DAMIANO CHRISTIAN – AN INTERVIEW WITH KATE CARROLL
It was an honor to chat with such a phenomenal talent as multi-instrumentalist Damiano Christian, who first impressed me a few years back when he and his band rocked the house at an event that raised money for The Station Night Club Fire Foundation. Since then I have been watching and listening to this young man through the magic of several social media platforms, as he has matured and evolved into a local rock star who has managed to successfully balance his well-honed talents with humility, congeniality and charisma.
Damiano will be performing with his newest band: Elm City Heartbreakers (hard rock original songs) who will open for one of his other bands: Rock of Ages- Def Leppard Tribute on Saturday, November 20th at Crystal Bees in Southington, Connecticut. His well-honed shredding and fast-fingered guitar riffs should not be missed! I’ll be there and you should be too.
KATE: It’s a pleasure talking with you, particularly when I know how busy you are. Huge congratulations on all your success and amazing gigs!
DAMIANO: Thank you so much for [doing] this interview and for thinking of [me]. I really appreciate it!
KATE: I’m interested to know how you ended up with a career in music (and thank god you did!): How old were you when you started singing/ playing, etc.
DAMIANO: I started off with piano at the age of 3 with lessons at the Hartford Conservatory here in Connecticut and I became a voice student at the school when I was 8. I picked the guitar up though on my own when I was 11 and heard Randy Rhoads for the first time. I used my piano training to teach myself how to play the guitar, now I’m 23 and have been playing the instrument for 12 years.
KATE: I first saw you a few years back in the band Ozzy America. This was at Club Roxx in North Kingstown, RI for a Station Club Fire benefit and I believe your band was the headliner. I’m confident I can speak for the entire audience that night when I say that everyone was completely blown away by your spot-on tribute to Randy Rhoads. You looked like him. You moved like him. You played like him.
DAMIANO: Thank you so much for the compliments regarding my Ozzy tribute, yes that is where we first met! My band headlined the benefit for the Station club fire in Rhodes Island.
KATE: I’d love to hear about your main musical influences. Pretty sure I can guess a few, and I gotta say, it’s a rare pleasure to know that such a young talent appreciates older bands that I grew up listening to.
DAMIANO: Randy’s always been my biggest guitar hero and inspiration, there was no one else like him. I also love Ritchie Blackmore just as equally so I’m also into bands like Rainbow, Deep Purple, Van Halen any band that has a great lead guitar player basically, haha. Recently I’ve fallen in love though with Queensryche, Geoff Tate is one of my favorite singers in line with Freddie Mercury.
With the piano my influences were always classical composers or pianists such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Elton John, Billy Joel and Liberace. What’s cool is translating their styles and songs to guitar, which makes playing the instrument a lot more fun for me.
KATE: What bands are you currently involved with?
DAMIANO: Aside from Elm City Heartbreakers, I’m also involved with a band named Sacred Oath out of Danbury, Connecticut. We just released my first album as a member of the band this year back in April titled “Return of the Dragon” which you can find on Apple Music, Spotify, ITunes and Band Camp and the album really shows the band reborn. You add a new member, it’s going to change your bands sound to an extent. The band sounds like a young, fresh and current band but with older influences. I’m really proud of this record because I got to develop my own style and sound but also really show off and define myself as a guitar player on tape. I totally suggest giving the album a listen!
I also play in Rock of Ages – The Def Leppard Tribute that plays all across the east Coast and is a part of the Titans of 80’s Rock show featuring tributes to Poison, BonJovi and Def Leppard.
KATE: What is the biggest challenge in your life as a working musician?
DAMIANO: The biggest challenge in my life as a working musician is balancing it all. Especially when you have multiple bands and you’re sitting there with your calendar fingers crossed that one of your bands won’t be asked to play on a date you’re already booked with another band! Talk about stressful haha but you get the hang of it and learn to compromise by getting a few dates from a venue instead of just one. The other challenge is staying motivated especially in today’s musical climate where rock is not very much present anymore. There’s not a lot of newer rock bands and the ones I like are either retired, dead or too old to still be performing. So there’s nothing really new coming out to inspire a rock musician and keep their drive going like it was in the 70’s and 80’s. Now it’s all artificial music with rap, hip hop and pop being the dominant musical genres. The only real music left is country which is starting to sound more like rock now.
KATE: How did you manage to not only ensure that your band/s survived Covid, but also seemed to thrive?
DAMIANO: During the main portion of the lockdown the only thing that kept me going was teaching my guitar/piano lessons online at Rockhouse School of Music where I teach professionally. I started doing a couple live streams of me playing like it’s a concert though from my house with tribute concerts to Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen. I was just doing my tribute bands at the time Covid started and I lost all my work for 2020. I had tons of big gigs coming up with Rock of Ages, all gone. Then I started playing with Band Inc. at the beginning of 2021 when the lock down started lifting and went on to open for Grace Potter, The Dave Matthews Band and Alice Cooper/Ace Frehley while playing all over the East Coast and as far out as Nashville. So it was one hell of a comeback from being locked in my house for almost a year.
KATE: What advice would you give to any musicians eager to hit the local scene?
DAMIANO: My advice to any young musicians that want to get out there and play is get out there and play, haha. You have to take things into your own hands and make things happen to get where you want to be, no one’s going to do it for you. Write your own music too and sprinkle them into a set list of covers as a way to try them out and see the audiences reaction. That’s what Elm City Heartbreakers will be doing next, we currently are in the studio recording some originals now for our first EP! We can’t wait for
everyone to hear it.
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To learn more about Damiano Christian, check out his website
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Stream music: Spotify / Apple Music / Soundcloud
Purchase: Amazon
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