Acoustic Northeast
Discover the musicians, music and venues behind America's vibrant Northeast singer-songwriter scene. Interviews and live performances every episode!
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Acoustic Northeast
Ep 19 – Frank Critelli
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Poet, philosopher, raconteur, busker, disc jockey, teacher, gardener — all these and more describe Frank Critelli, a tireless advocate and beacon for local music whose voice soars higher and stronger than Castle Craig in his Meriden, Connecticut, hometown.
For more than 30 years, Frank has played in streets and subways, clubs and coffeehouses, barrooms and classrooms, colleges, festivals, theaters, and in his kitchen.
Currently he is one-third of original music trio The Bargain. But whether you see him solo or with a band, you’ll come away entertained, energized, and possibly enlightened.
With Rick Allison, Frank co-hosts The Local Bands Show on WPLR 99.1 FM in New Haven and streaming on CygnusRadio.com. In addition, he contributes to the scene with performances and interviews, and by organizing events such as the Olde Church Acoustic Series.
Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another edition of Acoustic Northeast, where we bring you the singers, songwriters, and the acoustic music scene in the Northeast. USA. Yes, we interview musicians here, and we also talk about the music scene and topics that affect the artist. We interview singer-songwriters who also play live in studio, and our studio is located in historic Brewster, New York. I am your co-host, Dave Goldenberg. And I am your co-host, George Malis.
SPEAKER_02We're brought to you by HearitThere.com, where you can uh check out all the great music, live music that's going around locally in the tri-state. Hudson Harding folk radio promoters and you folky musicians. Um could use some promotion, I bet. And WBXO Internet Radio. WBXO go to WBXO.com streaming 24 hours a day. And it's one of the many places you will hear this podcast.
SPEAKER_03That's correct. And you can listen to us, obviously, wherever you're listening to us now, also on YouTube and at acousticnortheast.com. And we do pro post the song performances of our guests on YouTube. And today in studio we have a wonderful guest. His name is Frank Cartelli. Frank, welcome to the show, buddy.
SPEAKER_01Hey brother, thanks so much for having me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you're like the mayor of Connecticut almost in the music scene.
SPEAKER_01I think you're confusing me with Frank Vielli.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I think you're like the I'm not even going to say the mayor. You're like the governor of the state. Okay. Okay. Is that better? No, that's okay. Oh, that's cool. So anyway, we're going to talk. Are you dissing Frank Vielli now? I'm not dissing Frank Vielli. I just think that Frank Crittelli has more pull throughout the state than Frank Vielli. He's just been hanging around long ago. Hear that, Frank V? Anyway, uh, Frank Crittelli is gonna kick us off with a tune. Frank, what are you gonna play, everybody?
SPEAKER_01Uh, there's a song about putting one foot in front of the other, and it's called Take Another Step.
SPEAKER_00It's just another step in the process. Evolution leads the way. Cause something's gotta change if you want progress. Stop standing in your own way, and let the fear inside inspire movement to get on up and out the kitchen door. Cause the best way out of hell is through it. And you've been there before. Take another step in the process. Go forward all the way. Be not proud, nor my opinion. Just be like for what it is. Another step. Then take a look, only color, and see how far you've come. Then take a look ahead, don't feel good. Let's do the work yet to be done. Take another, then another step in the process. Evolution is the way. Something's gotta change. If you want progress, stop standing in your own way. Take another step.
SPEAKER_02Frank Cratelli, welcome to the podcast. So some of your songs I I love your music by the way, and and some of your songs are like a motive like motivational speeches. Do you write them to um like that one? Take another step. Was that to like help move you forward, or is that to help people with something that you've learned?
SPEAKER_01Um No, it's it's for me, I think. You know, uh I just I was just thinking about this the other day because I s I read something where, you know, uh when you wake up in the morning, um say it to yourself, do it now. Get up, do it now. You know, do the the ten push-ups you want to do, or you know, finish a song or the dishes you didn't do before. But the things you gotta do, do it now. Get up. Make you know, action. That action cures a lot of things, you know. So that's just a song basically to me, um, to say, you know, get off your rear end and do something.
