Since his teenage years, Greg Piccolo has played music. Those early days of rock and roll would eventually cross paths in Westerly, Rhode Island with the world of rhythm and blues to formulate what would become arguably the best known band the areas has ever witnessed. The result would become the Roomful of Blues train that is still running straight ahead, and Greg Piccolo would serve as conductor for a 24-year stint from 1970 through 1994. Piccolo began singing and playing alto saxophone when he met a guitar slinger named Duke Robillard. It would change his musical direction and his life forever. Eventually moving to tenor sax (Piccolo also played guitar and harp), Piccolo worked side by side with Robillard and fellow horn players Rich Lataille and Doug James to shape the legendary Roomful of Blues sound that lives on today. Following Robillard’s departure from Roomful in 1979, Piccolo assumed the bulk of the bandleader duties, also serving as songwriter, booking agent, and lead vocalist. During this time, Piccolo would also release his fi rst solo record, "Heavy Juice", in 1990. He would eventually step away from Roomful of Blues in 1994 to further pursue his solo career, with Greg Piccolo and Heavy Juice touring to support "Acid Blue" (1995) and "Red Lights" (1997). Still playing in a trio (Greg Piccolo and Heavy Juice) and also in demand as a session player, Piccolo juggles his daytime responsibilities as Booking Agent for The Knickerbocker Café in Westerly with travel stints as part of Jimmie Vaughan’s Tilt-A-Whirl Band, traveling the country for scheduled gigs and retuning to Rhode Island in between. Sound Waves Magazine caught up with a very busy Greg Piccolo upon his return to Rhode Island from the Midwest to talk about his career and current musical plans:

SOUND WAVES MAGAZINE: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. How was your trip?

GREG PICCOLO: It was great. I’ve been out there pretty much the last two years (with Jimmie Vaughan) doing a few gigs and then I come home, so it’s been very hectic.

SW: Besides all of the traveling that you’ve been doing, what are you working on now?

GP: Basically, I’m just practicing a lot these days. I’m trying to get better on the sax. I have two parts to what I do. I’m playing with Jimmie (Vaughan),

and aside from that, I write songs and I play the saxophone. When I do my (original) songs, I’m usually playing the guitar. I write melody and lyrics. I have these two things pulling at me all of the time. If I devote all of my energy to one thing, I start feeling guilty that I’m neglecting the other. And that’s the way it’s been all of my life. I’ve been pulled in different directions;

not anyone else doing it to me. But I just wouldn’t feel good if I left the sax behind.

SW: Listen, I’ve seen you play the saxophone and I don’t think you need any practice at all. You did mention the guitar and I know that you play. How would you describe yourself as a guitar player and how much time do you devote to that?

GP: Not much at all (laughs).

SW: How about the songwriting process?

GP: In 1984, we (Roomful of Blues) put out “Dressed Up To Get Messed Up”, and I wrote seven songs on that record. That’s really when my songwriting came out. The Manager told me that we need to get some original songs. I wrote a couple of songs when I was younger and they didn’t like them. So I said that I would try again. And I came up with a bunch of tunes. I can say that about my songs. When I do write a song, it usually is what I want it to be when I get through with it. I get an idea that pops up in my head, and I already know what kind of a song it is or what kinds it’s going to be. I’ll get some kind of a catch phrase that’s going on and I’ll take it from there. I have different ways of writing songs, but I’m not prolifi c. I don’t get up every day and write songs.

SW: Do you feel that you are a natural songwriter or is it something that you have to work at?

GP: I don’t really have to work at it. It’s the kind of stuff that I do. Whenever I make a new record, I always make it a point to come up with a couple of new tunes. But I’ve got a backlog of so much stuff that I have and never released that I don’t feel a need. I like the songs that I’ve got backlogged, but just for my own purpose, I like to know that I wrote that song last month, not 10 years ago or 20 years ago. So that kind of motivates me to get off my butt and write a couple of tunes.

SW: To that respect, do you feel that your songwriting style has changed over the last 10 or 20 years?

