Description

It was 1978 and rock n roll was in decent form in the Salt Lake City area. There were some bands on the local scene that were beginning to make some noise in the area and one of those acts was the guitar-driven band Freefall that played live as often as they could, playing at all the local clubs. Guitarist Danny Dickman however wanted to brake out of the mold to play a lot of covers to get gigs and started to look for experienced musicians who also wanted to move away from playing copy tunes to composing and playing originals. So in the early 80s he had the perfect line-up and he was ready to take on the Salt Lake Music scene with their own style of music as The Tools. The band quickly gained notoriety for their high energy stage presence and their music became very recognizable. They played five nights a week for years and played several huge beach festivals in front of 15 to 20 thousand people. In November 1982, The Tools recorded their first album at Audio Vision Studios. This album was originally released as a self-titled cassette (released on cd in 2020 as Diamond Lace). The Tools continued to pack the local clubs, earning the title of Salt Lake City’s top band. The album sales were going up and the band was gaining more notoriety with every show and the sales opened some new doors for the band. Stage and light show became bigger and the band continued to write melodic hard rock songs and the new songs got a lot of radio time on stations such as Z-Rock. Their second album, Remodeling, was released on tape in 1987 and sold quite well to the awaiting crowd. The band was getting attention from Geffen Records as the band was only gaining momentum. While the band was getting rave reviews, vocalist Mike exited The Tools and the band hired the well know and very talented singer John Hoffman and the band continued to play live for some time. However a third album and the one that could have been distributed worldwide by Geffen never happened. August of 2020 finally saw the release of the two cassettes on cds. As the cassettes are almost impossible to find its great that the music of The Tools finally gets the chance to be discovered by more fans of melodic hardrock

Track list:
1. Looking Back
2. Shake It Loose
3. Thinking Of You
4. Wasting My Time
5. Sting Me
6. Do It For A Living
7. Rock & Roll On The Radio
8. Bad Times
9. Livin Hard
10. Send Me The Bill