SPEAKER_02I need to play that song every morning. For my wife. You mean when you're lying in bed for an hour and a half trying to get going? Her I'm I'm a champion Herkel Dirkler. Whoa. Say that again. Herkel Durkling is the art of just lying there in bed. I never heard that.
SPEAKER_01I love that. That's one of those words. I follow the the word thing, the word of the day on Instagram, and they have words like that, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I should write a song about Herkel Dirkeling, but if that song heard your song, they would like explode. You know? Whoa.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you definitely have that going on. You do, uh, you know, Frank and I, we've we've known each other for quite a while. And um you do so much for the community, it's not just the music, but you bring the music into so much of what you do also, and it's extremely admirable, and I think it's part of your personality of just who you are. You bring together people.
SPEAKER_01That's my favorite part of it, you know. Um the songwriting is the one thing, and I think that that's the loneliest part. You do that for the most part in isolation, or maybe just with uh two other friends, you know, or something like that. But um, you know, I love going to shows, I love getting turned on by other people's music, and I love the feeling that is happening in a place where people are playing songs, and that's always my favorite.
SPEAKER_03I gotta talk to you about one of the one of the things that you do. I gotta talk about the Hope Collective, which is really a cool thing. Um tell us how that all came about and who the members are and and just what exactly you guys are doing.
SPEAKER_01Uh it started with Eric Robaska. Um, Eric Robasca started the whole thing. He called me one time and he had seen the We Are the World documentary. Um and I know that's you know, that's the punchline of people's jokes, you know, like it's a goofy tune and stuff like that. But it they had their heart in the right spot, I think. Um and he was very inspired by this documentary. I had not seen it. And he's like, you know, we could write a song like that. Do you want to write a song with me like that? And I thought, heck yeah, you know, we'll use it. You know, the passive guitar shows that we've worked on and we've done before. We always do a big finale song. I'm like, well, good. We don't have to do knocking on heaven's door now. We can do the song we wrote as the finale song. So we came to my house and we wrote the song in two sessions. Wow. And it was great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and we were talking earlier off you know, off mic, about writing and how you seem to be very prolific. And you were saying that you know you write songs very quickly. So do you pick a topic or does it something that's been floating around in your head for a while? What is what goes on in in Frank Rotelli's head?
SPEAKER_01That's a great it's a snake pit in there, man. You don't want to go in there. There's raccoons in there, they'll take you down. Um well, for with the song with Eric Robasco, we sat down to specifically with the intention of writing a song that we could use um as the finale song for the Pass of Guitar Shows, and that would be kind of reminiscent of that. So that was a specific um you know goal that we had for that particular song. For every other song I've ever written in my entire life, just about I'd say like 98.7% of them. Um it's they happen uh just kind of by happenstance. I feel like a lot of times, and we said this earlier, that songs are there, you know. Um there's like a there's just universal things, and I think when you get into that flow state, um either by yourself or with a couple of your buddies or something like that, I think it comes very easily. And you gotta put the lightning rods up and and you wait for it. And you know, if you're paying attention, uh most of the time it shows up. It's like when you're looking for a red car on the highway. Boom, there it is, you know. Or if you're sitting in your backyard and you're and you're waiting for the fireflies to come and you have to sort of like use your peripheral vision, you're like, oh, there's one, you know, and that's kind of what songwriting is like is using your peripheral vision.
SPEAKER_02Do you have do you have um a sort of a disciplined creative practice where you spend a certain amount of time every day?
SPEAKER_01I wish I did. Um I think I spent more time on it when I was younger, and these days I kind of wait for it to tap me on the shoulder. You know, I used to tap the muse on the shoulder, and now she she finds me.
SPEAKER_03Does the muse find you at times like because I know what you do for for work. You do work that is very you're alone. Yeah. When you work, you're doing gardening and maintaining um convent property.
