PLEASE CHECK OUT LVX NOVA and STARGARDEN in my top friends, these are other bobby d musical projects!
Bobby D is a guitarist and vocalist located in South Florida. He is currently seeking working and touring bands that are in need of a solid, sober, and reliable guitarist/vocalist. Styles are rock, blues, country, reggae, alternative, experimental, ambient, progressive stuff. Easy to get along with, willing to rehearse, and willing to travel -- fill-ins also welcome -- please call me direct at 954-639-1428, and leave message if you don't get me -- I might be doing a gig when you call!
I am a great supporting musician with a lot of experience backing up artists of all types. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you need a touring/live show guitarist with the skills to help make YOU sound better!
A full resume, bio, and presskit is available to interested parties.
Why this name?
My parents gave it to me.
Do you play live?
Yes. I am performing solo acoustic and live band gigs all over the South Florida area, and if you'd like to be informed on those show dates, please sign up for my email list.
In the past, I have been a "hired gun" guitarist, and play live as much as possible! I have performed extensively all over the USA and Europe, doing shows with artists such as: Sherman Robertson, Lonnie Brooks, Robben Ford, Joe Louis Walker, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Junior Wells, Big Jack Johnson, Foghat, Mike Stern, Chris Anderson, Richy Kicklighter, Banner Thomas, Al Dimeola, Wylde, Yngwie Malmsteen, Albert Lee, Greg "Gristle" Koch, Rick Derringer, Johnny Van Zandt, Nitro and the Tampa Bay Blues Machine, Fatback Blues Band, Curtis Hayes Blues Experience, Cheap Trick, The Producers, Cesar Diaz, Matt "Guitar" Murphy , Gary Brown Blues Band, The X-Statics, Islander, Hatterfox, Hoss & the Impacts, Michael Stanley Band, Djakout Mizik, King Kino, the IMPAK, and more I can't remember....
How, do you think, does the internet (or mp3) change the music industry?
For the better. It would be an essay subject to discuss fully...however, there is a LOT of music on the web that should have never been released at all, so it's a double-edged sword. Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD! But it's interesting to hear all kinds of new stuff that you can't hear elsewhere.
Would you still sign a record contract with a major label?
No. I have been signed to a "major label deal" before, and barely escaped with my music and integrity intact. I will certainly license my music to a major label for distribution - but I will NEVER sign away the rights to my music "in perpetuity" to anyone ever again -- and you shouldn't either. My ambient electronic project "stargarden" is currently signed with Magnatune, which I feel is a noble experiment in intellectual property management. But I would much prefer to record my singer/songwriter music myself, distribute it with a small indie label, and do a lot of touring, promotion, and press/retail/radio stuff on my own. We are the artists, and we have the power.
Bobby DeVito bio, written by Eric Snider:
Sooner or later, it was bound to happen: Bobby DeVito would find his way back to his roots.
Not that he has ever strayed too far; his heady blend of americana and blues influences has coursed through everything the guitarist has done. But DeVito has never been one to let genre hem him in. Over the years, he played in his share of rock bands, blues bands, ambient electronic recording projects, Top 40 bands, and even exploring Haitian Compas music and various other Carribbean island music styles. Perhaps no other Florida guitarist in recent memory has had as restless a muse as Bobby DeVito.
Born the son of an Italian father and a Scottish/Native American mother, and raised in rural North Carolina, Bobby came under the tutelage of his hard-living maternal grandfather, Warren "Slim" Henderson, who played on WWNC in Asheville with Jimmie Rodgers (the "Singing Brakeman"), and also hosted a live radio show at the Grand Ole Opry in the '40s. After being fired from his live radio show for getting liquored up and singing obscenities on the air and consequently being "blacklisted" in Nashville for his wild behavior, Slim settled down in North Carolina and started his own little side business, a moonshine still. Slim still played his old battered guitar - now one of Bobby's prized possessions - mostly on his lap, using a pocket knife for a slide. Bobby was hooked straight away. Besides his early tutorials from Slim, he soaked up the work of Clapton, Hendrix, and Peter Green. starting at age 12, he played in a variety of bands throughout high school, mostly with older cats, which helped to accelerate his development. After North Carolina, the DeVito famly picked up and moved to New Orleans, where the young DeVito was able to soak up the second-line rhythms and revel in the city's sultry ambience. Travel and change has been a major theme in DeVito's life, and now he seems to have come to yet another crossroads in his musical career.
