Turn It Up!

The Zoo Crew has got "Turn It Up!" by Anthony Gomes rolling out across the airwaves for all you Zoo Freaks out there, straight from the 2015 album Electric Field Holler. This one kicks off with a solid cowbell punch that sets a swinging groove before Anthony digs into those autobiographical lyrics about a blues soul paired with a rock and roll heart. Reviews from the time called it a raucous celebration of guitar-driven blues rock that makes no apologies, and the track landed the album at number three on the Billboard Blues Albums chart right out of the gate on Up 2 Zero Entertainment. Produced by Anthony himself alongside Peter Carson and mixed by Beau Hill, it carries that timeless black-suit energy he talked about in the official electronic press kit, the kind that never goes out of style like a classic B.B. King cut. You can hear the B.B.-style stabs flavoring the groove before he lets it rip in the solo, all while the band locks in with Theo Harden on bass, Chad Cromwell on drums, and David Smith adding keyboard texture. For more on the station spinning deep cuts like this, check out THE ZOO.

Anthony laid out the whole idea behind the song in interviews around the release, calling it the mission statement for Electric Field Holler and for the direction he was taking from there on out. In one chat he pointed straight to the line “Don’t try to stop me once I start ’cause I got a blues soul and a rock and roll heart” as the spirit of the record, unapologetic blues rock turned up to eleven. He talked about feeling like the bastard stepchild of the blues world sometimes, where folks argue over what counts as real blues, and how this track was his way of saying he was done watering anything down. The album itself was an expansion of an earlier acoustic project, traditional roots jacked up with youthful energy, and he figured if it had dropped back in 1975 it would have dominated the rock charts alongside the likes of Johnny Winter. One year later he still called it one of the strongest releases of his dozen albums at that point, still riding the charts while the street team kept the word moving. The opening cowbell nod got plenty of smiles in the reviews too, the kind of “more cowbell” moment that actually serves the swing instead of just the joke.

Dig into the lyrics and the story keeps unfolding. He sings about being baptized by the blues and saved by Muddy Waters, born with the blues in technicolor and carrying Mississippi lightning in his soul while he was raised on the thunder of rock and roll. Coming to your city, letting the music take control, and if you cannot feel the blues then you have got a hole in your soul. It closes the loop with nods to playing until the day he dies just like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, then turning the spotlight on the crowd and cranking it loud. In the electronic press kit footage he walks through the guitar room and ties that same lyric right back to the album’s core, the place where blues and rock blur into one loud statement. The whole record mixes serious deep cuts with a few funnier story songs, but this opener stays locked on the unapologetic mission. Fans have kept the energy alive in live sets years later, and the track still shows up when the band wants to declare the blues-rock middle ground is wide open for anyone who claims it.

Anthony got his start in Toronto, born to a Portuguese father and a French-Canadian mother and falling hard for the records as a kid. Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the rest filled the house, and at fourteen he picked up the guitar for the first time after his dad handed him one instead of the computer he had asked for. He ground it out in the local blues bars at night, sometimes earning a beer a song at open mics while he worked on his chops, and the scene there drew him deeper into the sound of B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, and Hendrix. By the late nineties he had relocated to Chicago with a three-song demo called Groove-a-licious Blues, sat in with Magic Slim and the Teardrops, and put his own band together. That group won the first annual Buddy Guy’s Legends Best Unsigned Blues Band competition in 1998, which opened the door to his debut album Blues in Technicolor the same year. The record showed off the Texas-influenced firepower and set him on the road for good.

The breaks kept coming once the road work stacked up. While he was still building the reputation, a stranger at a jam night turned out to be B.B. King’s bus driver, impressed enough to introduce him to the King himself, who invited Anthony to open a string of dates in 2005. That stretch gave him front-row schooling from one of the absolute masters and led to shared stages with Buddy Guy, Robert Plant, Joe Bonamassa, Heart, Sammy Hagar, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and plenty more. All the while he finished a master’s degree at the University of Toronto with high distinction, writing his thesis on the racial and cultural evolution of blues music and later turning the research into the book The Black and White of the Blues, which earned a Best Blues Book nomination. He also launched the Music Is the Medicine Foundation in 2010 to put the healing power of the music back out into the world through scholarships, instrument donations, and support for kids, veterans, and others. The foundation grew from private donations and grants, matching the same spirit he put into the records.

Through it all Anthony has stayed true to that blues soul and rock and roll heart, blending the two without compromise and keeping the road warrior pace across continents. Electric Field Holler sat right in the middle of that run, the record where he said it was time to turn it up and own the hybrid sound fully. You can follow the whole journey on his official website, catch the latest on the official Facebook page, see the photos and clips on Instagram, and keep up with the posts over on X. Fans worldwide swap stories and show support in the active Fans of Anthony Gomes Worldwide Facebook group, a place built for sharing everything from the early Chicago days to the current tours. The Zoo Crew will keep the records spinning, and Zoo Freaks know the groove when it hits.