mArCo bEoNkEy

Marco Bianchi Marco Bianchi was born in the mountains of Colorado and raised in the heartland of the United States. He remembers his father crooning to Frank Sinatra records and soon would follow his dad’s footsteps, singing along to Old Blue Eyes, Tom Lehr and others.Later in life he befriended a schoolmate who would later become the drummer in many later musical incarnations. This friendship would result in Marco meeting one of his greatest influences in music, Jimmy McGary, an Irish tenor sax player who played with the likes of James Brown, Miles Davis and Cal Collins. “He lived music, it came out of his pores. He blew his horn and read novel after novel from his enormous bookshelf. He turned me onto music beyond pop and metal and more importantly, literature.”Marco’s principle early musical influences included Neil Young, Zeppelin, early Stones and the first wave of British Metal. Not feeling confident with his vocal abilities, he took up bass and gigged with the likes of Mean Streets, Wild Hobby, and Cid and the Led Boots. “Probably, my greatest influence was Neil Young. “He always plays with so much heart and he does so by his own rules, not those of the music industry. You can hear a lot of Neil in the way I play and sing.” It was about the mid eighties that he began to write and compose songs of his own.Marco came to the Bay Area in 1987, mostly to have the opportunity to catch more Grateful Dead concerts. During his tenure here he has mostly given up the vocation of bass playing and has become more focused on singing and songwriting. In the almost twenty years he has lived in San Francisco, he has put out two EPs and one soon to be released LP, entitled “Last Ten Winters”, which was co produced by local Stick wizard Alex Nahas.It was the making of this record that led me to Los Nadies. “Pancho (Ferrer) played guitar on my album and encouraged me to pick up my bass again. I finally did and I am really enjoying the opportunity to explore a new aspect of bass playing that is fresh and intriguing for me.” Marco feels like Los Nadies will allow him to expand his musical horizons and develop new a sense of rhythm outside conventional American rock that he has been accustomed to playing.