Workshop
NRBQ
NRBQ’s Workshop is a 1973 album that captures the American band at its most playfully eclectic: a tight four-piece mixing rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country, jazz-informed piano, folk, and offbeat humor. Recorded at Electric Lady Studios with producer/engineer Eddie Kramer after vocalist Frankie Gadler’s departure, it returns the group to its core quartet configuration—Terry Adams on keyboards, Al Anderson on guitar, Joey Spampinato on bass and vocals, and Tom Staley on drums. The record’s relaxed virtuosity is central to its appeal: NRBQ play with considerable technical skill, but the songs retain a homemade, spontaneous warmth rather than sounding overly polished.
Its twelve-song original sequence moves easily between originals and roots-minded covers. The Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee tune “C’mon If You’re Comin’” opens the album with a chugging groove, while Adams’s “RC Cola and a Moon Pie” became one of the group’s enduring signature songs. Elsewhere, “Get That Gasoline Blues” pairs a wry title with buoyant rock-and-roll energy, and the album includes interpretations of “Blues Stay Away from Me” and Bo Diddley’s “Mona.” Recent expanded remasters add five bonus tracks—three previously unreleased session performances plus single versions of “Get That Gasoline Blues” and “RC Cola and a Moon Pie”—which further frame Workshop as a lively document of NRBQ’s unusually broad, humorous, and deeply roots-connected musical world.
Workshop
NRBQ
NRBQ’s Workshop is a 1973 album that captures the American band at its most playfully eclectic: a tight four-piece mixing rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country, jazz-informed piano, folk, and offbeat humor. Recorded at Electric Lady Studios with producer/engineer Eddie Kramer after vocalist Frankie Gadler’s departure, it returns the group to its core quartet configuration—Terry Adams on keyboards, Al Anderson on guitar, Joey Spampinato on bass and vocals, and Tom Staley on drums. The record’s relaxed virtuosity is central to its appeal: NRBQ play with considerable technical skill, but the songs retain a homemade, spontaneous warmth rather than sounding overly polished.
Its twelve-song original sequence moves easily between originals and roots-minded covers. The Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee tune “C’mon If You’re Comin’” opens the album with a chugging groove, while Adams’s “RC Cola and a Moon Pie” became one of the group’s enduring signature songs. Elsewhere, “Get That Gasoline Blues” pairs a wry title with buoyant rock-and-roll energy, and the album includes interpretations of “Blues Stay Away from Me” and Bo Diddley’s “Mona.” Recent expanded remasters add five bonus tracks—three previously unreleased session performances plus single versions of “Get That Gasoline Blues” and “RC Cola and a Moon Pie”—which further frame Workshop as a lively document of NRBQ’s unusually broad, humorous, and deeply roots-connected musical world.