tired of Listening Bone”
I was very privileged to have on bass guitar for the title track of the album Dennis Dunaway from the original Alice Cooper group. Having Dennis playing on the album is just so amazing I still don’t believe it. Dennis played the track to Alice who said “what a cool song”.
All the songs on this album mean a lot to me. I was able to write about some things that I had not been able to before. “Automatic Boy” is a song about my best pal who died quite a few years ago. I always wanted to do something but not in sad way. So I wrote a big old bluesy rocker instead.
I quite like the occasional protest song. “Plastic Islands” is about the plight of our oceans and “I Guess I Must Say” is a potted history of my life.
The album was recorded and mixed by Paul Win Winstanley who as with the last TBelly album has done an amazing job. It’s something I am enormously proud of. “
