West Side Heat - Live at Blues On Grand
Review By Brian Sidler from an article in Chicago Music Magazine written on the
eve of the year when "The Heat " was finally awarded a spot in the Chicago Blue Festival Lineup

Chicago, IL   Power and guts. These are the only terms I can use to describe what you are going to hear when you come out to see these guys on this fateful day. The second time only that an all white band has been booked to the fest after Stevie Ray Vaughan. Their music is the diesel roar of 18 wheelers whizzing along with a cargo van loaded with these rockers on the open midnight roads of this nation. Progress. Steve Arvey, like Jimmy page and Eric Clapton, listened to a lot of old country blues artists, with another Influence definitely being that of the Grateful Dead. But the music is more than that. There are so many influences indicated in this current format, it is hard to pin down exactly what, is from where. But, owing to the fact of an undeniable white-boy twist, their music can hardly be described as middle the road blues, thank heaven. It becomes rock, but then again the blues influences is so strong that it cannot be classified as rock either. It boils down to being another permutation and definition of both idioms. It is now! It's hot! It's West Side Heat!

There is a grind and a thrash in the sound of this band. Overlaid with the expert harmonica playing of Mark Hoekstra, West Side Heat takes a side road away from the blues owing to the innovative grooves this rhythm section has to offer coupled with the revamped blues guitar stylings of Steve Arvey. In recent memory I haven't heard too many acts that sound this gutsy, Midnight Oil perhaps. But it's been a long time since anything electric has been so full of real emotion, experience and soul as the music from "The Heat". They are the real article. A rock band raised in the belly of the beast, the nation's meandering B scale club circuit. Their perennial following has grown every year.