Hey, this is Paul Martin. And Ray the Roadie. For the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

How are you, Ray? I got a whole lot of shaking going on. You do? I do. Shake it, shake it.

And it ain't cause of this beer bell. Like a Polaroid camera. Huh? Shake it like a Polaroid camera.

Why would they say shake it like a Polaroid camera? I don't get that. No, it's shake it like a Polaroid picture. Polaroid picture.

Those later edition Polaroids, when the camera came out, they told you to shake it to, I guess it's whatever it did to the chemicals so the picture would come out. So to help develop the picture, right? Yeah. Right, right.

Yeah, but I'm talking about other kind of shaking, man. Poodle skirts, DA's. Poodle skirts, duck's ass hairdos, right? That's right.

I like my pompadour. I got it going on tonight. That's very nice.

I like that. You were working on that all morning, haven't you? Yeah, yes, I have. All day.

It took this long to get it to look like this. What do you use? Dippity-doo? Yes, dippity-doo. That was an old Johnny Carson skit.

I know. Yeah, what was that? He would hold the envelope to his head and he said, Dippity-doo. And everybody would go, oh, dippity-doo.

And you read the question. He opened up and read the question. What forms on your dippity in the morning? Paul's going to be at Zaney's all weekend this week and make sure you get out to see him.

I think the guy that stole the toilets out of the police station. Really? Police are looking to go in. Oh, my God.

We should stay away from comedy. Yes, we should. And go back into the music world.

Okay, all right. Who are we interviewing this week? Unless we have to get around to it. If we have time.

No, this week we did Joe Cantafino of Jade 50s. I think it's Cantafio. We'll find out.

I screwed up his name. So now I know it's Cantafio. Okay, it's Cantafio of Jade 50s.

And he founded the National Veterans Museum, which will be coming to Chicago soon. And he's just been kind of a busy guy in all these many years. Yeah, Jade 50s, boy, they were a very busy band.

I am very familiar with them. I liked them back in the days when they played around here, but I never realized that they were so national, that they played everywhere all over the country. And we're Dick Clark's backup band.

It's crazy. Yes, yes, it was. Well, let's get to Joe and find out some of the stories.

He has some great stories to tell us. Let's hear all about him. Let's go.

We're speaking today with Joe Cantafio. How you doing? Good, good, good. Good to talk to you.

So, so tell us. Cantafio, is that how you pronounce it? I thought it was Cantafio. Yeah, yeah.

It took me about four or five tries. You know, actually, if we were in Italy, it would be Cantafio. But we're in Chicago, so it's Cantafio.

There we go. So you're both right. I told you, Joe.

I told you, Pauly. But you're using your hands. That's good.

So Joe, you started out years ago playing with Jake Fifties, right? Yes. You started with the band. Tell us about how that got started.

You know, the band, we were a high school band. I decided to run for class president so that I could book my band to play all the dances. And it worked.

And that's the true story. And one, in about May of 1973, my senior year, our history teacher, Tom Graziano, said, I'd like you guys to play some fifties music for a dance that we're going to do on Friday. We're going to teach fifties arithmetic and history from the 1950s that whole week.

We're calling it Decades Week. And we'd love your band, Jade, to perform. So we were like, I don't know.

I want to have fifties music because I'll get you out of school for the whole day. We'll do it. We, you know, slicked our hair back.

And fortunately for us, the week before we went on, Shana and I was playing at the Erie Crown Theater. So we all bought our $10 tickets and went down to Erie Crown and watched Shana Na. And we put some choreography together and slicked our hair back.

And we had a blast playing all these music. Well, the Chicago Daily News at the time put me on the front cover. By the time we got to school on Thursday of the following week, this was on a Friday.

So by the next following Thursday, there was over 100 letters written to our school saying, we want to do the same thing you did. We want that band. How do we do this? So the history teacher said, I think we can make some money, boys.

So he became our manager. Really? And yeah, so we started. This is Oak Park and River Forest High School? Oak Park and River Forest High School.

