A Dirty Dozen with CHRIS BERARDO – May 2025

Photo credit: Tod V. Wolfson

According to a recent press release: “A consummate and charismatic performer, Chris Berardo’s smoky voice and lived-in tales have charmed audiences from intimate acoustic shows to full-blown theater concerts, often opening for some of his idols, including The Doobie Brothers, The Marshall Tucker Band, Dickey Betts & Great Southern, and America. Berardo’s lovingly-crafted compositions explore love, life, hard knocks, and the indefatigable human spirit. While wry and worldly-wise, his message is ultimately inspiring and optimistic – if anything, even more so since the challenges that stalled his career after breakthrough album Ignoring All The Warning Signs. Returning stronger than ever with several successful singles (“Somewhere Blue,” “Baby Blue,” “This Year,” “Something’s Gonna Happen”) and now his fourth album Wilder All The Time (all produced by David Abeyta), Chris Berardo has finally captured his intoxicating live sound and spirit on record and is poised to catapult well beyond where he left off.” We get Chris to discuss new music, influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your upcoming release. What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through?  Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

The upcoming album is called Wilder All The Time and it’ll be out February 28th on Blue Elan Records … I think if you’ve heard my albums before, a couple of listens in you might notice that it’s a more muscular sound then the previous ones … and that there is a really cohesive band sound track to track … and a lot of that was that me and half of my band got together with 3 of the guys from my favorite band, Reckless Kelly, and were the lineup on every track, and along with David Abeyta’s production touch that gave it a really solid band sound, and one that is probably more like what we do live and what I’ve pretty much been striving for for a while … The close listener might notice that the album’s title comes from a line in the chorus of the last song, “Nothing Greater” …

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

I can’t remember ever not being completely stunned and shaken to the core by music … I had a suitcase record player and the Mary Poppins soundtrack album when I was 3 or 4 I guess, and I have basically had the same heart swelling reaction to everything since … I had a crush on my babysitter Cathy Downes not long after that and she gave me all her Monkees albums, and I guess I never really figured from that moment that I’d ever do anything else … and one thing I have certainly been successful at is doing nothing else!

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

I took in everything … I wanted to be everything… and I’ve been in every kind of band and written all different kinds of music over the years and maybe that’s made it harder to find specific “success” but I love it all so much and eliminating things that bring me joy is something I have had almost no ability to do in any capacity in life, for better or for worse … so it’s hard to really isolate one particular thing … Although the TV broadcast scene medley in “A Hard Day’s Night” would be pretty hard to beat as inspiration for a young kid!

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

Paul McCartney … I think if you asked him, he’d agree that our keen competition over the years has driven us both to greater and greater heights …  but honestly, he could show me how to create life changing generational hit songs and I could show him the optimum way to keep the beers cold in the cooler … we’d both walk away having learned a little something! But as I said, getting my guys together with the Reckless Kelly guys, who I’ve been a fan of for so long kinda WAS my dream collaboration and on top of that one of my favorite people in the world and absolutely one of the best singer/songwriters anywhere, Walt Wilkins, came down to the studio and sang a duet with me on a song called “Underachiever,” so collaboration-wise, I’ve been as lucky as I could ask for …

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour?  What do you like to do to unwind?

I’m a big sports guy … Yankees, NY Giants, Knicks, University of Miami football … takes up a lot of my free time and sanity … I love to jump on my bike and ride around the beach and maybe make a few bar stops … and if an opportunity to make a quick trip to Texas or Key West to hang out with some friends or just listen to some music for no reason ever presents itself, I’m in …

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

NOT HEARD OF ME?! How is that possible? I’m a cultural icon! Wait … my mistake … I’m thinking of The Eagles … but I grew up on New York City radio which was fantastic and VERY eclectic, so I think I’d tell someone that I’m a synthesis of things I loved like the great southern rock and country bands (and yes, The Eagles) with lots of more straight up rock bands and LA singer/songwriters and classic rock bands mixed in, and absolutely the fantastic pop music on the radio back then, along with the cool pop rock stuff that I came to later like Big Star and The Replacements and Teenage Fan Club … voices together in harmony shook me from the start and it’s still does and is a big part of the sound … but I try to make something that moves me and make something of my own that I feel like is maybe missing in the world in some small way, and something that’s mine … When I put out my first album, I had already been writing and performing and recording music for a long time, so I was just happy to see anybody review anything and just talk about the music at all … and everything I remember was very kind … same with fans … you’re free to say anything you want, I’m just happy that you came to the gig … but I think most folks, by the time they’ve made the effort to buy a ticket and show up, are pretty open hearted  … now, I don’t know what they say after they get home!