SPEAKER_01Acres and acres. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So as you're doing that, I mean, you gotta have stuff that's popping in your head then, lines or something. Oh, yeah, all the time. Yeah. All the time. What do you do with them then? You throw them on your phone or something? You drive track of them?
SPEAKER_01I I throw them on my phone a lot when I'm driving in the car. You know, so like you have a nine-hour drive to get someplace, and I don't listen to the radio a lot of times when I'm in the car. I'll hum things to myself or I'll try to be aware of my surroundings. And I think things hit me then.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And in my in the notes section in my phone, it's like uh it's like Jack Kerouac scroll. Like for the past four years, I just add on to the bottom of it, you know what I mean? And it goes on for a long, long time. And every now and then I'll go back and I'll read some of the stuff, and I'll be like, Whoa, that's weird, man. You know? So, like, yeah, weird things hit you at weird times, and it's good to have a pen or some sort of device to I do that, and then like two years later, I go back into there, right?
SPEAKER_03And I'm like, Oh, delete that. You know, it's like where did that come from?
SPEAKER_02It's interesting how many people have have told us that driving is uh right, right. Um, George Smaking the windshield wiper motion. We we interviewed somebody, it was Jay Beckenstein. Jay Beckenstein from Spyro Driver Driver who told us that he would actually make up melodies to the rhythm of the um windshield wiper. So I guess he was only creative when it rained. What is it about driving that sort of brings this out in us?
SPEAKER_03Because you're in left field, right?
SPEAKER_01Um there's something about the road. It's metaphorical, you know what I mean? It's getting from one place to another. Uh we're all on the the quote unquote journey of life. I hate when people say that, but it's kind of true, you know. Um so I think the road's a metaphor and it it shows you who you are and it reveals things to you as you go along. If, like I said, you're paying attention. So you don't you don't listen to the radio when you ride, when you drive? A lot of times, no. No. So I'll listen to the you know, the Allison transmission with Rick Allison. Right.
SPEAKER_03Let's talk. Well, but because we just transitioned right into that.
SPEAKER_01So let's let's let's talk about that, the radio show that you do. Um I co-host with uh Dennis Lamar and Rick Allison the local band show on WPLR New Haven. That's 99.1. It's the biggest rock station in Connecticut. Big station, yeah. And this show has been on the air since 1988, and it was founded by James Velvet and Rick Allison. Um, and they've been playing Connecticut music on a very commercial rock station for uh 38 years, and it's one of the honors of my life uh to do radio with those guys because they're pros. Um Rick Allison, you know him, you know who he is. When I was a I never knew him, he was a Connecticut guy, and I grew up in Long Island, and when I was a little kid, I used to make my mom laugh by imitating the voice, which I later found out was Rick Allison, that I heard on the TV, and it was the voice that said White Diamonds by Liz Taylor, only at Walmart, you know, or something like that. And that was the voice of Rick Allison, you know, and now I get to sit across from him and spin records and stuff.
SPEAKER_02What is the scene like? What do how do you find music and and what gets on your show?
SPEAKER_01Um the scene's vibrant, um, it's chock full of people making a lot of great music. A lot of times people send it into us, and a lot of times we find it on our own. I'm kind of the man on the street just because I go out more than those guys. Um so you know, I see people all the time. I'll go to shows and I'll say, Oh, you know, Brian Larney has a brand new record out, and here it is. Boom, I brought it in, you know. Um, so that's kind of people find us and we find them.
SPEAKER_02Before well, not before, but earlier on you were Mr. Mr. Critelli, the um the English teacher. Did you lead a double life as a musician and an English teacher, or did they play together to create some sort of whole?
