Dec. 6, 1975: Songwriters Lou Rera and Bill Torrico

 

This story got shunted back to the second page of the TV Topics Pause section. Note the big ad for the long-gone Record Runner store in the University Plaza. 

Dec. 6, 1975 

Local Songwriters Visit Gotham,

Seek Record Contract After Win 

“IT’S ALMOST A CINDERELLA TYPE setup,” Lou Rera exclaims. “It’s going to pay off for somebody and I think it’s going to pay off for us.”

          Actually, the payoff from the 1975 American Song Festival already has begun for Rera and his songwriting partner Bill Torrico.

          Two of the six songs they submitted to the festival – “Lettin’ You Go” and “Send a Little Love My Way,” both in the easy listening category – were among 288 honorable mention winners from some 60,000 entries.

          For that they’ve won a small cash prize and the attention of a music publishing company, which wants to buy three of their songs and put them under contract.

* * *

BUT LOU RERA and Bill Torrico think they’ll hold out for a little more, namely a recording contract.

          There’s no point in giving in now, not after holding out for a break ever since they started writing together five years ago.

          “When we started writing songs together,” Torrico says, “We both had this same idea in mind of not playing out. We’d played around in other groups and we didn’t want to play the Top 10 again.

          “That’s why we haven’t played around locally. It would defeat our purpose.”

* * *

SO RERA, a bassist who’s 25 and teaches in West Seneca, and Torrico, a guitarist six years his senior, have kept their faith and their songs to themselves, putting it all in shape on tape with the help of drummer Bob Wiesner.

          Until last year, that is.

          Then they decided to make some professional quality demo tapes and go to New York City. They ran the usual rounds of record companies and made out better than usual.

          People listened, at least, and liked the songs.

          “Our goal,” Rera says, “was to get to Jimmy Ienner. He’s produced a lot of different people well – Blood, Sweat & Tears, Grand Funk, the Raspberries – and we figured his mind wouldn’t be stuck in one thing.”

          Instead they got to an associate of Ienner’s who works for Capitol Records.

          “It was a freak thing,” Rera recalls. “He took to us, he liked us personally and he liked the songs.

          “We went down and saw him a lot of times after that, played him tapes of new songs and picked up ideas of what we ought to do. He was the one who suggested entering the Song Festival.”

          Studio technique was another part of their strategy that they sharpened in New York.

* * *

THEY WATCHED Ienner produce songs for Eric Carmen’s album, then applied what they saw to their next sessions in Trackmaster Audio in Buffalo.

          Their New York mentor also suggested taking on another guitarist, at which point Tom Dussault, a rock veteran from Niagara Falls, joined the group, which they call Blade.

          The differences show in Torrico’s spacious plant-lined Town of Tonawanda living room as the tape recorder plays their eight demo tunes.

          The two that originally went to New York sound capable, but distant. The Song Festival songs have the vibrance of a live performance.

          But the newest tunes, taped last week, sound like they come from the innermost essence of each voice and instrument.

          They follow basic pop song form, but no two of them proceed quite the same.

          They have a common seduction in high, gentle harmonies which sound a lot like the group America and simple lyric hooks in the choruses: “That’s why I’m lettin’ you know I’m lettin’ you go …”

          The differences are in the tilt of the words, the rhythms, the sudden dramatic stops and some tasty instrumental breaks that recall both early and late Beatles.

          Elements of “Send a Little Love My Way” seem to have sprung from “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

          “It sounds strange,” Rera says, “but we’re a catalyst to each other. One may have a basic idea, but by the time we’re done, it’s both of us.”

          “Then when it comes down to recording,” says guitarist Dussault, “it’s really a compromise.”

          “With us, it’s like the old cliché,” Torrico says. “You believe in what you’re doing long enough and you make it.

          “That’s what makes us feel good – the Song Festival and all those judges. Now we know we’re on the right track.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Seated, Bill Torrico, left, and Tom Dussault. Standing, Bob Wiesner, left, and Lou Rera.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: For Lou Rera, we need to look no further than SUNY Buffalo State, where he became an associate professor in the Television and Film Arts Program in 1999. Before that, he was at WKBW-TV, Channel 7. A story about him in the campus newspaper in 2014 pretty much summarized what he’d been up to:

“Rera’s varying career, which began in the ‘80s, has moved him all across the country. He started out working with computer graphics and did special effects for TV. Then he worked in advertising and went on to become the art director for over 10 years at WKBW. There Rera worked on TV production, commercials, news and branding. Buffalo State then offered him a position at the college and Rera left the station. Rera helped develop a TV and film arts program. He … teaches students about the technical side of the industry.”

Now retired, Rera’s IMDb bio notes that he “writes horror, supernatural crime and subjects that delve into the darker side of humanity. He is the author of AWAKE: Tales of Terror (2020), a collection of 13 chilling short stories, including an homage to Edgar Allen Poe. His novel, SIGN (2014) [is] a supernatural thriller of deception and murder.”

Unfortunately, there’s no such trail on the internet for Bill Torrico, except an indication that he’s been living in Kenmore. Even less for Tom Dussault.

As for the American Song Festival, I went to the inaugural one in the amphitheater at Saratoga Springs in August 1974 with my wild and crazy friend Kim Ziegler, had a great weekend and wrote about it. As I recall, it featured some of my favorite artists.  I’m going to look it up.