BANDS & PROJECTS

The Rolling Onions was the first serious band I had. Before that, I only performed with a group of friends, but it never went that far.

We formed the band back in 2005, in a small village in the Center-North of Italy, Santarcangelo di Romagna (right by Rimini, where I’m from). The funniest thing about the band is the name, which is a mixture of “The Rolling Stones” and “Oliver Onions”. I cannot remember exactly who came up with such an idea, but what I can tell you is that we liked it (after struggling to search for a good name)!

The band was initially composed of seven members, which we then reduced to five. In the picture above, we have (from left to right): Emanuele (lead and rhythm guitar), Stefano (keyboard and backing vocals), Marco (bass), Lorenzo (drum), Giovanni (lead voice), Luca (lead and rhythm guitar).

We mostly played rock and hard rock from 1960s-1990s (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, to name a few), and we performed several live shows as well as music contests. We have been active for 5 years, and then we quit the whole project. However, during this period, we recorded an album “The Art of Rolling”, with four original songs, that you can listen to here. You can hear my guitar solo in “Like A 70’s Band” (second solo), and over the entire song “Sweet Sound Love”. My rhythm guitar is all over the tracks (along with Luca's guitar).

Playing with those guys, writing our own music and jamming on the tunes we loved has been a truly great experience, which I will never forget. I recall a music contest when I was awarded the prize as “best performer” of the night. It was completely unexpected, and the most rewarding thing, apart from a € 500 coupon to purchase musical instruments, was that a juror was a talented guitar player, who really liked my playing and my performing style.

We still have a Facebook page of the band, which has not been uploaded in a long time. But it is something, which is better than nothing!

Estro Versi is an acoustic duo (guitar and vocals) formed in 2008. The idea came out after I met Fabrizio, the singer, during a live performance of mine in Rimini.

We performed both Italian and international covers, but never got to write our own music. Even though we did not get the chance to perform much in front of big audiences, we played several times for small crowds, who always appreciated our music. Our activity lasted for a couple of years, during which we recorded an album, “In Musica” (which in Italian means “into the music”), that you can access here.

What I really liked about this project was that it put me in touch with acoustic music, and helped me to develop other skills as compared to those I was accustomed to on the electric guitar (which has always been my main instrument).

While I was playing with Fabrizio, I was asked by his father Ivano Tonini (a former musician from the 1970s) to play the guitar on a song he composed. The song, “It’s only a dream”, was recorded in 2008 at Gogo & Yellow Studio in Rimini, and you can listen to it here. I played the rhythm and solo guitar, along with Fabrizio and Angela on vocals. It was a great pleasure of mine to play this song, which has an interesting harmonic structure.

The Strange Fruit was the last band I had before moving to the US. Its story is quite convoluted, given that we continuously change members (I also had to leave the band for almost a year, when I moved to London for a period of study abroad). However, the picture above shows the “official” set. From left to right, there’s me (lead guitar), Paolo (bass), Massimo (lead vocals), Stefano (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), and Claudio (drums).

The band was formed in September 2010, right after I quit with Rolling Onions, and stayed active for quite a long time (until February 2019, though without all the original members). We mostly performed international covers, but the diversity of music genres we covered was quite impressive (from David Bowie to The Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, U2, Deep Purple, The Rolling Stones, etc.).

We performed live several times, mostly playing our own shows, which in some cases lasted for three hours. Among the covers we performed, there was one that would always create a special atmosphere: “Still Got the Blues” by Gary Moore. This song was probably our trademark, and we always played it toward the end of the show. The audience was craving for it, and I could not wait for the final solo to come (I have always been sentimentally attached to this song). To tell you how important this song was for us, Paolo shed some tears at the end of our last live performance of this song.

The experience with this band has been really unique, as it got me close to some music genres that I have never listened to before. You can listen to some stuff we have been playing and watch a short presentational video below. You can also check our Facebook page, though now is no longer updated.