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DIRTY TRAINLOAD

“It’s a no-man’s land where the dirtiest rock n’ roll and the most ‘suffering’ blues meet and something quite new is born.” This is how a popular Italian music magazine describes the sound of the Italian band Dirty Trainload.

Dirty Trainload began as the vision of guitarist Bob Cillo, who hails from Bari in the south of Italy. The trio’s roots are deep in the blues, but its sound is characterized by the use of old analog rhythm boxes loops and is inclined toward a lo-fi sensibility borrowed from alternative and garage and punk bands. The result is “progressive blues,” as contaminated and dirty as it is authentic and visceral. The Dirty Trainload sound was forged with Delta Blues and the innovative punk voyages of great innovators like Alan Vega (Suicide) and The Gun Club.

In the fall of 2007 Dirty Trainload’s debut, Rising Rust, was released, with Cillo working in a duo with harp player and vocalist Marco Del Noce. The album, the first “alternative blues” record recorded and produced in Italy, was given rave reviews in international music media outlets. Fabio Magistrali produced the album, with cover art and design from Swiss illustrator Benjamin Guedel – both Magistrali and Guedel would reprise their roles on the next two Dirty Trainload projects. From 2009 through 2011 Cillo was joined by Italo-American poly-instrumentalist and singer Livia Monteleone, who plays banjo, baritone guitar and percussion. Cillo and Monteleone co-wrote Dirty Trainload’s second album, Trashtown, which was issued by Otium-CNI in 2011 and again praised as a “one of a kind” record by a number of music journalists, most of them writing for alternative, non-mainstream outlets. In the fall of 2011 Cillo assumed vocal duties for Dirty Trainload with a song on a compilation from Internet record label Lepers Productions that included contributions from Black River Bluesman and Mike Watt, among others. It was during the session for this song that Cillo recorded two covers, “Commit a Crime” and “Special Rider Blues.” The band also made videos for these two songs. For the band’s third album, A Place for Loitering, Dirty Trainload was again a duo, Cillo with drummer and percussionist Balzano. The album was issued on 12”vinyl, a first for the band. In fall 2016 Monteleone returned to the fold, joining Cillo and Balzano in California to record a new song, “Freight Train,” and to film a video for the song. The trio also recorded another song, “Too Far Gone,” for a Free Radio Santa Cruz compilation, Question Authority, a collection of songs when, taken together, make a thundering statement of political dissent. In October the band was invited to perform at the “Deep Blues Festival”, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. In 2018 the trio recorded the band’s fourth album, Revolution and Crime a concept album on which the band offers its personal view and scathing critique of the current state of social justice, like on the second album "Trashtown". For the first time, Cillo and Monteleone share vocal duties on a number of tracks. The album was produced by Filippo Strang at VDSS Studio, with a cover by illustrator Claudio Losghi Ranieri.

Throughout its varied line-ups, Dirty Trainload has always pursued an intense performance schedule, including cross-country Italian tours and performances in cities across Europe, including Berlin, Brighton, Budapest, Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Paris and Zurich – while touring England the band recorded two sessions for an American radio podcast, Breakthru Radio. Dirty Trainload has also toured the USA, with performances in California, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Bob and Livia gave life to the side project "Behind Bars \\\\", dedicated to a musical research specific to the subject of prison detention. BEHIND BARS \\\\ is a "concept band" in which the musical aspect is integrated with the human point of view, emotional, but also political and social. The repertoire is an anthology of "prison songs", both original compositions or 'story-telling' cover songs, re-interpreted and re-arranged in a contemporary and personal way.