GP: I don’t think so, because the songs just are what they are. And a good song can be done in any style; it doesn’t matter. That’s the mark of a good song. I do “Yes Indeed” with Jimmie Vaughan. That’s a song that I wrote. It’s probably the most known of the songs that I’ve written because I do it every night. It’s really a catchy little tune. It can be done as a slow kind of a groove; as a strolling kinds of a thing. It can be done as a shuffl e. It could be done as a country song if somebody got the mind to make a country song out of it. It could be done a bunch of different ways. I think that’s the sign of a good song.

SW: There is a group of musicians from the Southeastern Connecticut and Rhode Island area; people like you, Duke Robillard, Al Copley, Ronnie Earl, Sugar Ray Norcia….what about those early relationships? How does it feel to be part of something that almost invented a certain style of music in the region? Do you still keep in touch with those people? How do you feel when you refl ect back on those days?

GP: I’ve never done anything that I didn’t want to do musically. I’ve always been of the moment with that. Whatever I’m doing right now is what I want to do. So my years in Roomful were great. I loved being in the band, and I really believed in the band. And we did great things together. After 25 years it was time for me to move on. We (Greg, Al Copley, and Doug James) are playing on November 4th at The Knickerbocker (Café). In the last few years, we’ve done a few gigs together. It just kinda falls in place; like riding a bicycle. We just all go back to the roles that we played in the 70’s and realized that we actually still remember.

SW: The fans seem to still appreciate and reminisce about those days of live music in the area. Could you tell me more about The Knickerbocker (Café) and your involvement?

GP: I was told when the investors put that together that I was the guy who was going to book the place. I didn’t look for the job; Johnny Nicholas just said, “you’re going to book it”.

SW: It’s a great responsibility. Of course, you seem to be doing a pretty good job. How has that been for you?

GP: It’s a responsibility. I worry about things working out. I want every show to be successful. It’s hard for me not to be emotional about it. I try to book as many bands as I really like. I know it’s not just my tastes that I’m catering to, but ultimately, somebody’s got to make the decision. I’ve been given that lead role. A lot of thee stuff works. Some of the stuff we do is not as successful as we would like it to be. But the club is a great club and more and more people are fi nding out about it. We’ve had really great shows in there….amazing shows.

SW: You have a great lineup of people coming through there.

GP: Yeah, we’ve got Delbert McClinton coming back. We’ve got Asleep At The Wheel coming back. We have Shemekia Copeland….Leon Russell…. Jimmie Vaughan….The Thunderbirds.

SW: How has the industry changes from 20 years ago now that you are booking entertainment? Is it different?

GP: Yeah, absolutely it’s different. Things change. The bad part of the way things are now is that the media and everything is such a machine, and the middle ground is less. It’s harder to have a middle area; you’re at the bottom or the top. In the middle, it’s getting tougher and tougher. And it’s like that in a lot of things, not just music, but just in business, period. My opinion is that all of the creativity and all of the real work is done in the middle. So if you make it harder for those bands to have a place to play, it’s kind of sad to not support that. But on the other side of that, we’re able to get a Leon Russell into The Knickerbocker. We’re able to get Eric Burdon and the Animals. We’re able to get Delbert (McClinton). We can get acts in there that we would never have been able to get in there 10 years ago. If an act is between New York and Boston on an off night, we can make an offer, and that part of it is cool. That’s a plus. Even myself, I could go on the road and get gigs, but I choose not to. I prefer to go for one night here or one night there and go home. Clubs in the early 90’s really got stung. There were a lot of bands out there, and everyone had been flying high all through the 80’s and things were good. Then things started going south, and clubs were still paying the high dollars and some went out of business. But some are still around, and they haven’t forgotten that time.

SW: I appreciate your point about the middle ground. It happens out there in the real world, and you do lose some creativity and some specialized services.

GP: Yeah, that’s kinds of like the area that things get to percolate around before they get to the next level, and it’s a little sad that’s not able to happen. It probably happens in another way and maybe I just haven’t fi gured it out.

SW: What about timing? If you go from your early days with Roomful to your solo career to now, was it timed well? Would you rather be in the prime Roomful days now?

