Lynyrd Skynyrd's Michael Cartellone Debuts His Artwork
Michael Cartellone , drummer for Lynyrd Skynyrd, began painting when he was four and drumming when he was nine--too much talent for one person. We got a taste of his beautiful work when he stopped by the LifeMinute Studios recently. His latest creations are inspired by his Sicilian heritage and a recent visit to Italy. He calls himself "a drummer who paints and a painter who drums." Luckily for us, he's good at both. This is a LifeMinute with Michael Cartellone.
Transcript
00:00Hi, I'm Michael Cardelloni, the drummer from Leonard Skynard, and you are watching Life Minute TV.
00:11I began painting when I was four, and I began drumming when I was nine.
00:16The kindergarten teacher had suggested to my parents that they might want to encourage
00:21the painting that I had taken to, so the summer in between kindergarten and first grade my
00:28parents enrolled me in a course at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, which
00:34is where I'm from.
00:36And I spent that summer learning all of the, or I should say being taught all of the main
00:43techniques in fine art, which I'm sure went over my head as a four-year-old, but maybe
00:48they've stuck in there at some point.
00:50So the painting began a lifelong journey, which has never wavered.
00:55The drumming at age nine very quickly went to the forefront, but I never stopped painting,
01:02and consequently the two have coexisted my entire life as a perfect two halves of a whole.
01:10I am doing my first ever appearance in the Asheville, North Carolina area, and they have
01:15a really great arts district called the River Arts District, which is a really cool community.
01:23Tens and dozens of galleries, hundreds and hundreds of artists.
01:26I became friends with a man named Phillip DeAngelo, who owns his own gallery in the
01:32River Arts District, and Phil is a very talented and very successful painter.
01:38I literally just called him out of the blue and introduced myself, and it turns out that
01:43we both have a shared Sicilian ancestry, and we realized, well, this is the perfect foundation
01:52to build upon to do a joint art show.
01:56It will be basically Phil and I reflecting our shared history as this wonderful scenic
02:03Italian and Sicilian vantage point, and some of the paintings that are going to be in the
02:08Bella Italia show are taken directly from my life experiences traveling around Sicily.
02:16There literally is a painting called Bononta that is the town that my family's from.
02:20My visual influence artist list is lengthy.
02:25I was able to zero it down at one point with creating something I call the Four Davids,
02:33and one of them is right there.
02:35So Michelangelo, of course, is one of my favorite artists.
02:38Nancy, my wife, and I went to Florence on our honeymoon.
02:42We saw the David, which is just awe-inspiring to see, and I came home wanting to do a painting
02:50in tribute, and it turned into painting him four different times in four different styles
02:58representing 100 years of art history.
03:01They really are a double homage, Michelangelo, and then to Van Gogh, Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein,
03:09and Andy Warhol.
03:10The Four Davids are paintings I'm very proud of, and all four will be represented at the
03:16Asheville Art Show.
03:18There is a list of fine artists that I'm inspired by.
03:20I love Magritte, Seurat, M.C. Escher, Caravaggio.
03:24I've studied all of the above, and I think at any given time, some of that inspiration
03:31comes out into whatever the next painting might be.
03:35The musical influences, not surprisingly, the Beatles are my favorite band.
03:39Ringo is my favorite drummer, amongst other favorite drummers, which is a nice segue
03:44to the painting here.
03:45This painting is called Ringo, and it is Ringo's vantage point in January 1969 when the Beatles
03:55were on the rooftop and did their last ever live public performance.
04:00And I had this idea for many, many years, being a drummer as a career, I see this vantage
04:06point a lot.
04:08And one night, I was just in the middle of a Leonard Skinner show, and I thought to myself,
04:13I wonder what Ringo saw.
04:15You know, I know what I see, and it just kind of cemented the idea.
04:19So I spent a full year working on this Ringo painting.
04:25The original painting, by the way, is five feet across.
04:28This is a reproduction.
04:29I researched everything from the battered drum heads to the tarnished cymbals to the
04:36clothing that the other three Beatles were wearing, the brick and mortar pattern on the
04:40building across the street.
04:42I left nothing to chance on this one, and I'm very, very proud of the Ringo painting.
04:47It will be in the Asheville Art Show.
04:49I should also mention I'm a huge lifelong David Bowie fan.
