Nick Perri & The Underground Thieves
Bio
Nick Perri isn’t writing your typical rags-to-riches breakout story (yet), and because it lacks the salacious drug overdoses and groupie exposés that have always enthralled rock’s faded journalism and today’s social media fervor, it isn’t getting the cultural attention it really deserves. Nick has spent nearly twenty years fighting for the soul of rock and roll, exhaustively trying to preserve a certain mindset and attitude, which was long ago abandoned by an industry that prefers to reach for homogeny. Instead, through his own personal ethos and the music he creates, Nick is crafting a salvation story, one in which rock and roll saves itself from its own mediocrity.
Over the last four years, the journey has been complicated and magical. It has been full of the kind of peaks and valleys that a person needs to travel on the path to becoming who and what they are meant to be. The Thieves are, indeed, world-class. But they are something else - brothers. Not just in the way that all bands are brotherhoods and sisterhoods, but this band is made up of guys who have known each other and performed together for their entire adult, and teenage lives. They have separately and now collectively reached the peak of their powers. The spirit of independence infused this project and resulted in music that could only have come from Philadelphia.
Through Nick’s vision for this band - and even more-so, for his execution - we’re all running around like kids in the early days of our musical lives. We’re staying up late, we’re huddled around tables quickly scarfing down take-out, and we’re laughing through much-needed breaks where we all discuss Jeff Lynne or Roger Waters or that one obscure Beatles story that every musician keeps in their pocket.
Authenticity, not guitar playing, is Nick’s most astounding quality. He’s a man who’s seen the music business from the inside and the out, he knows how it works. And now he’s making it work for him. Nick is a father in his mid-30s, a business man, a devoted child, a loving sibling, an uncle, an Italian, an American, a guitar legend, and a grateful artist. If he signs his name with authority, it’s because he earns it.