7. When your live band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

Well, no one cooks, I can tell you that! We’re not quite that domesticated, and when we do find ourselves together outside of a gig the only things we’re cooking up are schemes and fish stories … on the road we’re the scourge of the Waffle House set … some of the guys like to take advantage of the early morning breakfast buffet at the hotel but to me those are just a distant rumor … as far as the drinks, I’m not afraid to say that my cooler work is legendary … ice, beers, assorted spirits and mixers …it falls to me but it is a responsibility that I have embraced! My brother Marc Douglas Berardo and I used to play a 5-hour bar gig, hang around and play a few more up at the bar until 6 am and then sit around and play for another hour when we got home just for fun … I am always a great proponent of the after-hours hootenanny …

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

I don’t know about the most recent time, but it makes me think of a day years ago when I was recording at Media Sound Studios on 57th Street in New York City and I was in one room and The Bee Gees were in another and Gene Simmons was hanging around and that’s hard not to get a little excited about … but that stuff would happen fairly often back then and after the initial excitement you’d just settle into war stories and gags and Chinese food, and that just became this fantastic opportunity to get to know a little bit about these guys that you admired so much … On that particular day, I remember having a pretty heavy conversation with Barry and Maurice Gibb, and then watching my guitar player, Bill, tell Gene Simmons that “hey, we need more paper towels in the men’s room” while we all fell down laughing …so we would get over our initial bedazzled emotions pretty quickly … maybe it’s a New York thing … But the truth is that we’ve been really lucky to play shows over the years with some of my absolute heroes and there’s no way not to be starstruck … people like The Doobie Brothers, the late, great Dickie Betts, America and a bunch of others that meant so much to me in my musical life growing up  … but after a bunch of shows and seeing them operate up close, in almost every case (certainly in those particular cases) I’ve found myself even more impressed … when you see how guys like that go about their business, interact with their fans and the joy that they still bring to their music, it’s easy to see why they’re still thriving … it’s a fantastic lesson and just increases my appreciation …

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

The best part is being able to do a thing that moves you and then the opportunity to share it … with an audience, with the other musicians, it’s a rare privilege which I try to never take for granted … and also, you know, I haven’t paid for a beer since 1978 … If for some reason I had to stop doing this, I can’t imagine what I’d do … although I hear good things about the Bloomingdale’s training program.

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

I guess I’d like someone to ask what my first paying job in the business was, so I could tell them about the dollar I got for telling a joke on the NBC game show “Call My Bluff” when I was 4 or 5 … once I got a taste of that sweet Show Biz cash I never looked back! There’s really not a question that I’m tired of being asked because I really do appreciate anybody who is interested enough to want to know about what I’m trying to give out … But one thing that can occasionally feel bad, even when I know it’s meant in a completely good spirit, is “Man, you guys are great! How come I’ve never heard of you?!” I absolutely hear that a lot, and the fact is that it’s on me, not on the person asking … but I sometimes wish that folks could know that I have been writing songs and making recordings for a long time and I’m pretty proud of most all of it … but like in every walk of life, this thing lends itself to a lot of stops and starts and setbacks and I’ve had my share … back when I was in the “big deal” major labels / managers / producers scene a lot of really exciting things happened and I was always so close to The Brass Ring, and there were a lot of pretty heart breaking surprises and disappointments … those can set you back a few years here and there, but it’s what I chose and I was writing songs  and putting together some really great bands that I’m no less proud of just because not a lot of folks got to hear it … it’s just kinda what the terrain was back then … and also, Life intrudes sometimes … I had a pretty serious health struggle that set me back for a while (I feel great now) and just when I was getting off the mat from that one and things were starting to really swing, our drummer of 14 years, friend, brother, unexpectedly passes away … we were all devastated … you’d think that, well that’s a tough one and that hurts, but you find someone else to do the job and you move on … and we tried … but the fact is that that is the kind of blow that can really take the wind out of your sails and it absolutely did … and those things are just the struggles we all go through, but in this racket where perception means so much to some people it’s hard not to want them to know that I haven’t been jamming in the basement and getting high with my buds all this time … I didn’t just come up with this idea recently and I stand by the places I’ve been and the music I’ve made … But, having said that, please ask anything you want to!

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Well, many years ago, in their hit making heyday, Mike Reno of Loverboy got it in his head to bring me up to Vancouver to his ranch / oceanfront studio to produce a record for me … he’d do it all on spec, just out of belief in what I was doing … How fantastic! And yet, at 6 in the morning in an LA hotel room, I apparently attempted to define the difference in certain music styles and approaches by saying that I didn’t want to be like “the headband Loverboy guy” … very shrewd … I guess I meant like being a great singer who was wealthy and successful … well done … A couple years later I found myself working with the powerful music manager Bud Prager (Foreigner, Bad Company) and he was kind enough to ask the great Mick Jones to come down and meet me and listen to my music … Mick was as hot as it gets between his band Foreigner and producing the huge (and beautifully musical) 5150 album for Van Halen … we hit it off, he loved the music, I called a couple of my bandmates and told them to high tail it down to Bud’s office in NYC … a brace of gin and tonics appeared and then another! My vague memory is that once again I took a stand for my musical “principles” and me and the guys got all amped up declaring what we wanted to sound like and be … I can’t pinpoint when I talked myself out of that one, but it was probably somewhere between the 4-5 rounds of G&Ts … Well played again, Chris! But if offered a do-over in all of these kinds of situations over the years I would absolutely say no thank you … the bruises and scars are part of the story and I’m so happy and thankful for where me and my music have landed today …

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

That’s so hard … I never really dreamed of going behind the curtain and seeing how the things I loved were made … I was always better letting the magic wash over me and take me to a place in my mind than getting a look at the nuts and bolts of it … Now that I have an idea about how to go about writing songs and making recordings, I still try really hard to think like the kid who didn’t know anything more than how it made me feel … sometimes reality is for suckers and buying in is the payoff … But maybe Whipped Cream and Other Delights by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass … I’d like to meet that whipped cream lady on the cover …

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Category: Interviews