Silvermine, CT’s Chris Berardo has spent the last several years touring much of the country, playing hundreds of shows with the likes of The Doobie Brothers, Dickey Betts & Great Southern, The Marshall Tucker Band, Reckless Kelly, America, Three Dog Night and many others, as well as countless appearances as headliners everywhere from top-notch listening rooms to beer-soaked bar rooms.
With his fourth album slated for release this year, there is much to look forward to … Wilder All the Time (produced by David Abeyta) maintains many of the same qualities that distinguished Berardo’s prior recordings. The rousing melodies, heartfelt harmonies, jangly guitars and moments of acoustic beauty are all prominent throughout, as are Berardo’s soaring, expressive vocals, which drive some of his most resonant compositions to date. Finally, though, the harder edge and vibe of Chris’s live shows can be felt on these masterfully crafted ten new songs.
Chris Berardo & The DesBerardos are for folks who refuse to be bound by useless categories … Rock, Pop, Country? Hell Yeah!
New Bio for “Wilder All The Time” release TBD
“It’s been a long time since we put out a record,” Chris Berardo says of Wilder All the Time, his fourth album and his first longplayer in more than a decade. “I didn’t really know if the world needed more records, so I wanted to be sure that I really had something to say.”
He needn’t have worried. The New York native’s new ten-song set is something of a milestone for the artist. On the one hand, his new songs continue to embody the restless wanderlust that’s long motivated the much-traveled singer/songwriter/frontman. At the same time, the new disc finds Berardo taking a fresh new approach to recording, while reflecting upon some unexpected life-changing experiences that threatened to alter his previously carefree approach to life and music.
Berardo’s new songs once again demonstrate the artist’s uncanny ability to encapsulate universal human experience with self-deprecating humor and hard-won insight. That’s the case with such pointed new originals as “The Last Great Chance,” “Take Me Back,” “Wanda Leigh,” “Broken Hearted Man,” “Try Love” and the anthemic “King of Fun.”
Berardo traces Wilder All the Time’s genesis to a two-week East Coast tour that he and his band, The DesBerardos, did with the beloved Austin roots-rock outfit Reckless Kelly, where over pints in an Irish Pub post show, he and guitarist/producer David Abeyta started discussing the possibility of David producing this album. From that conversation the collaboration took hold.
“I’m a huge Reckless Kelly fan,” he explains, “so when David had the idea of cutting a record in Austin, and then using some of our guys and some Reckless Kelly guys and then maybe pulling in some of my favorite Austin Musicians, of course I was pretty excited to shake things up some and give it a try.”
The result, Wilder All the Time, features an all-star cast: brother Marc Douglas Berardo on acoustic guitar and vocals, Bill Kelly on electric, mandola and vocals , RK guitarist David Abeyta and his bandmates Joe Miller and Jay Nazz on bass and drums, respectively, as well as legendary Austin musician Lloyd Maines on steel guitar, Bukka Allen on piano and organ, and revered Texas songwriter Walt Wilkins, who joins Chris for a duet on the rollicking bar-band stomper “Underachiever.”
Along with the new creative input, Wilder All the Time maintains many of the same qualities that distinguished Berardo’s prior recordings. The rousing melodies, heartfelt harmonies, jangly guitars and moments of acoustic beauty are all prominent throughout, as are Berardo’s soaring, expressive vocals, which drive some of his most resonant compositions to date. Finally, though, the harder edge and vibe of Chris’s live shows can be felt on these masterfully crafted ten new songs.
Chris Berardo and his various musical compatriots have spent much of the past quarter-century traveling around America, playing music and building an unfailingly devoted and loyal fan base, while accumulating an extensive array of life experience that’s reflected in the artist’s vivid, personally-charged songwriting.
Growing up in Westchester County, NY, Berardo joined his first band at 15 and began performing his original songs soon after. His musical wanderlust sent him on the road in search of adventure and musical satisfaction, resulting in stints in Florida, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, encounters with all manner of memorable characters, and several glancing near-misses with mainstream show business.
Berardo scored something of a breakthrough with his third album, 2007’s Ignoring All The Warning Signs, which influential Nashville critic Robert K. Oermann called “As good a country rock record as you will hear this year,” and which reached #4 on XM Radio’s X Country chart, and #49 on the Billboard Americana Chart, and was in rotation on over 100 stations in the U.S.
But Berardo’s career momentum was temporarily interrupted in April 2010, when he was diagnosed with cancer. Having spent most of his adult life “slashing my way through the world, running on all cylinders like a wild-eyed teenager, without regard for health or personal safety,” Berardo was forced to focus, re-group and battle to get his health back. But the music refused to take a back seat for long.
“I was way too concerned with doctors and praying to think about songwriting, but songs started to come when I wasn’t looking… it’s the way my mind dealt with it, and the words and music began to spill out.” Within a few weeks of (receiving) surgery, while still recovering, Berardo was back playing gigs, singing some of the new songs for the locals and looking forward to getting back out on the road with his musical family.
He and the band hit the road again, searching for more adventures, “It was way too early, I was told, but I needed to know that I could do it,” Berardo notes. “It was feeling great and things were really starting to happen again, when we were completely blindsided by the sudden and unexpected loss of our drummer, brother, best-friend and 14 year long bandmate, Paulie Triff … It has taken some time to sort through the grief for all of us, and again, the music was put on hold for a spell while we tried to come to grips with the loss of our friend.”
“Despite life’s bumpy road, I still think I am The Luckiest Guy In Show Biz , and I figure that if I can help anybody here and there because of these things I’ve dealt with lately , maybe that is how I’ll make some small difference in The Big World. I can’t wait to see what happens next. It’s starting to feel like magic to me and the guys again , and I can’t wait to get this music into the world. Let the good times roll!”