No Man is An Island, the new single by the Rusty Wright Band, was inspired, in part, by an autistic child but was written for everyone who has ever felt set apart from others - physically or mentally marooned. Shipwrecked, if you will.

"It's not a three-minute pop song. It's a powerful piece of music and I felt it important to follow where the music was taking me, rather than me trying to compress the song into a cookie cutter format," said Rusty Wright, front man and primary songwriter for the group.  "That being said, it's longer than most radio hits but only because it has so much to say. The lyrics speak of sadness, of feeling apart, and longing for a place where you feel like you belong, like a castaway on an island who through no act or fault of their own has been placed apart from the rest of the world. From that description you'd think it would be a depressing song but the music builds to a soaring organ and guitar crescendo as the song progresses and at every show people have leapt to their feet at the end. That's what prompted us to make this the first single."

"We knew we had something special when we performed it at Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago in June. We had just started performing it live. We hit the last note and heard this wave of sound roll at us from the audience as the entire place stood and roared their approval. You always dream of moments like that. Buddy was in the audience that night and later, as we got a photo with him he told me "You're great, man. Don't you take **** from anybody." At that moment I felt my life was complete," laughs Wright.

The second single, slated for release in late October, is a rendition of the rock classic Mississippi Queen. The song was originally included in the band's 2013 This, That & the Other Thing album but was originally recorded with an extended spoken delta blues intro, rendering the song too lengthy for airplay at most radio stations.

"Laurie actually suggested that we re-release the song in a shorter format," said Wright. "I revisited the raw tracks, cut off the intro and the fade-out ending, and took that mix into Clear Track Studios in Clearwater, Florida where we are recording the rest of the album, and we remixed and re-mastered it".

The song stays mostly faithful to the original Mountain tune except for the insertion of a bridge section with additional lyrics. 

"I always loved the song but I always heard something additional in my head so I added it. I'm very happy with the remix and think it will do quite well," said Wright.

The Rusty Wright Band is a Billboard Top 10 recording/touring act formed in 2004 by Rusty and Laurie Wright. Originally hailing from Michigan, the Wrights relocated to Florida three years ago and reconfigured their band, enlisting bassist Nic Allen of Winter Haven, drummer Chris America of Clearwater, and B3 organ player Dennis Toerpe of New Port Richey.

Band leader Rusty Wright describes the group's sound as aggressive, progressive, electric roots rock with a blues edge.

"We're doing things a little differently this time," explains Laurie Wright. "In the past, our releases have been full albums but the industry is moving back toward a focus on singles so this time around we're going to experiment with releasing a string of singles every six or eight weeks, culminating with the full album release just in time for the start of our spring and summer tours."

Currently, the group has five albums to their credit, with album number six slated for release in early 2019. The band's most recent release, "Wonder Man" [Sadson Music 2015] reached #8 on the Billboard Blues Chart, #4 on the Billboard Heatseeker chart, #3 on the Hit Tracks Top 100, #5 on Relix Magazine's Jam Bands chart and was nominated for Album of the Year in the Vintage Guitar Magazine Reader's Choice Awards. In 2014 the group was inducted into the Michigan Blues Hall of Fame® as a Master Blues Band.

The Rusty Wright Band performs at Lkld Live 8 pm Friday, November 9, 2018. Admission is $5/advance, $7/door for row seating, or $15/VIP table seating.  Buy Tickets: https://squareup.com/store/lkldlive

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