SC Musical History…

Everyone’s got a unique story about their musical upbringing, things that “moved” them at certain time periods. I can track mine by school years, each new time period adding new influences to the previous one:

Birth Till School Years – Classical, Sinatra, Swing, My jazz singing mom, Rosemary Conte.

Kindergarten – Motown; Temps, Supremes, Stevie W.

Elementary School – Beatles, Who, Small Faces, Hollies, Stones, Sly, Monkees

Middle School – Chuck Berry, J. Geils Band, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Aerosmith, Bad Co., Hendrix, Philly Soul

High School – Jeff Beck, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Yes

College – Police, Pretenders, XTC, Jazz Fusion guitarists; McLaughlin/ Mahavishnu, Carlton, Morse, Metheny, Scofield, Stern, Martino & Trad Jazz; Wes Montgomery, Charlie Parker, Miles, Monk, Trane

Post-School Years – Replacements, Tom Waits, Morphine, Iggy, Chris Spedding, Humble Pie, Faces, Chris Whitley, Jeff Buckley, old Blues, classic R&B (Stax, etc) and Soul.

Everything I’ve done since then has been informed by that list.

This is not a list of the only stuff I ever liked or listened to, just what I feel informed my writing, singing & playing.

If i could put together the ultimate rock-soul-jazz fusion band it would be songwriting like Lennon/Waits/Westerberg/Partridge with a singer like Paul Rogers/Rod Stewart/Wilson Pickett/Sly Stone & a guitarist like Jeff Beck/Page/Keef/Townsend/ Stern/Scofield. It would NEVER work! And that is why – I’m a marketing nightmare and no major label would ever touch me again… 🙂

So there you have it. No Clapton. No Dolls. No Pistols. If i didn’t list it, it wasn’t an “influence”.