Vinny Serino has been fronting Boston Baked Blues for several years now. After being a sideman in his own band, he stepped up when his guitarist-lead vocalist announced he was starting a new job. In only two days. With 13 gigs lined up for the month ahead of him, Serino had no choice but to step up to the microphone. He’s never looked back.
Last summer Boston Baked Blues played a blues festival and went over well, even though BBB hasn’t been visible more than once a month since Serino focused on caring for his ailing mother. “I’ve got a friend. He’s a rabbi. Rabbi Jay we call him,” Serino said. “He opened up this temple. He loves blues. He has us play there every so often.”
Last summer, Serino and the rabbi put on a lengthy show featuring Matt Guitar Murphy from The Blues Brothers movies and James Cotton’s band, Toni Lynn Washington, Ricky King Russell. Boston Baked Blues has been doing some local clubs, but Serino, after his four year hiatus, has been trying to pick up the pace.
What happens is, you get kind of out of the loop, and you try to get back into these clubs and they all see you coming, and the first thing they want to know is how many people can you bring to the clubs. I’m so done with that stuff. I’m like ‘Do you have a place that has people or not,” he quipped. “If you want to be entertained, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been playing for 40 years.”
Boston Baked Blues been around since 1985, and Serino has been with it ever since. He formed the band with Boston’s legendary blues guitarist Ricky “King” Russell. Throughout the years, BBB has seen many transitions and they’ve played many clubs around the country. In ten straight years, they had played 220 gigs a year, on average.
Serino became very successful in business, so he cut back on performing, and the last four years his schedule dropped down to a monthly gig. Old friends and fans are constantly bugging him to find out where he’s playing next. Lately, he’s been playing the Sunday blues brunch shows from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 at various locations of the British Beer Company. “I still love to play,” Serino exclaimed. “If you’ve got a good club, if you put us in there, I can guarantee you that they’ll be greatly entertained and want to see us again.”
There are not as many blues venues these days as there were in the 1980s and 1990s. So, the challenge is finding bookers who remember his band. Serino has been noticed on the international level. A few years back, he was added to the list of Most Influential Harmonica Players on the website for World Of Harmonica, a compendium of musicians put together by an astute musicologist in London, England. The organization’s website helped create a buzz around Serino’s harp style. “He put me on the list, and all of a sudden, I started getting tons of hits all over the world,” Serino said. “I shot up the charts. I was in the top ten for a long time.”
Talk about proving to the world that his talent is still there. “I was kind of surprised,” he said. “As I started to get a lot of attention, I was very excited by it. Next thing you know, he wanted us to come to England and make an album.” Serino recorded 11 semi-finished tracks but got sidelined by his personal family obligations of the past few years.
Back in the 1990s, Serino’s Boston Baked Blues were on the verge of being picked up by Virgin Records after they had recorded a CD. Yet, that success might have gone to one band member’s head, and Serino had to deal with it. The female lead singer, at that time, had approached Serino to say she had some news for him. She declared that since she was the lead singer, she was now in charge of the band. But Serino doesn’t take that kind of attitude from anybody. He and his soon to be former lead singer were at ththen new House Of Blues when a singer named Angela from Tennessee performed. “She came down and she sang and the place went crazy. What a great voice. I said(to his outgoing lead vocalist) ‘Well, hate to tell you, but there’s your replacement. See you.”
Serino has always had an affinity for Chicago blues and Texas blues. “It’s just a style that I’m passionate about,” he said. “I like the Texas and the Chicago and I like swing. As you get older, and you get more awareness of the music, and the bass player has been with me 15 years and the drummer has been with me 20 years. You don’t have to think. It just gives me the freedom to express myself. My playing capabilities are dramatically different from what they were back then when we were a really hot band. Quite frankly, I‘m a far better player. I have far more understanding of what I can do with the instrument. The more you work on something like that, the more chops you get. The more ideas you get. I don‘t necessarily play the harmonica like an old blues man. I‘m more of an innovative type of a player.”
Serino’s favorite harp players include Paul Butterfield. Serino has been and will continue to “fill in” for Paul Butterfield at a live concert recreation of The Last Waltz, The Band’s concert and film from that last tour where they had numerous guest An outfit called the Rev Tor Band tours the east coast performing The Last Waltz at small theaters, function rooms, and upscale night clubs. When Rev Tor comes to New England, they tap the Boston Baked Blues front man for a special job.
