TONY SARNO

in a nutshell...

Tony Sarno is an American singer and guitarist who has recorded numerous critically-acclaimed Rock and Blues albums. Tony has toured the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Argentina, and Mexico with his band or as guitarist with David Clayton Thomas' Blood Sweat and Tears, Dee Archer and Peter Tork. He has dozens of published songs and pieces written for TV and other broadcasts. Tony produced international releases Thunderhawks, Tony Sarno, Silent night, and co-produced Dee Archer's Sooner or later and Tony Sarno & the screamin' blue demons "It's a blues thing". He produces background music for CBS Sports and music for Big Fish Audio. He has shared numerous concert bills with B.B. King, as well as bills with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hall & Oates, Johnny Winter, and Little Feat. Tony has recorded for CBS/Holland, Icehouse/Priority, Marconi, and Bandwidth Records. His music appeared in The Craig Brewer film Poor & Hungry, and on the Masters of Blues cd compilation with Albert King, Buddy Guy, and the Allman Brothers Band.

the rest of the story......

Tony Sarno was born on the road... His father being a US Navy officer, the family moved frequently, and San Juan Puerto Rico was Tony's first stop. The family soon moved to Tarrytown New York, then to Riverside and Cos Cob Connecticut, where they settled through his High School years.

Guitar instruction commenced at age 8 with Mr. Petrone's group music lessons (in the same class were 8 or 9 other children learning everything from accordion to saxophone). After two months, Tony decided to quit the guitar. Piano lessons began at age 10, but these didn't last much longer. Deciding to go back to guitar, this time with a private guitar teacher Bill Frenz, Tony learned quickly and won a talent show in the 4th grade, and played his first gig (going classroom to classroom at Cos Cob School with drummer David Caravella). In the 6th grade the orchestra needed a bass fiddle player, so Tony started lessons, but was shortly canned for knowing only Louie Louie. So the guitar became his main focus and he was ready for his first paying gig at age 14. At age 15, the seedy bars in the neighboring town of Port Chester NY provided gainful employment, and a fast education in the entertainment business. It was around this time that Tony first saw B.B. King (with Muddy Waters as opening act) and Sly & The Family Stone in concert, and those experiences were a major influence on the developing guitarist/singer's style.

After graduating from Ithaca College in upstate New York, where he studied guitar with Steve Brown and voice with Jim Porterfield, Tony became a full-time musician. Accepting a 6-month tour as guitarist with Carol & Carl's Soul Revue, Tony and the group traveled to the Altoona PA Holiday Inn; only to be sent packing, polyester suits in hand, after only one night. Returning to Stamford CT, Tony studied guitar with Linc Chamberland, voice with Joan Brainerd, played solo gigs, and painted houses. Along with former bandmate saxophonist Steve Sechi and keyboardist Jeff Bova, Tony founded a 7-piece progressive rock band called DBFM, playing original music. The short-lived band performed and showcased constantly in the New York Metropolitan area, but failed to attract Record company attention. After some personnel changes (including founding member Tony Sarno leaving), the band split up.

Tony then did a short stint with the Burns Sisters Band, as guitarist and background vocalist. The incredible harmonies that only sisters can produce was also great backup when he got a chance to sing lead on a few songs, as they toured the bars in Westchester, Long Island, and upstate New York. The Burns Sisters went on to record for Columbia Records and still perform together. He then started All-American; a Rock, Soul, Blues, Variety band, which included Bassist Kevin Jenkins, singer Cookie Watkins, B3 player Conrad Andriani, and drummers Rowan Kaplan and Vince Barranco. It was in this group that Tony says he really learned how to sing. "I had the amazing Cookie Watkins standing next to me night after night, singing like Tina Turner and backing me up on songs that I wanted to sing. All the voice lessons in the world aren't gonna get you close to singing like Cookie, and I knew that I'd better get good real fast if I was to share the vocal duties with her, so I just went for it and developed my style... trial by fire". During the day Tony had a gig teaching 40 guitar students a week at a music store in Fairfield CT.

It was the spring of 1979 that he decided to move to the infamous Bretton Hall on the upper West Side of Manhattan (a funky, Single Room Occupancy hotel, which housed hundreds of other struggling musicians, actors and artists). Tony quickly discovered Kenny's Castaways on Bleeker Sreet in Greenwich Village, a testing ground for aspiring musicians. He soon became a fixture there, taking over the Monday night jam after guitarist Jack Sonni tired of it. Tony got hired as lead guitarist with The Peter Tork Band, a hard-rock rave-up of Monkees music, which led to a gig with New York Rock singer Dee Archer, who had a development deal with the brand-new Geffen records. Opening for Joe Cocker and B.B. King, the powerhouse group won over the audiences but not David Geffen. The group splintered and Tony moved to Europe, landing a gig with the Dutch group Hollander. He recorded one single and toured Holland with the group. Since the band was already signed to CBS Holland Records when he joined, Tony had the dubious distinction of being dropped from the label without him ever being signed.

Returning to NYC, Tony was hired as lead guitarist for David Clayton Thomas' Blood Sweat & Tears, and toured the US. When that tour was over, Tony re-formed his All American band and toured extensively in the Northeast, sharing concert bills with B.B.King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hall & Oates, James Cotton, and N.R.B.Q. but in early 1986 he was ready for another change.

