“Young and sad don’t cut it anymore,” Nick Allison quips on “Camera,” and despite the sadness touches even many of the album’s rockers, failing relationships with people and places is a major theme of Church Shoes’ debut full-length. These thirteen songs won the band a local following in their hometown of Fort Wayne. From the anthemic crowd-pleaser “High and Naked” to the ballad “Big Bad World,” Church Shoes features songs that become a old favorite before the second chorus.
While Allison’s previous band was itself failing, fans watched him develop a new maturity as a songwriter while performing solo. He toyed with the idea of starting a country band (and it shows on songs such as opener “Odell Williamson Bridge”), but when he’d picked his ideal line-up, the result was Church Shoes: more rock than country but undeniably American. The quartet includes two friends from high school, Gabe Pastura on drums and Max Forbing on bass and vocals, and predictably (to everyone but them), the sound was completed with lead guitarist Mitch Fraizer, who has been playing with Allison since literally the day they picked up their first guitar and bass.
Max steps up to the mic. Live at the Brass Rail.
Church Shoes live at the Brass Rail.
