Iron City Houserockers

Love’s So Tough, the 1979 debut from the Iron City Houserockers, established the Pittsburgh-bred group on a national level, garnering important recognition, most notably from Greil Marcus. The legendary journalist called the record “one of the least polished first albums I’ve heard in the past year and one of the best” in his review for Rolling Stone.

Robert Palmer of the New York Times wrote that one of the reasons that the Iron City Houserockers “have drawn so much critical praise is that they’re bringing fresh energy to a hallowed and somewhat moribund rock tradition.”

The band had created a unique sounding blend of blue collar rock informed by their influences which included a deep love of Chicago blues, early rock and roll and old school soul, all mixed together with dollops of the then-current sounds of punk and new wave added in.

Their second album, 1980’s Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive), found them recording in New York City with an incredible supporting cast. Cleveland International’s Steve Popovich and Marty Mooney tapped Mick Ronson (David Bowie) to co-produce the sessions, with additional input coming from Ian Hunter (Mott The Hoople) and Steven Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny).

Houserockers songwriter and vocalist Joe Grushecky recognized that they were entering into an unique situation. “We were a particularly effective concert band at that time. We just wanted to kick your ass and tear the place down. That’s the attitude we had and then you had these guys that joined us who had much more experience recording,” he explains. “They brought a little bit of sophistication to the whole process. You have the English guys and then you had the New Jersey guys and then you had us from Pittsburgh and on paper, it never should have worked. But somehow it did. Everything just fell into place.”

Cleveland International Records is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive) with a new expanded reissue that is available on CD, vinyl(bonus tracks available via a download card) and on all digital streaming outlets. Grushecky worked with his son, Johnny (who also plays guitar in the current version of the band) and his sound engineer, Brian Coleman, to compile a second disc with an additional 16 tracks, all previously unreleased. More than an hour’s worth of demos and rarities, including alternate takes and in some cases, songs that didn’t make the final running order of the original album, add an intriguing chapter to the existing legend of the record.

“We always went into a local studio in Pittsburgh and I would write songs. Some of the guys would bring in some ideas and we would demo everything,” Grushecky recalls. “Most of the demos, when we were recording them, we weren’t setting out to make a final product. So a lot of this stuff is just first and second takes to see what the song sounded like.”

Going through reel-to-reel tapes and even some cassettes that had been in boxes for decades, Grushecky found he had an abundance of material. “At first, I thought we were just going to include a couple of extra tracks on this reissue. Then I started finding all of these different things and I started to get excited about it,” he says. “You know, to some people, I’m sure it would be like a great lost Iron City Houserockers record.”