The American South being the birthplace of the music he played and loved, Tony decided to try Atlanta, to "see what's in the water down there". He formed The Atlanta Underground with Wet Willie bass-player Jack Hall and Georgia Satellite Randy Delay. Recording demos with legendary producer Rodney Mills (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Gregg Allman, .38 Special), constantly playing the clubs and performing in concert with B.B.King, Johnny Winter, Little Feat, Leon Russell, and Edgar Winter. There were no record deals forthcoming (Cindy Lauper manager David Wolff got close to a singles deal at Epic with the bands' version of the Four Seasons Rag Doll), so after five years the group went their separate ways.

Upon hearing the genius of bassist and Georgia Satellite founder Keith Christopher, Tony made a few exploratory trips to Nashville and co-founded The Thunderhawks with Keith and guitarist Eddy Shaver. The three wrote songs in Christopher's tiny kitchen, and together with drummer Rick Donley, the band recorded demos and played fraternity and club gigs. Keith and Eddy were members of Billy Joe Shaver's group Shaver, and continued to tour and record, but the Thunderhawks demo resulted in Tony's signing by Mark Maynard to Memphis' Icehouse Records as a solo artist. The 1995 Icehouse/Priority release titled "It's a Blues Thing" was both well received and critically acclaimed. Recorded in seven days in May '95 in Memphis, the record was a very long-awaited triumph, and resulted in touring Australia in both '97 and '98 in support of the album.

Returning to Nashville in late February of '98, Tony finished up work on his self-titled second album. As his first release consisted of original Modern-Electric-Blues and traditional Blues covers, the second album featured original material and classic Rock covers. There is also a tribute to Tony's late uncle and namesake, in the form of a blues rendition of America, the beautiful, the arrangement inspired by Ray Charles. The album was released in late 1998 on Marconi Records. Marconi Records was founded by Tony, along with Mark Maynard and is distributed by Select O Hits in Memphis. Also that year Tony co-produced (with drummer/producer Craig Krampf) an album for Dee Archer. Dee had left the music industry in 1983, but returned with a vengeance with her appropriately named album "Sooner or Later". The album featured original members of her New York band, Kevin Jenkins and Atticus Finch, along with colleagues Dave Perkins (Chagall Quevara), Lee West, and session-ace Craig Krampf, and featured Dee's compositions and early works by Tony and Dave Perkins. The album was released on Marconi Records. The next year Tony continued to tour with both his band and Dees' and released the Christmas single "Silent Night" on Marconi Records.

The new millennium brought the completion of the long-awaited Thunderhawks CD. Recording for the Rock band's debut actually began as their 1992 Atlanta demos at Purple Dragon Studios with engineer Tom Cassell. The band resumed recording in May of 2000 at Tony's Record Camp Studios with engineers George Tutko, Voyek Kochanek, and Jason Hall. The band, along with drummer Craig Krampf and keyboardist Clayton Ivey, finished the album in July of that year. The album was to be released in the fall of 2000, but was postponed due to record company struggles. Tragically, guitarist Eddy Shaver's life ended on New Years Eve 2000 along with the future of a very promising band.

The fall of 2001 brought a tour of Argentina. Playing clubs and concert Halls in Buenos Aires and surround cities, Tony was warmly received with his brand of Blues and Rock.

In 2002 The Bose Corporation invited Tony as a guest artist to try their new product for musicians. This meeting led to another relocation, this time to the Boston area where he was enlisted as resident artist for the project. Fronting the soulful seven-piece band The Linemen, Tony toured The US and Europe to introduce and demonstrate the product, and acted as a consultant and "voice of the professional musician". The band line-up; ex-Joe Cocker guitarist and music director Cliff Goodwin; the rhythm section of bassist Wolf Ginandes (James Cotton, Maceo Parker) and drummer Marty Richards (Taj Mahal, Peter Wolf, Pat Metheny, Gary Burton), horn section of Bruce McGrath on saxes and Doc Chanonhouse on trumpet, and the inventor of the Bose L1 technology, keyboardist Cliff Henricksen.

2003 and 2004 brought local Boston area gigs and performances at the Bose performance theatre, Folk Alliance festival, Martin guitar, Taylor Guitar, a Bose/Line 6 press conference with fellow guitarist and Berklee College of Music Professor Thaddeus Hogarth, and a European and Canadian tour with the Linemen.

In 2005 the long wait ended for the commercial release of the Thunderhawks album. Released on March 29th on the Bandwidth record label, Thunderhawks gained some recognition in Europe for it's "straight-ahead" style of Rock. Tony also did some west coast dates with B3 player Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band) and bassist Mario Cipollina, longtime bass player with Huey Lewis and the News. Having only one rehearsal and two gigs, the musicians developed a great synergy and there was talk at the time of starting a band.

In 2007 Tony and his family relocated to the mountains of New Hampshire, where he plays locally with an assortment of fine musicians and his old NYC Bandmate bassist Al Hospers (Buddy Rich, Blood, Sweat, & Tears).

2008 brought a different twist on the music industry with work writing background music for TV sports, and guitar sessions done over the internet for Producer Steve Sechi, Tony's old pal from High School bands and DBFM.

In January 2009 Tony played the Illinois Delegation party for the historic presidential Inauguration, and started work on a construction kit cd for Big Fish Audio www.bigfishaudio.com.

2010 saw the completion of the Big Fish Audio project and the resurrection of his bigger band freshly named "The Tony Sarno Revue". Complete with a four-piece horn Section, B3, two female vocalists, and percussion, the eleven-piece band plays Rock and Soul music with a vengeance.

2011 had Tony rehearsing with fellow Thunderhawk Keith Christopher and Australian drummer Chris Nable, for a possible 2012 tour of Australia and Germany. He also started pre-production for an acoustic album, and a long overdue live album, both set for release in 2012.

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