04:53I have an affinity for all things British, I think.
04:56Charlie Chaplin is a hero of mine as well.
04:58I think musically and artistically, I'm the sum of all the parts that I grew up being
05:04influenced by.
05:06Musically, growing up in Cleveland was a wonderful place to learn my craft, because there's
05:11a very healthy music scene.
05:13It is the rock and roll capital of the world, hence the museum right there.
05:18And I had, by the time I was 22, I felt like I had to do everything that I could do staying
05:26at home.
05:27So I decided to move to New York City and become a very small fish in a very big pond.
05:32And at the time, I started working with a renowned British musician named Eddie Jopson.
05:39And Eddie is a British progressive rocker who was in the band UK.
05:44And Eddie and I worked together for a few years on a recording project.
05:48That segued into my landing a tour playing in the solo band for Tommy Shaw, who was from
05:56the band Styx.
05:57And Tommy Shaw Band worked for about two years, and that segued right into Tommy and myself,
06:04Ted Nugent and Jack Blades forming Damn Yankees.
06:09Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah.
06:16Yeah, here I come again.
06:23And Damn Yankees was formed right here in New York City on the Upper West Side.
06:26A lot of people know that.
06:28Damn Yankees was an incredible experience.
06:30It was truly the springboard for my musical career.
06:35It was a multi-platinum selling band, and it was just a wonderful, wonderful time.
06:41And I could not be more proud of what we did.
06:43Interestingly, during the course of Damn Yankees, we shared the stage a few times with Leonard
06:48Skinner, which isn't unusual that you would run into other bands or be on the same bill
06:54now and then.
06:55So I knew the guys and Leonard Skinner for many years socially.
06:59And it turned out that in 1998, they were recording an album.
07:04And the man that was producing the album is named Ron Nevison.
07:08Ron had produced both Damn Yankee records.
07:11So Ron hired me to play percussion on that Skinner album, which was called Edge of Forever.
07:17So this was 1998.
07:19I played percussion on the record.
07:20They asked me to join the band, and I've been there happily ever since.
07:28Yeah, it truly is in between the art and music.
07:37I like to say on any given day, I'm a drummer who's painting or a painter who's drumming.
07:42But Skinner already has had a very busy 2024.
07:47We toured all of March and all of April as a double bill with ZZ Top, which was a wonderful
07:53tour.
07:54It did great business.
07:55We had so much fun.
07:57And those two bands have worked together before in the past, so we're all old friends.
08:02We are doing the next leg of the tour starting in the summer.
08:06And it'll be a very busy year in between all the drumming and all of the painting.
08:11There is one other painting behind me, which I would like to explain.
08:16It is what I call the Pixelism series.
08:21So I did a whole batch of these.
08:24I think there's 20 of them now.
08:26Paintings where I've pixelated the image.
08:28Some of the paintings, I've made the blocks larger and harder to see what it is.
08:35Some of them I've made smaller blocks, which then makes a tighter focus.
08:41The camera does help smooth out the squares a little bit.
08:45So the people that are seeing this might be able to clearly see what that is.
08:50However, in person, it is definitely trickier to figure out what that is.
08:54I will tell everyone that this is a pixelated Mickey Mouse, if you can't figure it out.
09:00These have been very fun.
09:02They have been very popular with the art collectors.
09:05And one very fun tidbit about these paintings is if you look at them through your phone
09:14camera, it smooths them out completely and the blocks just go away and then you can clearly
09:20see the image.
09:21The band members of Leonard Skinner are very supportive of the art.
09:26For many years, I carried art supplies on tour, literally one of these little collapsible
09:33easels, a toolbox with paints and a canvas in and out of hotel rooms because we have
09:39a lot of downtime during a tour.
09:42So I paint in hotel rooms during the day.
09:45And quite often they come down to the room and watch the progress.
09:49I've also painted about my life as a musician.
09:53Specifically, I've painted more than one Leonard Skinner themed paintings.
09:59And there will be one in the show in Asheville, which is called 50.
10:03And it is the seven original members that are on the band's first album, which is called
10:10Pronounced, that came out in 1973.
10:13If people are curious to see the body of work, all of my paintings are online at my
10:19art website, which is michaelcartoloni.com.
10:22To hear more of this interview, visit our podcast, Life Minute TV, on iTunes and all
10:27streaming podcast platforms.