Correct. Okay. So Tom Graziano and Jim Locke at the time.

Jim managed us for about a year. And then he had another baby. And this wasn't up his alley.

But Tom Graziano stayed with us. Tom Duke Graziano for a long time and got liftoff for Jade 50s. We hooked up with a few.

We hooked up with Blytham. You remember those guys out of Champaign. Irving Azoff.

They were our agents. We decided to go agencies in areas. We didn't want one agent.

In the Chicago area, though, we worked with three or four agencies. John Orzel. Everybody worked with John Orzel.

And Paramount. Art Goldsmith, who booked us with Al Curtis. Booked us at the State Fair and all the big corporate parties downtown.

And then Ken Adamanti and Chuck Toller. Adamanti and Toller took us all over the United States. They had Cheap Trick.

They had Dr. Bopp and the Headliners, Ziggy and the Zoo, and us. And so we ended up going national with these guys. And we had such a good time.

The first breakup of Jade 50s was our second year when all my classmates said, hey, I want to go to college. I don't want to do this full time. So they left.

And we brought in some underclassmen from Oak Park. And they stayed with us for about another four years. And they just said, I've had enough of the road.

I want to start a family. And I just kept going. My brother ended up joining the band.

And then he left. And after about four, Mike Arturi, the great drummer, joined. He was with Rick Susseto at the time.

And I knew Mike from college. So I called him. I made an offer.

He couldn't refuse. He joined the band. And then we started getting a little more serious.

During that period of time, a great guy named Lou Valpaino, who ran Chicago Fest and started Milwaukee Summerfest, called and asked us if we'd like to be with Dick Clark on the main stage the first year. So obviously, we were floored by that. We ended up talking with Larry Klein, who still is a friend.

And Larry decided, I said, send us the music. And we'll memorize the show. He goes, well, everybody just sits there and reads it.

I said, I'm not going to read Chuck Berry music, Larry. That's embarrassing. Just send us the arrangements, and we'll memorize them.

So some of the arrangements were a little sticky. The charrelles and the crystals had a couple different. They had more than four chords in some of their songs.

You know, it was basically Bo Diddley was one chord. I'm a man in E, and hey, Bo Diddley in E. And then Can't Judge a Book by his cover was basically four-chord ice cream. And then you had the Coasters, which were really interesting.

And they had arrangements, and they were really fun. And Freddie Can and Jerry Lee Lewis. And I don't know, I mean, maybe 60, 70 of these guys.

We ended up doing all of Dick Clark's rock and roll shows for about four and a half years. So what year was this? What year was this? The very first Chicago Fest was, I believe, 1977. And then we played the very last Chicago Fest, which was at Soldier Field in about 83.

Maybe, I think, 83. Yeah. We were on the main stage every year.

We were the only band ever to play the main stage every year at Chicago Fest. And all the other bands that had hit records and stuff. Yeah, well, that doesn't matter.

I remember, I don't want to name names because they're friends. A few of the local bands from Oak Park, who had a couple of hits, didn't want any of their band members coming to see us. Because we were actually making money.

J-50s back then, everybody was on a salary. They all had Blue Cross. We got Workman's Comp.

And I got Blue Cross and Blue Shield for everybody. And we picked up all the road expenses. So we all had cars and homes and stuff like that.

And that was unfathomable for the bands that were signing record contracts. That the record companies were taking all their money, which was just terrible. I remember working the Thirsty Whale.

And we were making like $2,300. We'd take 70% of the door. That was our deal.

Right. And we'd walk out on a Thursday night with $2,300 when, you know, Off-Broadway was playing. They're scraping.

The record company was ripping Cliff and the boys off. Here's this oldies band, packing the place. And making serious money.

And these guys have Airplay. And they're starving. You know, I learned all this from Mike Gorman, who was a classmate of mine.

Who later ended up playing with me in the 101st Rock Division. And Mike would tell us, you know, he goes, oh, he goes, I loved you. But I was like, how is J-50s making the J-50s? They're doing oldies.

