San Diego Reader

Russ T. Blitz: Vocals | Richard “Blitz” Livoni: Guitar (acoustic), Guitar (electric) | Danny Jamison: Bass guitar | Barney Roach: Bass guitar | Dickie Dodd: Drums | Rick Randle: Keyboards

Genre: Rock

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Synoposis

Inception: San Diego, 1973

Background:

The Blitz Brothers were a popular rock band who frequently opened for touring headliners in the 1970s and 1980s. Richard “Blitz” Livoni began playing guitar at the age of eight and continued through college, eventually opening for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Hoyt Axton, Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne, Linda Rondstadt, and others.

After playing with the Blitz Brothers from 1973 to 1986, Livoni went on to play with Sons of Edison, as well as opening Blitz Recording Studio.

A quarter century after they split, the band reunited on August 7, 2011, at Winston’s in OB. “I wanna play 4th&B and the House of Blues,” says Livoni. “I wanna open for a bunch of people. A gig a month would be great.”

Why start over now? The answer, Livoni says, is Barney Roach. “Being the big daddy of the band was no fun.” Roach, who will fill the spot once occupied by Danny (Jamison) Blitz on bass guitar, is the new hustle behind the organizing of gigs and rehearsals and all of the day-to-day tedium, says Livoni, that goes with running a band.

What’s in it for Roach? “I get to be in a band with one of my all-time guitar idols,” he says.

Livoni was playing in an Orange County band called Fast Eddie when he left them to start the Blitz Brothers in 1973. The original members were Livoni, Jamison, and a former Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer on drums named Dickie Dodd. The Blitz Brothers made their name at L.A. clubs like Gazzarri’s, the Starwood, and the Pasadena Hilton.

Says Roach, “Van Halen was our competition.”

By the time the Blitz Brothers migrated south to San Diego venues such as the Spirit Club, Ledbetter’s, the Palace, and Neutral Ground, Livoni had gained a reputation as a blistering-hot guitarist. “I hated electric guitars when I was a little kid,” says Livoni. He liked jug bands. “Kazoos and shit.”

But when the Animals released “House of the Rising Sun” in the 1960s, Livoni says he went out and rented an electric guitar and amplifier. He taught himself to play Paul Butterfield’s East-West and every track on John Mayall’s Blues Breakers album as well. “I became a victim of the Jimi-Jeff-Clapton syndrome.” He laughs.

When Livoni shuttered the Blitz Brothers in 1986 (“one reason was that nightclubs weren’t drawing because of changes in the liquor laws”), he needed a job. “I put an ad in the Reader advertising myself as a recording engineer and I’ve been booked steadily ever since.”

The first Blitz Studio was in the basement of his home in Mission Hills. For the past several years, Blitz has been recording bands and writing music in a private stand-alone state-of-the-art digital studio in south Mission Hills on Reynard Way.

Keyboardist Rick Randle was added to the lineup in early 2013.