Frank Carillo still remembers the day he decided to become a musician. “My mom liked to watch American Bandstand and as I was walking through the living room I heard this huge twangy sound coming out of the TV. Duane Eddy was standing there with his slicked-back hair and his band and his big Gretsch guitar and I said to myself, ‘Cool man, I want to do that!’ He gave me the jones and I’ve still got it.”
Today Carillo is a world-class guitar player with a long and illustrious career. He’s played on albums by Peter Frampton, French superstar Johnny Hallyday and blues great John Hammond, Jr. He’s written songs with Carly Simon (“Pure Sin” for Simon’s Spy album), Ricky Byrd (“Play That Song Again” for Joan Jett’s Up Your Alley album), Annie Golden (“Waiting For Someone” for the Prelude To A Kiss soundtrack) and Golden Earring members George Kooymans and Barry Hay (seven songs on the band’s 2002 album Millbrook, U. S. A.). He’s also penned tracks for Dutch multi-platinum pop star Anouk, Johnny Hallyday and written and produced tracks for supermodel, turned singer, Twiggy.
His recording career includes an album with his rock band Doc Holiday and two solo outings for Atlantic, Rings Around The Moon and Street Of Dreams. He also cut two stunning acoustic albums with vocalist Annie Golden in a duo known as Golden Carillo, Fire In New Town and Toxic Emotion.
Last year Carillo felt the need to challenge himself and embarked on the journey that resulted in his new album Bad Out There, one of the most satisfying projects he’s ever been involved with. “This is the first thing I’ve done in all my years of recording that I’ve been 100% happy with,” Carillo says. “I didn’t have any record company guys telling me what to do, I just relied on my gut instincts. I don’t change with the trends. I just wrote the songs the way I wrote ‘em and played ‘em the way I played ‘em. It was the easiest record I’ve ever made, like falling off a mountain.”
Carillo wrote 12 of the 14 songs on Bad Out There and co-wrote the other two with long time collaborators Ricky Byrd, Glenn Levie and Mark Lacob. The tunes are largely autobiographical, “even the stuff I made up,” Carillo jokes. The album illustrates the range and depth of Carillo’s musical and lyrical experience and despite his monster chops, Carillo never shows off. Every note on Bad Out There is played in the service of the song.
“Red Queen,” the first rock radio single, is a sharp, mid-tempo ballad, with a soaring, anthemic chorus delivered in Carillo’s timeless bluesy growl and accented by his big, bold guitar sound. “The Red Queen is love,” Carillo says. “I don’t care what anyone else says, but I still believe that love is all you need.” “Whatcha Gonna Do (When The Levy Breaks)” is a spooky, apocalyptic Delta blues; “Just a Photograph” has a gentle lilting tune, a breezy tropical rhythm and a couple of Carillo’s short twangy solos; “Wrong Number” is a spoken, folky blues full of surreal humor and disjointed images and “All in Chains” recalls Cab Calloway with its combination of Gospel and swing. Carillo’s simple piano playing and heartfelt singing makes “If You Don’t” one of the most intimate tracks on the album. Its a poignant love song from a broken down man to the woman who loves him in spite of his faults. “Paul had a new piano and wanted to see how it would sound in the studio,” Carillo explains. “I sat down and played this tune once and it was a take. It’s raw and whatever hairs are on it are on it.”
Carillo produced, mixed and engineered Bad Out There with Paul Orofino (Foreigner, Blue Oyster Cult, Bill Perry) at Millbrook Sound Studios in New York. “We wanted spontaneity. We wanted to capture the excitement of a live performance,” Carillo says. “We cut everything down to the minimum. We used less mikes, less tracks and cut as much of it live as possible. We knocked out several tracks in one take, vocals and all. We wanted it to feel like people making music together in one room, no processing, no editing, no tricks.”
To capture the live rock’n’roll feel he wanted on Bad Out There, Carillo enlisted the help of some old friends: Norman DelTufo on percussion/ backing vocals, Eddie Seville on drums/backing vocals and Karl Allweier on upright bass/backing vocals. The sessions went so smoothly that Carillo signed them up to create Frank Carillo & The Bandoleros. “There’s no way in hell I’d go on the road with people I don’t get along with and these guys are all really fun. We did one gig and everything fell into place: the music, the personalities, the band and the album.”