Serino performs the songs Paul Butterfield performed in the film. This Saturday night, Serino will be performing it again at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts. “It was ‘Mystery Train,’” he said. “It’s a cool song. It’s got a great beat. That’s the type of thing that allows me to really express myself. I can really dig into something like that.”
Boston Baked Blues is now comprised of guitarist Greg Miller, bassist Bob Abruzese, and drummer Skip Fischer. Serino said they think together and move as one pulse. “It allows you the freedom to express yourself and it gives me the freedom to entertain people,” Serino said. “I’m good with the audience.”
Serino is not a young man any more. “I’m celebrating the 35th anniversary of my 30th birthday in July,” he said. “I feel like I’m 30 years old. I keep myself really fit. I’m in the gym 5:30 every morning, four or five days a week.” Serino has no thoughts of retiring. “I’m too young at heart, too full of energy. I don’t feel old. I probably look old. People are surprised when they hear my age. My hair’s turning white or grey, or whatever, but I guess they’re fashionable. I don’t really care what I look like, as long as I have fun, and the people enjoy it.”
After all his years in the business, Serino doesn’t see that much change, except for one aspect. He feels it’s more about the money than the music. Club owners tend to look for acts that have a guaranteed following as opposed to looking for bands that are exceptionally talented who will grow with the business.
“If you just get the next band that seems to have a following, that will last only so long,” he said. “Believe me, when we were doing 220 date year, as we were building up our reputation back then, we’d be packing clubs every night. But, after a while you’re like white on rice. People could see you any night of the week, so they stopped coming. It’s an interesting dynamic. We had to get out of town. We were around too much and people forget about you. You have to find that space when you’re just around enough.”
Aside from that, Serino doesn’t see much change. “Club owners want to make money and sell drinks, and they don’t want to pay the bands,” he said. “They pay them less now than they ever did. I used to make more money back then than we make now. You go to clubs and they want to give a four piece band two hundred bucks. You know what? I’m too old for that. I don’t need the money. I don’t play for money. I play because I love to play. Some of my guys need the money. I was very successful for many years. I made a lot of money in real estate, quite frankly. A lot of times I didn’t even take pay. I just gave it to the guys. They don’t know it. But, that’s what I did.”
Owing to his inviting personality and gift for gab, the singer actually functioned on the higher level of the real estate world. Serino was able to parlay his business connections into big gigs all over the country. The singer used to own a large Century 21 company before he sold it in 2008. Boston Baked Blues were flown out to other states to perform at large convention halls and they’d get a thousand bucks in their pocket. “That was living,” Serino said. “That’s why everybody liked playing with me because I got those kind of gigs back in the day.”
Serino always handled the business end of the band, booking, promoting, building an organization. As a business owner, he went from one office with eight employees to five locations with 140 employees in the space of five years. “And what I do in music, I just surround myself with real good players because, believe it or not, I have no idea what I’m playing, “ he said. “I couldn’t tell you one note from the next. I play by ear and I play totally by the feeling and the passion at the time. My passion hasn’t gotten lower. It’s getting stronger as I go along.”
Nowadays, Serino plays for the appreciation from the audience for what he and his band does. He also likes playing with his band mates, as he doesn’t want it to be all about him. “It’s like a football team. You’re only as good as the people around you. So, I always surround myself with good people.”
Aside from playing Paul Butterfield’s songs in The Last Waltz, Serino’s other occasional side project is filling in on harmonica with Danny Klein’s Full House. “I think Danny Klein’s the only guy that ever hired me to play as a sideman for him. Nobody really wants a harmonica player. It’s pretty interesting. If you’re a harmonica player, most of the times, you better have your own band and your own PA if you want to play.”
Serino occasionally bring the Boston Baked Blues outfit around as a larger, horn-backed unit, featuring John Vanderpool, Danny Rebenowitz, and John Ferry. “It’s a smoking’ section. They can just come in and play anything,” Serino said.
For now, the British Beer Company’s Sunday blues brunch will be his launching pad to reignite interest in Boston Baked Blues. All of the managers like Serino’s band and the BBC keep bringing him back to their various locations. The singer would also like to get Boston Baked Blues into a festival circuit this summer as well as into more clubs.
“When people come out to see us, they love us,” the singer said. “There’s a lot of local places where I go and people do come to see us. I do a lot of promotion, a lot of publicity. My daughter goes to BU. I’m sure I can get a bunch of her friends to go over there for one night, if you’re worried about how much money you’re going to make. I just want to come into town. Just give us a shot. We always get a call back when they hear the music.”
Serino closed out the interview with his favorite saying, “Old harmonica players never die. They just blow away.”
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