SPEAKER_01While I was a teacher, I kept the two worlds very separate. Um some of the I did use music in the classroom because I think it's a motivator, but most of the students didn't don't know what I did outside of the classroom. You know, they knew I played the guitar because I played it for them. I you know, we did a Shakespeare song or something like that, you know. Um so although I used music in the classroom, I kept the two worlds very different. These days, now that I'm not a teacher anymore, I find that my onstage um presence becomes more and more like Mr. Certelli. Um kind of like, you know, we were talking before about the community of music places, and there needs to be a facilitator of that community. And I feel like um that's uh what I have matured into somehow.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you do. You you know, there was a time in your life, I think it was after teaching, that um you like hit some some hard times. Oh yeah. And dismal. Yeah, and I mean you don't have to touch base on that, but what whatever where I was going with the question is talking about what you do now in Meriden, Connecticut with the old old church series and how um tell us tell us about that and what it does for the community.
SPEAKER_01Um being in the dark forest or the old church? Or both.
SPEAKER_03You can you can touch base on both.
SPEAKER_01Well, I was really thankful for a lot of things because you know, every I think everybody goes through their period in in the dark forest, you know. Um so finding uh people like um Dave Cooley and Denise Jones, you know, uh Dave Cooley uh was friends with a guy named Mike Wilcox. This is the whole story, I guess. And Mike Wilcox had in Rocky Hill uh music series called the old Stone Church Acoustic Series over there. And when Mike Wilcox started to not feel so well, he wanted to he wanted the series to continue, but he just wanted somebody else to do it. So Dave Cooley picked it up um and brought it to Meriden and asked my help um to you know book it, host it, and things like that. Um and now we do it in Meriden, and we've been doing it for six years, and it's one of the joys of my life. Um we you know it's important to our community because Meriden's a working class community, you know, and you know how it is with ticket prices these days. You know, um everybody's pushing this advanced sales stuff, all the all the tickets are twenty or twenty-five dollars. My name is Frank Cratelli, and I host a local band show on WPLR New Haven, and I can't afford to go to most shows that I want to go to. I can't afford it. So at the old church, we're working class town. We're not elitists. We think music belongs to the people, and that's the way we want to keep it. Um so we have any donation at the door. We still pay it, we still pay our performers full price, and sometimes we lose money on a show. We've lost money on shows that we should have made money at, you know. But um we're stupid and uh, you know, also got our heels dug in that we want the music that we present to be accessible to anybody who wants to see it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's a beautiful venue, too. And you know, and then you have the people in the kitchen cooking, and people can come early and have a bite to eat and all that.
SPEAKER_01Bona fide church ladies cooking homemade food with wild.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, absolutely. I've been up there to a few shows, and it's yeah, it's great. And uh Dave's giving the signal to Frank right now. Frank, you need to play another song because Malice is talking too much.
SPEAKER_01All right. Um, this song has a lot of words, but uh Hudson Harding is one of your sponsors here. Yes. Um, they were kind enough to include uh one of my songs on their compilation records. Cool. And um I'm a big Eric Balke fan. I think he's a great guy.
SPEAKER_03We had Eric on the show recently. We haven't put it out yet, but good deal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, when when it is out, what's that website again?
SPEAKER_03Um it's called acousticnortheast.com, and it's northeast, not New England, acousticnortheast.com.
SPEAKER_01This song um has a lot of words, and I remember every single one of them, just not always at the right time.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's too late to know, and it's too soon to tell whether any of this is really happening at all. A detailed simulation isn't out of the question, neither science nor religion knows for sure. And I spoke with a friend just the other day, the passage of time and the passion it play, and how few still read books or bother to look at the lessons of repeated history. In the second quarter of the 21st century, where the robots are healthier than you and me, and we still go to work, all the long, clean and cook, while AI writes all our poetry. And I spoke with a friend just the other day of Orwell and Huxley and Bradbury. Did no one remember the 5th of November? Those who foretold future tyranny, and yet this is the way of the world. This is the first boy I met, first girl, and it goes on and on and on and on, and the answers still scatter when the wind blows. And so they press the panic button to employ the smoke screen. They distract us with sports and the lottery. Give us something to hope for: a cocktail, a cell phone, and we'll ignore heinous crimes against humanity. And I spoke with a friend just the other day. Is their modus operandi? They say your freedom and survival make your neighbor your rival. But deep in your heart you know it's not that way, and yet this is the way of the world. Since the first boy met the first girl, and it goes on and on and on and on. But I know who I am all the same, and I know it's true that you can be you because I and I without shame. And I spoke with a friend just the other day. How people are unique, that's what makes the world great. Please know you are loved by me and something else, something holy and benevolent that I can't explain. And this is the way of the world. This is the first boy I met the first girl, and it goes on and on, and on, and on.
