When we last checked in with Micky Shomidie and House of Nasty, it was July of
2008 and the band was off to Oklahoma to perform at Rocklahoma, the biggest
hard rock/metal music festival in the country. Regular readers with excellent
memories may remember Shomidie’s tale of redemption and resurrection, music industry style, told here back in
2007, but for the rest of us, here’s a quick refresher.
Nasty Nasty, the bass player’s band from the glory days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, recorded two CDs
and toured extensively before Nirvana and Northwest grunge destroyed the
national market for metal mania. The band tried to keep the faith, but the
fickle public eye looked the other way for several years and group members went
their separate ways. As time passed, nostalgia grew for things of the 1980s and
in 2007 Shomidie posted a couple of the Nasty Nasty songs on his MySpace page
in hopes someone might be looking and listening.
Lo and behold, someone was. Retrospect Records, a Las Vegas-based label that
focuses on metal and hard rock reissues, heard the clips and decided to release
the original Nasty Nasty CDs for international distribution. Since then
Shomidie and bandmates Andy Armstrong (vocals), Troy Anthony Blasko (guitar)
and John Scully (drums), now known as House of Nasty, are riding a new wave of
popularity fostered by the presence of the record label and Shomidie’s unrelenting desire to succeed in the music business.
“My goal is to be successful in the music industry whether it be song writing or
promoting shows,” says the musician and businessman. “Some day I will be booking shows in auditoriums like the PCCC.”
Last year through his production company, ESP Entertainment, Shomidie promoted
the bands, Firehouse and the Bullet Boys, at central Illinois venues, including
a concert at the Macon County Fair. This year he’s off and running with a booking of former Top 40 rockers Skid Row at the
restored Lincoln Square Theater in Decatur on Jan. 24.
“I’m moving up the food chain by doing national acts,” he says. “If the show at Lincoln Square does well, which I believe it will according to
advance ticket sales, they’re going to let me do Great White there on May 29.”
House of Nasty opens the Decatur Skid Row show and plays regularly in
Springfield and around central Illinois with occasional forays into other
Midwest areas. In 2009 they’re scheduled to return to Rocklahoma in July and perform at another major, hard
rock festival, Rock Gone Wild, at Algona, Iowa, in August. The increased
exposure encouraged the band to head into the recording studio last November
intent on making new music for their resurging audience. The resulting
seven-song CD, Nice and Nasty, recorded at Private Studios in Urbana with producer Jonathan Pines, becomes
available to the public on Friday, Jan. 23, with a CD release party and band
performance at the Koo Koo’s Nest.
“It took 152 studio hours to record — we did it the right way — over 230 tracks,” reported Shomidie. “We were a little anxious to get our product out there as we do have some
interest from a few independent labels, so we needed a product now.”
The group intends to record a full-length CD in the spring, continue gigging
and, no matter what happens, keep plugging away at making it all work.
“This is what I do for a living,” says Shomidie. “I play music and book bands. I’m going down with the ship.”
Enter the House of Nasty on Friday, Jan. 23 at 9pm for a CD release party at the
Koo-Koo’s Nest and with Skid Row on Saturday, Jan. 24, 7pm at the Lincoln Square Theater
in Decatur (217-422-1711 for tickets).
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2009.