It's lunch time, and Bobby DeVito sits on a red crushed velvet couch in the cozy Bordello Room of the La Femme Buvette nightclub in Ybor City, singing and strumming an old Harmony acoustic guitar that belonged to his late grandfather. The affable artist is performing a new batch of introspective original songs for an audience of one.
This is just another in a series of stages that DeVito has graced during his 20 year plus musical career. And it represents yet another stage in a quest that has touched on new wave electro rock, shred guitar histrionics, acoustic blues, ambient electronica, and instrumental guitar fusion. Since 1982, he has toured the Southeast in a new wave group (The X-Statics), been a jack-of-all-trades axeman in various rock bands (Hatterfox, The Wake, The Impacts), independently released two instrumental guitar albums (Guitar Salad and High Wire), graduated from the honors university of the state of Florida (New College in Sarasota), worked as a marketing rep for the major labels (BMG Distribution), gotten signed (to Miramar Records, with his ambient guitar project and senior thesis project LVX Nova), and toured the USA and Europe as a sideman and bandleader for Texas blues guitar great Sherman Robertson.
And DeVito thinks he's finally found the answer. "I spent so many years trying to be the best guitar player I possibly could," he says. "Now it's time not to focus on the guitar for me. The singer and the song are all that really seem to matter. That's what really touches people. I found it difficult to do that as just a guitar instrumentalist or an ambient composer. My grandfather told me years ago that all the really matters is the song, and if you can't do it with just an acoustic guitar and your voice, it shouldn't be done. I should've listened to him back then, but I was too busy trying to be the next Eric Clapton."
And so he performs his new batch of tunes, a trademark leather fedora perched on his head. The sun dapples the sofas, warming the Bordello Room from the December chill. Most of the songs are dark, complex, but elliptically catchy. Although he refers to himself as a singer/songwriter, DeVito is no folkie. His chord progressions are often sophisticated. His voice is plaintive and haunting. You can hear traces of the Seattle sound, Radiohead, Chris Whitley, Tim Buckley, and others who perfected the art of brooding, alongside DeVito's Americana-style influences like Steve Earle, Townes Van Zant, and Robert Earl Keene.
DeVito's dream of becoming a viable recording artist simply will not die. He came closest to bagging it at the end of the 90's, when he went to work for a major musical instrument manufacturing company and was looking at a six-figure income. "I had my mid-life crisis," says the guitarist. "But instead of dating a stripper and buying a sports car, I tried to put my musical dreams to rest and get a 'real' job. I found myself going to bed at night wondering how to make the 50 sales reps I managed produce more sales. I bought some of the guitars I had always wanted, but they sat idly on guitar stands, because I never had time to even play them. I knew that if I continued like this, my musical career would indeed be dead. And I realized that I still had things to say to the world musically, and I just wasn't ready to call it quits just yet."
After an attempt to put together a band with ex-Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr, DeVito found himself stuck in Los Angeles. Instead of turning tail and running home to Florida, DeVito noticed the plethora of street performers in Santa Monica that seemed to be making a living. He asked around, received a street performer permit from town hall, bought a battery-powered amplifier and started busking on the 3rd street promenade and the famous pier. He stood out amid the novelty acts and James Taylor clones. Restaurant owners offered him tips and free meals to play in front of their establishments. Christian Slater slipped him a twenty when he would see DeVito performing. Even Madonna, with a mammoth bodyguard in tow, stopped by to listen to DeVito's songs and gave him her approval.
He lived alone in a cheap hotel that he referred to as a "Tom Waits song come to life", and stuck to a routine: up early, hit Starbucks for a cup of coffee, talk a walk with music rolling around in his brain; return to the room and write; perform from around 2-8 p.m., sometimes later depending on the day. He made about $100 a day in tips, "not enough money to really go out and party, but enough to get by and eat."
Music industry types of all sorts, lolling over lunch at pricey patio eateries, noticed him. Some of them pressed a few bucks and a business card in his hand, told him to send some music when he could. They'd talk.
