CT's Cartell's Make It Into Wolf Den Hall of Fame

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey, this is Vinny. Hey, good money, Vinnie. This is
Joe Rico. How are you,Joe? How you doing? My man?
Welcome to the show. Oh hey, thanks for having me. Congratulations
on the upcoming honor the Cartels tobecome the newest Mohegan Son wolf Danny Hall
of Fame honorees two live free shows. I love the wolf Den. I

(00:20):
honestly, I think that's my favoriteroom to see a show, which is
so weird because I remember the firsttime I went, wait it was the
late nineties and thinking, what thehell like? It's not even soundproofd You
know, we're surrounded by slot machines. Who would have thought it would sound
so good, but it does.They do just the best job there.
You know. They're wonderful, butquite an honor. I mean, you're

(00:42):
the fifteenth member of the Wolfden Hallof Fame. You're joining Chubby Checker,
Little Anthony in the Imperials eighty moneyNow the Cartels if I'm remembering correctly,
though, your Connecticut's own. Aren'tyou from like Mystic Connecticut? That's right.
We're a Mystic based band. Yep. We started out in the Hartford
New Haven area and then just sortof bread out as the years have gone

(01:07):
on. But yeah, yeah,it's a Connecticut base band. We started
playing there very early in the casinosdays, and it's just SE's a great
place to play. And I andI guess we fit in well in that
place. We you know, knowhow to play their crowds, and we
have a nice following that comes tosee us, and we know how to
play to their clientele as well.So it's it's just a great fit.

(01:30):
And like you said, it's justan amazing room. It's just a great
room. I feel like everybody knows, you know, Wolf Dan our free
shows, although those lines can getlong, but that's always a good thing.
Two shows. I'm assuming you're talkingseven and ten. No, this
time they're doing they're doing a lateshow, so it's eight to nine thirty
and then ten thirty two midnight,so it's for the for the hardcore late

(01:57):
night partiers will come for the secondset. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's fun, a lot of fun. Oh absolutely. And you guys run
the gamut from rock and roll,jazz, swing, R and B,
motown. You got a favorite genreyou yourself. I like playing the vocal
harmony stuff, so that's one ofthe things. We're really strong at We
have five singers in the band,so the drummer things great. You got

(02:23):
a great female vocalist, the guitarplayers a great singer. The horn player
plays five different horns and sings likea bird, and I sing, and
the bass player things. And nowwe got this new percussionist too, who's
killing it. So I just loveour variety of stuff. It's it's a
really great band. It's really honestly, and so much fun to play in.

(02:46):
And I hope we get in anice crowd because we love playing there.
Yeah. We play big mix ofdanceable stuff and it's just a lot
of fun. It's fun. Youhave been together a good long time too,
since the mid eighties. If I'ma mid to late eighties, if
I've got it right off a coupleof years, no, no, no,
no no. Yeah. We startedas a four piece band. They

(03:07):
were the three of them were inEighth to the Bar and they and they
hired me and and we were aspin off of that group initially, and
then as the years old on,we added players like uh. At first,
I was playing guitar in the band. I'm the keyboard player, but
I was playing some guitar parts,and we were all double on different instruments.
But then we added this great guitarplayer from Hartford area, Tim and

(03:30):
Jess Ke and and then later onwe added a great bass player. And
then Uh, we'd gone through someof the amazing horn players, Like we
had a horn player that used toplay with Joe Cocker, this guy with
Cunningham, he was amazing. ThenUh, then Danny Cipriano who played with
Wilson Pickett and uh, and thenKurt kurt Ram was with us for a

(03:53):
while. He's in Bruce Springsteen's band. So we've had and then Billy Hallman
is our regular guy and he touredthe world with Niall Rogers for lots of
years. So we've had these amazinghorn players through the year. So it's
a it's just a great lineup ofwonderful musicians and a lot of fun,
a lot of fun. Starting asa four piece vocal you know style group,

(04:19):
one would assume there's a lot ofa cappella action or do you guys
not go Do you remember that band? Do you remember the band Chili Whack?
You remember they had one hit inlike the eighties. It was like
Gong Gong. Don't you've been goingso long, you've been gong gong.
You guys got to do that,I think you I think the Cartels would

(04:42):
kill that song. That's really agood song. I could see you guys
standing around, you know, inthe video they stood around like the trash
can with the open flame, likethe old do wop groups back in the
day. I know it's a littlebit more dated than where the Cartels go,
but it shows off those vocal harmony. No, that would be great
fun. Yeah, I'm always lookingfor stuff like that. I'll check that

(05:03):
out. That would be a blast. Yeah. And that's another thing we
can do is we break up theshow into you know, different kind of
formats and you know, we cando an acapella piece or just a heavy
vocal piece and then blast off withyou know, the corns and the percussion
and a lot of stuff. So, No, that's great, I'll check
that out. Yeah, that couldbe a good addition. That could be

(05:27):
a good addition. I'm looking forwardto the show. I don't I'm probably
gonna do the earlier one, FYI, But I love the idea of a
ten to thirty show in the WolfDen. I think that's fantastic, and
it's Joe Grico. I mean,it's the cartels from Hartford to Mystic to
the Hall of Fame. Hall ofFame, Honore, said wolf Den this
weekend. Congratulations on that. It'sFriday, May thirty first, What a

(05:50):
great way to kick off a weekend, two to end a month. And
I appreciate you coming on this morning. Oh Vinnie, thanks so much for
having me. All right, takecare and I have a great day.
Bye bye,