Red Neckin' It

Even though we look as if we were a country band... this is really just Ric and I  holding the guitars, and our fellow hippie redneck friends, Keith and Mark.

I think we had probably put away a few by then, and coaxed someone into  taking a pictures of us sitting in the bed of my '76 F-100, 4x4, 4 speed.






Mandarin, Florida... probably about 1980...

Man I miss these dudes... And I miss my truck....

Peace all...






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Touton Hall - Where'd Y'all Go?

 

A Family Tradition - "A Lucky Little Boy"

Lou Sr. second from the left with the band he had in Brooklyn, NY

I have many relatives who were, or still are musicians. Most of my early influences came from country music. Putting aside the obvious ripoff from Hank Jr. with the title of this post, Hank and I go way back.

My earliest remembrances are filled with songs from Hank Williams Sr., Roy Acuff, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, Flatt & Scruggs, and many other legends of country music.

It was only a matter of time until my mid-twenties and I would be melding the tones, inflections, arrangements, progressions and other elements of the country music genre into my own stew pot of a redneck hippy, rock & roll playing style.

The guys I had been jamming with in my mid teens taught me many tricks and techniques of rock, which I added to my advanced rhythm playing ability. Open chords were easy for me because most of the country music songs I had learned previously were almost always open chords ('cowboy chords' is what my friends used to call them). I could play complicated and fast progressions utilizing only open chords. Learning to play barre chords effectively was a much bigger challenge, and I will most likely devote a later post to describing that challenging experience.

A family tradition, my musical relatives:

My father
Two uncles (or more)
At least two cousins
A niece and nephew
My son and daughter
My wife

My dad, Lou Riccio, pictured above with the band he formed in Brooklyn NY "The Ozark Hillbillys", loved the music of Lefty Frizzell. He played guitar, harmonica and sing.  He also wrote some of his own material. Two notable tunes he co-wrote with my Uncle Joe Riccio, pop's brother, were "Pity A Fool" and "A Lucky Little Boy"

Joe Riccio - "The Singing Cowboy", Brooklyn, NY

An excerpt from "A Lucky Little Boy"

What a lucky little boy am I,
I can reach up to the sky,
I can sit on the stars and shake hands with Mars,
I'm lucky.

I have been told pop wrote that with my Uncle Joe right after I was born, but I am not sure... If that is true, he was right, I'm extremely lucky. But, most of all, I am blessed...


A video playlist of some of the music of my pre-teen years:

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" I Know You Rider"

From Ric's "To The Edge" CD, Produced by Hughie Thomasson of The Outlaws and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

 

My good friend Ric Toole and The Ric Toole Band do an excellent job on this traditional classic. A very cool arrangement and great vocals.

Ric was a guitarist in the band Touton Hall I had formed in Fort Walton Beach Florida, 1983. After hanging out in our high school years and playing a bunch of music together, Ric was the obvious choice for me when it came time to build the band.

On another track off his CD, "Bayin at the Moon", Hughie Thomasson plays the second guitar solo. Ric would later join The Outlaws touring at the invitation of Hughie.

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A Lone Acoustic Guitar

I was born in Brooklyn NY, a mix of Italian and Scandinavian ancestors. An interesting ancestral heritage by any stretch of the imagination. Romans, Vikings, fascists, mobsters, and Norwegian heavy metal heads.

• Hey, I'm Lou, the Problem Fix-a, I fix problems......  You got a problem wid dat?"

So yeah, okay, I digress...  Let us get back to it, shall we?

So in Brooklyn, I was very young, I mean like 4 or 5 years old young. Then my mom and I left Brooklyn to move to "the island" (that is "Long Island" for all those non-New York natives).

While we lived in Brooklyn, my sister Karol and her husband Richie would be around a bunch.They may have been even living with us for a while, I am not sure... this could be a sign.... :^).

My brother-in-law had a guitar and it was the first one I had ever seen. He would sit on the couch and pick some notes, and mess with a few open chords. He would strum harder as he learned how to change faster and faster from chord to chord.  They were the open chords, the "cowboy chords" some rockers like to call 'em. He would sit back and practice those, trying to get his fingers right on the changes. He was about 20 years old at the time.

Richie could be heard in the corner singing, mostly to himself, "hang down your head Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry, hang down your head Tom Dooley, poor boy you're bound to die..."

It was a large blonde acoustic, the only one in the house and the only guitar I had ever seen.

I don't even know who made it....


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A Life Of Music

Hello all, and welcome to my blog!

Many my find this an uninteresting read, as I am not an accomplished recording artist, or some melodic virtuoso schooled in advanced fretboard wizardry. My dream of becoming a hippy rock star ended with a set of reassignment orders to Korea in October 1983.

I was in the USAF at the time, stationed at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The band was called "Touton Hall" and was composed of some friends I met in the service, and friends I knew prior. The story of Touton Hall is a fun one, and will be detailed in later posts as we progress through the years. For now, I would like to just give an introduction of what this blog is about.

A brief outline of where I will be going with this!

•  I will be having fun discussing the musical people in my life. Those family members and friends who introduced me to various styles of music and taught me the basics of playing an instrument.
• My experiences of trying to play different instruments.
• My selection of the guitar as my primary ax.
• Experiences with learning music from others, jam sessions, and joining or starting bands.
• The various music genres I enjoy, and the styles I enjoy playing with others.
• The discovery of my personal faith, as the result of a gift of music
• How my love of music has influenced others.

I know there are many more things I could have, or should have put in that outline, but, I prefer to not write the whole story from an introduction. :^)

Soon to Come: "A Lone Acoustic Guitar"

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My Creative Domain...

My cousin Ray surprised me with this setup while I was away at work.

Now I have the Babe, Butch, Sundance, Jack and Josie to inspire me.

Thanks Ray!

          



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Tuunngle.net?

My son directed me to this FREE gaming website. 

A VPN connection to emulate a LAN gaming environment.  Check it out if you'd like.

I am exploring...   http://www.tunngle.net 

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