Pat Travers

With a hard-edged tone, rowdy vocal delivery, and barroom-boogie sensibility, Canadian singer-guitarist-keyboardist Pat Travers embodies blues-infused hard rock. Emerging amid the 1970s peak of blues-rock guitar heroes, he issued eight Polydor albums between his self-titled 1976 debut and 1984’s Hot Shot, securing seven Billboard Top 200 entries and two Top 40 singles, one of which was the enduring party anthem “Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights).” He later landed four Hot 100 singles and two additional high-ranking Mainstream Rock Songs placements. Equally comfortable with funk, jazz, and prog, Travers has maintained a near-annual touring schedule exceeding 150 dates a year for more than four decades. Into the twenty-first century he continued releasing material on various labels, among them 2003’s P.T. Power Trio, 2005’s Bazooka alongside drummer Carmine Appice, 2015’s Retro Rocket, 2016’s The Balls Album (also with Appice), the 2019 jump-jazz outing Swing, and 2022’s The Art of Time Travel.

Born in Toronto on April 12, 1954, Travers first took up the guitar after seeing a local Jimi Hendrix performance. He soon absorbed the styles of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page while paying dues in Quebec bar bands. His initial touring break arrived via a stint with 1950s rock-and-roll veteran Ronnie Hawkins. After roughly a year, however, Travers relocated to London to pursue hard rock. A demo recorded shortly after his arrival secured a Polydor contract, yielding the spring 1976 release of Pat Travers. A slot at that year’s Reading Festival heightened interest and led to two further 1977 albums, Makin’ Magic and Putting It Straight, both featuring future Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain, before Travers returned to North America to target the U.S. market.

The revamped lineup—drummer Tommy Aldridge, guitarist Pat Thrall, and bassist Mars Cowling—debuted on 1979’s Heat in the Street. This configuration underpinned Travers’ strongest commercial phase, producing the Top 30 albums Live! Go for What You Know (often cited by fans as his peak) and 1980’s Crash and Burn. By the early 1980s, bluesy hard rock had lost ground to polished arena rock and, soon after, MTV-driven acts, so subsequent releases sold progressively fewer copies; the final Polydor titles to chart in the United States were 1981’s Radio Active, 1982’s Black Pearl, and 1984’s Hot Shot. Disillusioned with the label, Travers paused new recordings for the rest of the decade yet kept touring. His 1990 comeback School of Hard Knocks made little chart impact, though he issued further studio efforts such as Blues Tracks, Just a Touch, and Blues Magnet, plus archival live collections including King Biscuit Flower Hour and BBC Radio One Live in Concert.

Throughout the 1990s and beyond Travers sustained regular road work, appearing alongside Night Ranger’s Jeff Watson, Cinderella’s Tom Keifer, and Rick Derringer, and joining the 2001 Voices of Classic Rock tour. He resurfaced in the studio in 2003 with P.T. Power Trio, which included covers of Cream’s “White Room,” Robin Trower’s “Day of the Eagle,” and ZZ Top’s “Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings.” Later projects encompassed the 2004 Carmine Appice collaboration It Takes a Lot of Balls, 2005’s PT=MC2, the second Power Trio set P.T. Power Trio 2 (2006), Travelin’ Blues (2009), Blues on Fire (2012), Can Do (2013), and Retro Rocket (2015). In 2016 he rejoined Appice for the aptly named Balls Album, a blues-rock romp through classic material. Departing his usual persona in 2019, Travers delivered Swing!, a set of reimagined big-band standards from the 1940s and 1950s—Duke Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” Louis Prima’s “Sing Sing Sing!,” Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” Louis Jordan’s “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” and “Let the Good Times Roll.”

Returning to hard blues-rock, he released The Art of Time Travel in 2022. The raucous title track served as a pre-release single, while “Ronnie” paid tribute to guitarist and early mentor Ronnie Montrose. The album also featured the horn-laden R&B single “Push Yourself” and the gentle instrumental “Natalie.”