SPEAKER_02That's Frank Critelli with the Way of the World. Frank, great song. And um I think of you a little bit as a a little bit as a kind of a poet philosopher, and it's not just because you look like Walt Whitman. And I'm just the hair, white hair. Well, I think you and Rabaska, you know, the two best best folk music buildings. He's still salt and pepper.
SPEAKER_01I I like him. He's got the salt and pepper thing.
SPEAKER_02But what I'd like to know is what you think about the intersection of artificial intelligence and art, especially music, but but art in general, because of your your literary background as well.
SPEAKER_01Um I like things when it comes to art, I like things that come out of the human mind and the human heart, um, and not uh something that's artificial. I get it to a certain extent, you know. Um in the 80s I loved Star Wars. That was kind of the same thing, right? Like CGI wasn't didn't that was the precursor to all this AI stuff? They were making things up for a long time, you know, and and even like photo doctoring, you know, like uh you know, like switching photos. That's not really Lee Harvey Oswald. The shadows go the wrong way, they splice that head on there, like they've been screwing with us forever, and we don't know what is real and what's not real. Um, that's why I love live music so much and the community of that, because there can't be any AI there. It's happening right in front of your head, you know, and that's why we talked about like Ellis Paul jumping off the stage. That's why I love to jump off the stage too, because now it's just me. You know what I mean? There's I'm not plugged in, there's no reverb on anything, I don't have any pedals or loopers or any kind of technology at all. It's just dopey me and this silly song that I wrote. You know what I mean? And ha ha ha, here we are, you know, and that's my favorite with warts and all. I like things a little filthy. You know, I want to get some dirt on it.
SPEAKER_03You know, I want to talk about there's I mean, look, we all know a lot of musicians, a lot of singers, songwriters. And there's the ones that get up there and they play their song and then they say thank you, and then they play another song. But that's not you. I believe you take your personality and you transform it on stage. And I think it's you. I don't think it's an act or anything like that. I think it's just you and the way you are and your personality when you perform. Is that a pretty I could choke up.
SPEAKER_01We talked about that. We're both sensitive guys, you know. Yeah, we talked about that. I I could choke up about that because I feel like that is the real me, and everywhere else is a big fat act. Okay. You know, sometimes like you gotta be that to just to get through the world. You know what I mean? Like the surly guy at the gas station or something like that. It's an act. When I when I when he looks at me tough and I look back at him tough, that's an act. You know, but on stage it's not that way. You know? On stage it's we're here singing songs and everything is wonderful.
SPEAKER_03You know, I've always looked at you at somebody who's very genuine, and and I always thought that you on stage was the the genuine Frank Cratelli.
SPEAKER_01I always felt that's the same way. Yeah. And that's why I say like uh with the meshing of like the Mr. Cratelli persona and the on stage persona, for me, that's that's what it's all about. That's the real me. That's my favorite me. Some of the other ones are assholes.
SPEAKER_02So when you're on stage, you're not just playing music, you're you're talking a lot. You're it's almost as though you're you're weaving music and the storytelling in into an arc. How do you how do you build that? And do you go into a show with something in mind?
