*King’s X bassist’s newest solo album
*featuring Wally Farkas of Galactic Cowboys fame
*with help from Billy Idol’s guitar wizard Steve Stevens
*with help from Army of Anyone’s Ray Luzier
*Limited Edition DigiPak

Dug Pinnick (King’s X, Poundhound), metal music’s very own Sly Stone, finds inner peace through his visceral,
loose, jam-heavy new solo effort, Strum Sum Up.

Like a slice of Pinnick’s raw essence, Strum Sum Up is so free, so instinctual; it’s Pinnick as you’ve never heard him before.
This raw, wah-wah-injected groove machine is powered by the stellar talents of Wally Farkas of Galactic Cowboys fame,
Army of Anyone’s Ray Luzier, Billy Idol’s guitar wizard Steve Stevens, Hal Sparks, 11’s Alain Johannes, Kellii Scott, David
Henning, and Pinnick himself (on guitar).

“It’s the realest thing I’ve ever done,” Pinnick says.

But don’t take our – or Pinnick’s – word for it. Give Strum Sum Up a spin and let its explosive, groundbreaking songs hit you
like a ton of musical dynamite.

dUg: Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Percussion
Wally Farkas: Guitar, Percussion
David Henning: Bass
Alain Johannes: Lead & Rhythm Guitar, Vocals
Miles Loretta: Drums
Ray Luzier: Drums
Michael Parnin: Percussion
Kellii Scott: Drums
Hal Sparks: Percussion
Steve Stevens: Lead Guitar

Natasha Shneider: Vocals
Michele Zaccone: Vocals
Maylin Pultar: Vocals
Charity Lomax: Vocals

It wasn’t long ago that dUg Pinnick, King’s X frontman and self-styled Sly Stone-esque soul/prog-meal prophet, was preaching to folks about how they should live their lives. In short, Pinnick isn’t suffering from Seinfield syndrome any longer.

Whereas Pinnick once railed against the world’s major institutions and senseless acts of human stupidity, he now he sings, “Life is what you make it.”

“I am not the victim anymore,” says Pinnick. “I am not pointing fingers and forcing people to think the way I do. I finally realize that people just want to dance and have a good time.”

Raised by his religious great grandmother (in a household where most worldly things, including music, were perceived as sinful), Pinnick used his early life experience and its impact as the inspiration for such seminal King’s X tunes as “Over My Head”, “Don’t Believe It”, “Mission”, “A Box”, “Dogman”, and “Believe.” Pinnick has since learned to make peace with his past – and not run from it. “I used to badmouth my great grandmother a lot,” says Pinnick. “I look back now and realize that she was just trying to survive. I don’t feel like a victim anymore. I feel like I’ve found peace, and when you find peace you can get through anything.”

Enter Pinnick’s latest solo effort, Strum Sum Up, a raucous batch of jam-heavy tunes, among the freest he’s ever recorded.

“Everything that was done for this record was right, for once in my life,” says Pinnick. “It is like this portal has opened for me. Everything lined up and it resulted in something I am really proud of. [Strum Sum Up] is the realest thing I’ve ever done.”

Helping Pinnick achieve a sense of musical balance is a stellar cast of players: guitarist Walter “Wally” Farkas of Galactic Cowboys fame (Yes, that Walter Bela Farkas immortalized in the King’s X song bearing his name), Army of Anyone’s drummer Ray Luzier, Billy Idol’s six-string guitar wizard Steve Stevens, friend and Hollywood star Hal Sparks, Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age), Kellii Scott (Failure, Veruca Salt), Miles Loretta (Zero1), Natasha Shneider (Queens of the Stone Age), and David Henning (Big Wreck).

Half of Strum Sum Up is composed of two-part rock “suites”, containing extended jam sections following the song proper. Befitting Pinnick’s newfound looseness, he and his band let ‘er rip on many of these tracks. “We would play the song and immediately jam right after it on the first time around [in the studio],” says Pinnick. “The jams you hear are all the first take. We would do the song and then we’d jam, and the jam became the second part of the songs. Some of the jams are my favorite stuff on the record, and really showcase some of my best playing.”

King’s X fans are used to the tall man causing low-register-tone eruptions with his bass guitar. On Strum Sum Up (as he had done for his Poundhound records and his 2005 Magna Carta solo release Emotional Animal), Pinnick plays six-string guitar joined by Farkas, Stevens, and Henning, all of whom create an overdriven, psychedelic sonic freak-out – the splendiferous sound of Pinnick’s new self expression.

“The truth of the matter is that I have been playing guitar as long as I’ve been playing bass,” says Pinnick, who currently plucks away at his trusty Fender Strat Elite. “I’d write songs and I never practice scales or chords or anything. I’ve always been like that.”

We shouldn’t give you the wrong impression, however. Pinnick hasn’t completely buried the past. Elements of Pinnick’s pulpit days are still present (ie. “Perfect World”, “Hostile World”), but even in those few moments of self-righteous indignation, Pinnick’s general acceptance of the world around him -- and himself -- slips through.

“I have been writing music for 30 years and I figure you either have to give up or get better,” says Pinnick. “I always tell people, if you play one note when you are 20 years old, and spend the next three decades playing that one note, that one note will be the greatest note anybody’s ever heard. Look at B.B. King. He’s got a handful of licks, but every time he plays ‘em you just go ‘Oh, my god.’

“It’s all about KISS [keep it simple stupid],” Pinnick continues. “I don’t have to put every note and every time change I can in every song I write. I clutter it up so much and the song gets lost. … It is like you have this great piece of meat and you dump ketchup, BBQ and steak sauce all over it.”

Strum Sum Up, recorded by Michael Parnin (Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine) at Blacksound Studio in Los Angeles, sports such gems as “Damn It”, “Angel”, “Coming Over” (featuring a funk diatribe that courageously rhymes “junk of your trunk” with “crunk”), “Cross It”, and the explosive, inimitable “Dynomite.”

“ ‘Dynomite’ is basically telling about my life and the way I felt about it,” Pinnick. “The chorus is saying, ‘So, hit me with your dynamite’. I was recording and I had to stop my computer. I thought about that line. … Whenever I come up with a line like that it might take me five to ten years to figure out what I was truly trying to say. Maybe it was something that was going on deep down inside me, but I just didn’t know how to verbalize it, and it comes out in these lyrics. Musically, I just love it. When the chorus kicks in, the music just slams. I can’t wait to go out and do that song.”

Pinnick can’t hide his exuberance for playing his music – and “Dynomite” -- recalling his early years when he was first exposed to the music of Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard. “When I go out on tour with this band I am going to play guitar with Wally, and another guitar player,” says Pinnick, who’ll hit the road in support of Strum Sum Up in the fall of ’07, prior to the scheduled release of King’s X’s upcoming studio record. “We are going to have three guitars and do the Lynyrd Skynyrd thing.”

Despite experiencing a new sense of openness and purpose, Pinnick still keeps a few things to himself: he refuses to reveal the origin of his solo record’s mysterious title. C’mon, dUg, are you sure you won’t tell us what inspired Strum Sum Up? “Yeah. I think I’ll keep that one to myself,” Pinnick says. “It’s an inside joke. Maybe someday I’ll tell the world what it means, but until then, people will just have to apply their own meaning to what it expresses to them. It’s fun for now to let it be what it is.”

Let it be, dUg. Let it be.