DeVito ended up staying out in Los Angeles for over three months, and refers to the experience as his "singer/songwriter boot camp -- possibly one of the best experiences of my life. It really makes life a lot more alive and vibrant when you are living on the edge like that."
DeVito has written over three album's worth of songs so far, and has been working out the recording project in various project studios in Florida. Titled "The Fierce Urgency of Now", this disc is scheduled for independent release in July 2009, with DeVito continuing to perform live in the Florida area and elsewhere. Because of his previous experience with BMG Distribution, his previous record deal knowledge, and longtime utilization of the Internet, his strategy is to self-promote the record to college radio, alternative press, and independent retail. If need be, he'll rent a car and scour the country, playing the songs personally "in every college radio station and indie record store in the country."
The new album is a bold step forward for DeVito into realms that his music has seldom feared to tread. He seems to be simultaneously exorcising and yet celebrating the battle that rages within himself for control of his soul. This music does not seem to be made of half-hearted posturing or compromise - this is the music borne of a deep inner necessity, an existential call to arms from an artist whose persona can neither be analysed nor understood independently of his music. Defying the popular music conventions of today, DeVito manages to wring out a gut-wrenching, authentic, and visceral set of songs that explore who he is, where he's going, and what's happened along the way. There is nothing slick, polite, accommodating, or false about this album - these are the songs of a man who is battling for his soul, his very existence in the midst of his own personal trials and tribulations. Yet, there is still sense of victory to be found here, another of the many seeming reconciled contradictions of his life.
Bobby doesn't have a timetable for when he'll cease his vision quest. He's committed to making at least three more albums, releasing them himself if necessary. He's confident, though, that some label somewhere will take a shot at his new stuff.
And he never doubts his work ethic. "I've never considered myself more talented than other Florida artists," he says. "But I do get up every morning and hit the computer, the phone, the fax machine. I work as hard at promoting myself and making connections as I do at playing my music."
Your influences?
Chris Whitley, Steve Earle, David Gray, Jeff Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Townes Van Zandt, Radiohead, Aphex Twin, Guy Clarke, Freedy Johnston, Robin Trower, Robert Earl Keene, Depeche Mode, The Cure, etc.....
Favorite spot?
Torricella Peligna, Italy...the mountains of Abbruzzo at The Hotel Cape, overlooking the valleys while sipping cappucino.
Currently Bobby DeVito is playing with one of Miami's favorite bands, COOL BREEZE, doings gigs from Palm Beach to Key West!
Yo Bobby DeVitoasaurus. I just found out that we're related...and as a special family only present we've made a new song for you called "End of Days" (start doing backflips now). It's an epic instrumental opus to the moment when our ancient Dino relatives saw a large fiery object plummeting towards them. Please come to our page, give it a listen and let us know if it makes you feel like something catastrophic is gonna happen. If the song upsets you too much we will be holding several s support groups (read: comcerts) in the near future. Check our page for locations, dates and times.
in 2012 our world will change positively for the human mankind!
drink clear water. breath deep and slowly. go outside and enjoy the nature. don't trust your ego - trust your fellings. follow your dreams. beware of illusions. if you do this i promise you: your life will change the best way!
kind regards! wolfgang
DREAMSCAPE (progressive metal from germany) new cd february 2010!
Thanks for the friendship! Please keep me in mind if you or any other Musician you know is in need of a photog! Check out my albums when you get a chance, I add photos often!
hi, how are you doing? i wanted to stop by and tell you how excited i am....:) we are finally ready to get the new album i just finished in austin with charlie sexton out into the world....i just got back from nashville where we shot the video for the new album...the album is up for pre-sale at rubyjames.com you can click the link from myspace to take you to the purchase page......i hope that you will like the new stuff enough to pick up a copy...:) you can get a little taste by listening to "the predictable kind" on my player......
James has a new Facebook page. Please go there, become a fan and share with your friends!<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/James-Maddock/111519936879?ref=ts" target="_blank">GO TO THE JAMES MADDOCK FACEBOOK PAGE</a><br /> <br /> James' new record "Sunrise on Avenue C" is ou Aug 4th!
I'm really proud of the new mixes. I should have done this sooner... why didn't you tell me? ;) BTW... it looks like Sonic Erotica will be doing a reunion show.