SPEAKER_01Yes, um, but it's gotta be something that's pliable. You know, um, you have hit look, I could do all of these songs, these 25 songs. I only have to do 10, but I could do these 25, and they're written on a notebook page at the bottom of my feet. And, you know, uh the prophet Mark Douglas Perardo once said, you know, you get to the venue and you gotta have your head on a swivel. And, you know, you observe what's going on, and maybe you had a conversation that day, or maybe somebody talked to you on the way in, and you said, Okay, well, I'm gonna do that song now because that person said that. And you use the atmosphere to sort of influence the set list.
SPEAKER_02That could come only with experience. What's that? That can come only with experience then.
SPEAKER_01Um, well, maybe, or just like knowing your songs, like um the Prophet George Malice, you know, practices every one of his songs every, you know, every time he sits at the piano. Yeah, and still screws him up. Right? But but you're able to just about play anything.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's you know that's that that does come with time, I believe. But you're right about reading the room and what Mark Barado said. Yeah. Um very, very true. Um Yeah, because you look, and then there'll be people who say to you, you know, can you play that song or whatever? And one of the things that I love is after I play, and unfortunately it doesn't happen all the time, but the best thing to me is when somebody comes up to you afterwards and they you know put their hand on their chest and they say, Thank you, you that one song or whatever touched touched me. And that just makes the whole idea of being a writer come to life. That's the point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Right? I used to do a haiku lesson. Um, and with haiku, there's you know the two lines and the one line, and usually there's a dash or something to set off the two. And those are like the filaments on an old light bulb, and the electricity happens in between. So when you're singing the song, you you send out you know, you send out your message. That message is received, and then when they feed back, that completes the whole communication cycle. You know what I mean? And that's when it's the best. Hey, look, I sent I said something, that person heard it, and then they paraphrased it back to me, and they told me what it meant to them. And, you know, the primary objective, completed. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_03Um, and we talked about um, you know, your community work and that kind of stuff. Uh talk a little bit about uh a different project that you do, that you do with the bargain, your band, and how different that is from your solo stuff. I believe it to be to be a bit different because you're playing with, you know, a couple other guys and I mean tell us about them and um and how you guys go about doing your thing and and writing.
SPEAKER_01Um Muddy Rivers and I have known each other since about 1991. I was a big fan of his band at the time called Common Ground. Uh Shandy Lawson and I met at around 2000 and I recognized him as a lifelong friend the second I laid eyes on him. Yeah, two great players, too. Absolutely. And then during the pandemic, um it just happened to be we were all in this room at this in my kitchen at the same time, and um we started to write songs together. Um now nobody plays the guitar like Muddy Rivers. He's a absolutely unique guitar player in my mind, and he comes up with things that I would never come up with. So when he was playing the guitar, new words were coming to me and different phrases and lots of different things. And then Shandy would color it in with uh mandolin, you know, yeah, and it was it was great, and I loved writing songs with those guys and feeling like we were in a gang. You know what I mean? Like we were in a gang, and right after this, we were gonna go out and like, you know, beat somebody up, man, and ride our motor. Like it was the br a real brotherhood, you know, and um that's what attracts me to the bargain, you know. Um, it really is a brotherhood, and I feel like I'm in a gang. Like I have brothers, you know, ride or dies.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. You do some other work for um another radio station. Tell us a little bit about what you do for uh Pam Landry and her show.
SPEAKER_01Pam Landry is um the goddess. Uh she's one of the most familiar and friendly voices on the radio in Connecticut and New York for that.
SPEAKER_03Give the people a little background on on her and how long she's been in radio and where she works.
