What is it that makes a musician play one nighter after one nighter, town after town, year after year, toting instruments all over the country in a van with way too many thousands of miles under it’s belt?

For 50-year-old Pawcatuck native Greg Piccolo, it’s the continuation of a deep promise to himself to bring about the performance of a song, just about any good song, in his own indomitable style that been honed over the years.

“On top of everything else,” he said during a recent interview in a hometown coffee shop.”it’s always been about finding, or writing, a good song, listening to it, putting my own style on it, and playing it.”

“I’ve never thought about doing anything else, ” he said.

Whether it’s been with Greg and the Groupe, playing at Friday night teenage dances at the old “Como” in Stonington; or his phenomenal, yet underrated, work as one of the founding members of the astonishing Roomful of Blues, which single-handedly made southeastern Connecticut and Rhode Island one of the blues capitals in the country; or with his newest band, Heavy Juice, Piccolo’s career has always been about the passion, integrity and, yes, soul, of music.

And, now, to top it all off, Piccolo has recently released “Homage,” a tribute to the tenor saxophone giants like Illinois Jacquet, Lester Young, Red Prysock and Gene Ammons, whom he has studied and learned from in his 30 plus years as a professional musician.

‘I wrote the list of songs I wanted to to in about five minutes,” he said about recording “Homage.” “I learned the songs, and I did exactly what I wanted to do with it. I’m not really a soloist or an improviser. What draws me to an instrumental is that somebody did something with it that makes me want to play it. Once I know how they played it, I will figure out what I’m going to do on it. I want to keep what they (the original artists) have done, and build on that.”

It’s a process that has served Piccolo well, for a number of years in an astonishing musical journey from his Pawcatuck roots through numerous recordings and live shows, including recent ones at the Mohegan Sun Casino, the Knickerbocker, and clubs in Mystic and New Haven, as well as around the country and abroad.

“I started my first band when I was 13,” Piccolo said,” and I heard the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five. I remember the first time I met (Roomful guitarist and co-founder) Duke Robillard. He asked me ‘what are your favorite songs,’ and I said’ Reeling and Rockin’, ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, and ‘Around and Around,’ which I’d heard those bands cover.

“And he said to me, ‘did you ever hear of Chuck Berry’?

“That’s how it started,” he remembered.”You read about who wrote the songs, you figure out what you like, and where it came from. That music wasn’t available to me, as a young white 13-year-old at the time, to go out and get in front of it. Duke, who brought that to us, was like the guru of the whole scene.”

Piccolo and Robillard started out together in a rock band, the Variations, in 1964 or ’65, he remembered. After that, Piccolo started “Greg and Groupe,” and, later, “Friends,” two other cover bands that showcased his trademark of playing more interesting songs, more interesting covers, than just the Beatles and the Stones tunes that every other band was doing in those days. It was then that he also played guitar and saxophone on stage, which is currently doing with his current band, “Heavy Juice.”

“I always wanted to do songs that nobody had every heard, because they were cool, and of course, I wanted to be cool,” he said, laughing. “That was pretty much my own way of making my own statement, looking for and playing things that I thought nobody else knew about, and doing them the way that I wanted to do them.

“What I do now, in the genre that I am in, is a lot like what I did then,” he said.”I wouldn’t be happy if I weren’t playing the horn, if I weren’t writing songs, I’d think that I would be neglecting a piece of me. I am just what I am, for better or for worse.”

While Piccolo notes that, in his mind, Robillard was the key ingredient to the expanding blues and R&B scene in the area, there can be no denying his own involvement in that growth. Roomful was, and still is, to this day, arguably the country’s toughest and truest blues and swing band.

“It was all Duke, without Duke, there certainly would not have been a Roomful of Blues,” Piccolo said.”There would not have been any of what happened here without Duke. He was the one that was driven to do this. He dragged us along with him, because, I mean, Duke was the best. He was always as good as he is now. His execution on the guitar was always perfect.

“I didn’t even care what I played in Roomful, I just wanted to be in that band.” He said.”I never expected anything, businesswise, out of Roomful of Blues, because what we were doing, at that point, there was no market for it, period.

“I told myself when I joined the band that I was not doing it for money,” he said,”I was doing it because I really enjoyed and liked the music. Whenever I got discouraged with Roomful of Blues, I always went back to that original reason, for ‘why did I do this in the first place?’”

“But,” he added,” none of it (the success) surprised me, because I thought we were the best. There was no doubt in my mind that when we got on the stage, we knew we were the best. We were going to do what we did, and screw it if people didn’t like us.

Clearly, there were very, very few people who didn’t like Roomful’s brand of blues and R&B, which put them at the top of their profession, years and years before the so-called “swing revival” of a decade ago, a time that Piccolo has an interesting take on.

“Hey, it was good for business, I suppose,” he said, “but Roomful was not wearing the zoot suits and doing the superficial things. We always had to take the tough road. We always had a chip on our shoulders.

“We did care, and that was part of our image,” he said.”If we had to compete with those bands, like Cherry Popping Daddies, they would have made money and we wouldn’t, because we wouldn’t have done the stupid shit they did. I mean, they are totally superficial. I’m not knocking their success. God bless that they can make money doing this thing they can call ‘swing music,’ but we went much deeper than that.”

After several years at the top of the heap, Robillard left Roomful to play with rockabilly great Robert Gordon, and Piccolo moved forefront with the band, changing the sound by increasing the number of horns in the band, taking over the lead singing role, writing more original music and continuing to make many of the business decisions.

“It was very tough,” he said about Robillard leaving and the band changing.”It was his band he quit. He was the man. I wasn’t Duke, so I came up with the idea to make the band more of a spectacle, putting the brass (trumpet and trombone) in there. We had to do something to compensate for Duke not being there. It made Roomful beyond any one person, at that point.

“One of the talents Roomful has had since then, after Duke left, is that it becomes what it is from all of the people in the band,” he added.

After a time, the band began to trouble over Piccolo as a vocalist, which brought about more changes, including new lead singer “Sugar Ray” Norcia, another Pawcatuck native.

“I’m not Pavarotti,” Piccolo said, of his singing.”I have my own style and I love to sing, but I didn’t want to be the singer, if they didn’t want me to be the singer. Once we got Ray, we started to go back to what we did with Duke. Ray’s got a voice he can depend on, a more natural singing voice. I know what I’m doing, but I have to work a lot harder.”

As the band continued to evolve, Piccolo made his first solo album, “Heavy Juice,” in 1990. A very Roomful influenced album that contains all of the original members, Piccolo remembers it as “the best Roomful album.” By four years later, in 1994, Piccolo made a decision to leave the band himself.

“It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done, and I was really scared when I left,” he said, looking back at it.”There were a lot of reasons, and it was past time. I have always loved Roomful of Blues, I still love it and I will always support the spirit of what the band is.”

And, with his current band, “Heavy Juice,” and four albums and countless live shows later, Piccolo has come back full circle.

“Now, I play just what I like, again,” he said.