GP: Well, back in the 70’s it was wide open. When I joined Roomful (of Blues), I had been playing in my own band for seven years. I started a band when I was 13 and joined Roomful when I was 19. Roomful was just a great band. When I heard them, I wasn’t happy anymore doing what I was doing. I knew that they were doing something special and I wanted to be part of it. So I didn’t even care what I played; I just wanted to be in the band. I told myself then that there’s no market for what this band does. I’m 60 years old now, but I remember saying to myself “if you’re 60 and you spend your life doing this, are you going to be unhappy if you don’t fi nd huge fi nancial success?” I asked myself that question. And I answered no; I’m not going to be, because I’m doing what I was to do. I say that I was right. I haven’t enjoyed huge fi nancial success, but I’m not unhappy about it (laughs).

SW: Like you said, you’ve never played anything you didn’t want to play. You’re always stuck to your true roots.

GP: Yeah, there’s a price that you pay for that. Some people are so good at what they do that they can rise to that next level. There are so many musicians that I love that are out there that never made it. Sometimes you get down in the dumps and you ask yourself whether you should even be doing it. But when I’m playing and it feels really good, and I have a good reed on

and people are responding in a way that coincides with the way I’m thinking and it all meshes together. When somebody comes up out of the audience and says something to you and what they say is how you want people to feel about what you do, it validates doing it.

SW: That’s a great point.

GP: I’m much happier playing music now than I probably ever was. I have a trio, and in a trio, you can do anything you want and it’s very liberating. I can bring it down to a whisper and I can just go anywhere. You don’t always stumble into the right room, but you can move it anywhere.

SW: How has technology changed the industry, with things like iTunes, buying music on line, and YouTube? I can go on-line right now and fi nd plenty of videos of you playing music.

GP: There’s basically no record industry anymore. Certainly in popular music, it seems like the players don’t matter anymore. The machine is so fi ne tuned that the players are just plug-in parts. Not to say that a lot of these artists aren’t talented. They are. I don’t want to sound like every old person saying “when I was a kid this and that”; I’m sure that the same kind of stuff, relatively, was going on when I was a kid.

SW: We talked a little about your practice routine. Do you sit down and say “I’m going to practice”, do you jam, or listen to other musicians?

GP: I don’t read music. Basically I have to remember everything. If I listen to sax players that I like and something really hits me and I hear a new riff that I like, I’ll try to learn it. Sometimes I practice after listening to music. I don’t want to copy people, but at the same time, I try to incorporate a lot of things that I’ve heard into what I play. I phrase them differently, and when I play a tune, I try to make it be the fi rst time I’ve ever played it even though I’ve played the song a thousand times. But I approach it like I’ve never played it before.

SW: If you’re playing a cover song, do you try to purposely reinvent it to blend your style in?

GP: What draws me to an instrumental by an artist that I love is that, when I hear what they played, it’s not just another instrumental, but what their playing is actually like the melody. It hits me in such a way that I want to know what they played. I want to know exactly what they played. It sounds perfect to me. I want to learn every note that they played and then I will play it that way for a while. And as time goes by, it still has the basic theme in there and I can still quote the original, but I do other things. It takes time for me to develop how I’m going to play it for myself in my own way, because I don’t read (music), I don’t think of chords when I play, and I don’t even know what’s going on (laughs).

SW: It probably comes natural to you. Sometimes that opens up more creative avenues.

GP: Yeah, I get caught on both worlds, believe me. Sometimes I can just not think and that’s the best way. But the guys that play so effortlessly, you know that they know what they’re doing.

SW: What can we expect to hear next from Greg Piccolo?

GP: Well, I’ve been sitting on a record for the last 10 years and I haven’t released it. It’s my original stuff. A lot of it is Roomful style, R&B type things. I wanted to get a great band together and go in and redo the whole thing, but I don’t know if that just gives me another reason not to put it out.

SW: You must really enjoy what you do to do it so well for so long.

GP: Well I’m glad that there are people who think that. I do enjoy what I do. I love to be on stage. I love to play. I’m willing to give whatever I’ve got. I never know what that’s going to be until I get up there.

Greg Piccolo is currently touring with Jimmie Vaughan and The Tilt-A-Whirl Band. Greg Piccolo and Friends can also be found on Monday evenings at The Steak Loft in Mystic, CT. He will also be appearing with Doug James & Al Copley at the Knickerbocker Friday November 4th.
Check out www.gregpiccolo.com for more on the musical career of Greg Piccolo and www.theknickerbockercafe.com for a listing of the music that will be coming to the area booked by Greg Piccolo.