December 18-24, 2003

music

Family Business

Two Tones: Chianese grew up listening to Italian classics from his grandfather and the Grand Ole Opry on the radio.

Dominic Chianese -- The Sopranos' Uncle Junior -- is a little bit country and a little bit escarole.

by Mary Armstrong

By the time Dominic Chianese finally answers the phone, it’s several no-answers into the third or fourth postponement. All the reschedulings have been for very good reasons, be it the nasty cold messing up his golden throat and threatening his regular gigs at Sofia’s in Manhattan or the Sopranos shoot that required Uncle Junior.

Yes, Chianese is a very important, much-in-demand kinda guy. We should all be so busy and so rewarded at age 72. But is he the sort of gent who sets the timer as he picks up the phone? Who politely recites memorized and sanitized factoids while glancing at his watch?

Nah. Chianese is the kind of guy you can argue with about whether he really does remember sitting with his dad, listening to Jimmie Rodgers on the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights in '39. I insist that Rodgers was dead by then and offer to send him a URL to prove it, but Chianese says, "Don't bother! I've got the books right here." And then goes on to agree, hmm, yeah, could've been Ernest Tubb (Rodgers' biggest imitator) Chianese so fondly recalls listening to on that old Philco cathedral-style radio as a little boy in a Bronx apartment.

Chianese is currently touring a collection of sentimental Italian favorites, Ungrateful Heart (Grandstand). "O Sole Mio" is indeed part of the collection. Label PR folks make much of young Dominic listening to Italian radio and hearing his grandfather pour out his heart in nostalgic songs of his youth in Italy. Chianese also reminisces about when his father and uncles got together, singing in harmony with mandolins and guitars.

But his childhood wasn't limited to songs from the old country. The Opry was just as influential. Perhaps his curious mix is best summed up with the line he wrote to close the CD: "I'm a Neapolitan-American/ If I don't sing I die!" Small wonder that the Italian collection is actually his second recording. His first was made in Nashville several years ago.

Chianese recalls being in Music City to promote Under Hellgate Bridge, an indie film in which he had a part. "We were all invited to a BMI party. I got kinda bored, as I tend to do at these things, so I asked one of the band if I could borrow a guitar." He sang "Blue Side of Lonesome" just to break the boredom. By the next day he had a call from Dub Cornett, who invited him to cut a recording of whatever kind of music he desired. That CD also landed Chianese a two-song spot on the Opry, Sept. 7, 2001. He sang the classic "A Fool Such as I" and one of his grandfather's favorites, "State Vicino a Me."

"When I left the stage I was crying," he recalls. "I could feel my grandfather's spirit with me."

In between the Opry and singing at home, there were a lot of folk clubs and similar small stages. At a hootenanny night at Gerde's Folk City in the '60s, Chianese got up and sang an unaccompanied Italian song. Mike Porco, the Calabrese owner of the place, complimented him, and noted he'd never heard an Italian folk singer before. He offered Chianese a job hosting. So he worked every night for a princely $90 a week. All the while he was still trying to figure out how to make a living as an actor with three kids and a wife at home, and a sincere desire not to return to the bricklaying career he inherited from his grandpa and dad. He'd made inroads onto the stage, touring with a Gilbert and Sullivan company, The American Savoyards, in his early 20s. "That lady was a tough taskmaster," he says of director Dorothy Raedler. "I learned to enunciate. You wouldn't mess up on her stage."

Still, acting is unpredictable, so he took other work. "My father always wanted me to be a teacher. Why not? I like kids, but the system beat me down. I wanted to use the arts but the principal wouldn't let me use my methods. I had to leave. I had supposedly the slowest class in fifth grade. Yet I had them do a version of [Brecht's] Caucasian Chalk Circle. We took the political stuff out. When the kids got a standing ovation, all 30 of them walked off the stage like kings. The next day the principal called me in and said, "No, you can't do this.'"

Chianese has an endless supply of passionate stories that will make the book he is working on a page turner. Meantime, he and his band, The Cement Sidewalkers, remind us that "music is therapeutic. I open every show with Richard Fariña's "Pack Up Your Sorrows.'"

Dominic Chianese performs Sat., Dec. 20, 7 and 10 p.m., $25, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0770.