Hoboken native and businessman Charles Lallo has been writing songs for decades. But when he heard that New Jersey-based actor Danny Aiello is also a singer, Lallo decided to approach the actor to sing one of his songs.
“I’m a songwriter, but I’m not in the business,” Lallo said. “I’ve been doing this for a number of years.”
Most of his songs involve musical concepts with some environmental or spiritual core, and some deal with the concept of the safety of home. In this case, the song called “Home America” seemed to sum up some of his feelings about his home country.
“Basically, we live in a country that is so great and wonderful, we tend to forget and take it for granted,” he said. “A friend of mine was doing a CD of patriotic songs. I had this one cooking, so I finished it up. I wasn’t recording it for anybody. I was going to do it myself. Then someone came into my shop and told me that Danny was performing. I didn’t know he was a singer.”
Aiello, in fact, released a CD of American jazz classics last year, I Just Wanted To Hear The Words, that reached number four on the jazz Billboard sales charts.
Aiello, an award-winning actor with appearances in some monumental film – such as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, for which he won an Academy Award nomination, Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, and The Godfather II – has become something of a local hero in Hudson County, where people can meet him in local restaurants or catch his live act at various clubs.
Although Aiello performs American jazz classics, Lallo decided to approach him at Tutta Pasta in Hoboken, a popular Italian restaurants where Aiello sometimes eats.
“Sometimes when I went there for lunch I would see him there,” Lallo said. “On my way out this time, I said hello and told him I was a singer-songwriter and asked him to listen to my song. Even though he didn’t know me, he decided to give it a listen.”
“I ran into Charlie at Tutta Pasta in Hoboken, a restaurant that we would both frequent for lunch,” Aiello recalled last week. “He approached me one day and told me about this song. After listening, I found it expressed my own beliefs about America so I wanted to include it on my new album. I had the opportunity to add my own narrative to the song, reflecting how we as a country are affected by the things we do. I think the song brings America back to where it once was or should be.”
Lallo didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not the call he received about an hour later from Aiello, who told him he loved the song.
“He said he wanted to make it his signature song,” Lallo recalled. “That really made my day.”
At that point, Aiello contacted an old friend: Paul DeAngelo, a Bayonne moviemaker and actor with a hand in nearly every aspect of the performing arts.
“This is a rock-and-roll patriotic song,” DeAngelo said, noting that the recording was done partly in the Bayonne studio of local performer and music producer Bill Christopher Meehan, and partly in the Chun King studio in New York. The CD cover will feature artwork by Pop Artist Peter Max. “We’re also going to shoot a video,” DeAngelo said.
Aiello has put “Home America” on his official Web site and has already begun performing it at various venues, including local radio programs such as Cousin Brucie on WWOR and Mark Simone’s show on WABC.
A little extra effort went a long way
Meehan, who performs under the name Bill Christopher, has worked the local music circuit since songs like “Mustang Sally” were chart-toppers, performing throughout Hudson County for years. Lately, he has focused more on producing music in the studio.
“Paul called me and said Danny Aiello didn’t think the song was in his vocal range and wanted me to work out the right range for him,” Meehan said. “I’ve known Paul for more than 25 years. He wanted to drop off the demo for me to listen to and see if it was too high, and said he would bring Danny around to determine the best key. I listened to the demo, then deconstructed it.”
He heard a different production in his head and decided to recreate it. When Aiello and DeAngelo showed up, Meehan played his production for them.
“They were blown away,” he said. “If I hadn’t deconstructed the song, they would have just come in, we would have tested for his range, and then they would have been on their way.”
Aiello came to Meehan’s home studio in Bayonne five or six times after the initial consultation to work out the details of the song and to put down the basic tracks that he later completed at Chun King Studios in New York.
As it is, Meehan said the song has the potential to take off, especially because Aiello is so caught up with it. While Meehan doesn’t know if it will be a hit, he hopes that the tune will catch on. He also hopes to produce more music on that level in the future.
Meehan and Aiello performed the song during a nightclub performance in Hoboken on Valentine’s Day, and received a good reception.
Meehan described Aiello as “a regular guy” and “warm and engaging.”
“He’s a very positive person,” Meehan said. “But he never sang rock-and-roll before, and he needed some help with the phrasing. I told him he has to sing it over and over until he owns the song. I told him, ‘Sing it until you make me believe it,’ and he did. He made me believe it.”