SPEAKER_01Um well, I knew her as uh Pam Landry from WPLR. She was the program director there, and she had the midday show. And she was always um, like I said, a really friendly voice. And she did the Landry's luncheonette, so people would call in with a request and she would talk to people and say, Hey, this goes out to George and Brewster, you know, blah blah blah, or whatever, you know. Um, and one time uh I was in the car on my way to my friend's house, and I had a gig that night, um, a really good gig. And she played a song on the radio of I was opening for Arlo Guthrie and she played an Arlo Guthrie song and she said my name on the radio. You know, I had didn't know her back then, but when I got to where I was going, I called the radio station up. I'm like, hey, thanks a lot. I'm Frank, you know what I mean? And you said my name on the biggest rock station in Connecticut, and I feel really cool, you know. And she was just a nice person. And um WOW Radio CT, which is 977 WATR Waterbury, um is a new station, and they have um a lot of the old real old popular voices from WPLR, Pam Landry being one of them. And when they first started up, um I kind of got an ad hoc job of introducing them to the local scene. So I would go in once a week on a Friday for two years, and I would either bring a buddy of mine in or somebody who was playing the old church or whatever gigs we had to promote, you know, I would bring a friend in and they would play on the air and introduce them and stuff like that. And now they do that every day. Dan Landry has a local person on every day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's why I wanted you to bring her up because of what she does for the music scene in Connecticut, also.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's huge. Huge, huge to have that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Shout out to Z-Man. Steve Zion is the guy who owns that station, and he's the whack job who I met him. He's a nut. He's a wonderful, beautiful, intelligent nut.
SPEAKER_02That describes a lot of people, I know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all of our friends. Aren't we lucky ones, right? Tell everybody where that station is located because it's really cool. Well, Steve Zion owns uh a Toyota dealership. And the radio station is inside the Toyota dealership just because he wanted to have a radio station.
SPEAKER_02Good for him.
SPEAKER_01And uh for two years running, it's only been on the air, I think, for four or five years. And for the last two years running, it's been the most popular radio station in Connecticut.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I know Pam does, I think, weekends once in a while on uh the peak. That's right. In White Plains, wherever it is. Frank, where where can people find your music?
SPEAKER_01Um, we do a lot on Bandcamp, so it's just uh bandcamp.com forward slash Franc Cratelli, but all the links are at Cratelli C-R-I-T-E-L-L-I. Correct. One T Two L's. Um Franc Critelli.com is will it's just a collection of links. So if you go to pr Franc Crotelli.com, it'll send you to a whole bunch of other places where you can actually hear the music.
SPEAKER_02Okay. It's been great having you on the podcast. It's been great hanging out with you guys.
SPEAKER_01And thanks for the bagel.
SPEAKER_02We we only provide the best, right, John? New York bagels. Right? We're in New York. Um, why don't you uh take us out with a song?
SPEAKER_01You got it. Um, all right. Well, this is a sing along song, and uh, we were talking earlier about uh meeting people and all and doing all that stuff. And um this is a special song for me because it's about three specific people in my life that I know kind of on the periphery. But um, you know, getting being able to drive around and sing songs for people in different places that you don't know, you get to meet people along the way. So when I sing this song now, it reminds me of like the 10 minutes that I spent with, you know, Lisa at the counter in Folly Beach, or the 20-minute conversation I had with Angry Johnny on, you know, that on the run walk over there in Savannah, Georgia, or you know, Thomas, the guy who I bought the walking stick from, you know, over there, and he told me a story about this. So every time I I hear this song, um, it's just about people.
SPEAKER_00The man in the group home down the street from me waves every time I drive by, and I roll down the window to raise up my hand, and we flash each other the peace sign, and it flows like a river the same way every day. I look forward to it every time. I hope you have someone like that in your life who waves to you and makes you feel fine. And the old woman who works in the grocery store, I can tell has the hots for me. Cause she blinks her fake eyelashes slowly, and clicks her gum in a seductive way, and it flows like a river the same way every day. I look forward to it every time. I hope you have someone like that in your life. Who winks at you and makes you feel fun? Cause it's a long way down the river, and it's a long way home, and I hope you have someone special in your life, who smiles with you and helps you have fun. And the old man in the tall house next door to me, he walks his old dog every day, and I watch as he walks by my window. And one day I'm gonna say hey, and it flows like a river, the same way every day, I took it to it every time. I hope you have someone like that in your life to say hey to and make feel fun. And it's a long way, and uh who you have someone, special in your life, smiles with you and helps you have fun. Special in your life, who smiles with you and helps you have fun.