We have songs on WLS. And I saw something where J-50s was the only band that was allowed to count the people. Or count the money at the door.

Because you guys were getting a percentage. And every other band was. That's right.

That's right. We brought in our own. A lot of times it was my wife.

She'd come up with a clicker and sit at the front door. She was such a little doll. Nobody bothered her.

And she'd just sit there and click people. And at the end of the night, it usually matched up a little bit off, you know. And so I said, no.

My wife, no, no, no. She's so cute, they gave her the money. Awesome.

So how many guys are in the band? How many guys are in the band? What kind of instrumentation did you have then? Okay, originally, the original J-50s was two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard, saxophone. And then two muscle singers. You know, they weren't the lead singer.

I was the lead singer. But they'd stand on either side of me. They'd each get one lead a night.

But we'd do the choreography like Sean and I did. And so then when they went to school, we trimmed down to a six piece, which was just two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard, and two keyboards. So we filled in the strings and stuff with an ARP string ensemble, if you remember that instrument.

And so I would do the Elvis. And so it was like a variety show. The first set was all 50s with crazy choreography.

The second set was Elvis Presley. And the third set was the Beatles and the Beach Boys. And then we brought in a manager who was a drama teacher at Oakton Community College, Dennis Perkson, who rewrote the show and put in real choreography.

And it became rock and roll theater. And that's the way we termed it. I said something stupid like, it's music you listen to with your eyes.

And I remember Kenny Voss, he looked at me like, wow, I did that again? I was just like, what did I say? But that's what it was, music you listen to with your eyes. And so I remember playing downtown and seeing a young John Malkovich and Gary Sinise who were starting the Steppenwolf Theater because that little thing, music you listen to with your eyes, rock and roll theater, caught them. And so they came to see us.

I saw Sinise a couple of years ago. We did a veteran show together. And he said he remembered that.

That was kind of fun. But you remember, that was the days in Chicago. Roman and I talked about this, where you didn't have to leave town.

You could play a one night or seven nights a week, a different place and never repeat in six weeks. Oh, yeah. And it was great.

You could go on a Tuesday night and see Keep Trick or Off-Broadway or J-50s on a Tuesday night at some club. Yeah. Right.

And the club was probably packed too. Oh, yeah. Those were the good old days.

The drinking age was 19. I remember when it was 21, we used to go up to Lake Geneva to the top deck. And we'd perform up there.

And I remember the first time with this, well, Dr. Popper, the headliner, holds the attendance record. You'll never smash that. The first night, we smashed the attendance record because all those 19-year-olds and 21-year-olds from Illinois went up because it was 18 in Wisconsin.

So, yeah, they were like, who are you guys? When we played down in Champaign-Urbana, I remember we saved 7% of the door. Well, what do you want to charge? I said, five bucks. Guy goes, five bucks? I never heard of you guys.

There's no way they're going to pay five bucks. I said, well, that's what we're going to charge. So you'll love this story.

The doorman comes walking in. It was Scott Studwell, the great linebacker who ended up playing for the Vikings. But he was the big star of Illinois at the time.

And he comes walking to the door. He was a doorman at Second Chance in Peoria. And he said, who's the band here tonight? And the manager goes, these a-holes, he points at me.

And he goes, well, there's a line wrapped around the building about five feet. He runs outside. We all look at each other like, wow.

He runs outside. And he comes back in the door. And he looks at me.

He goes, well, I still never heard of you. You know, but then we were his best friend. But the reason the line was wrapped around the doors is we started out in high schools and colleges with Tom Grasner.

We started booking us. And he signed all these kids up on a mailing list. And we finally got to 10,000 names.

And we started mailing out where we're going to be. Well, all these high school seniors are now college kids. And a lot of them were in Illinois.

You've got to see this band. And they brought all their friends. And that's how we really got a good reputation.

Well, I believe that there's a resurgence every 20 years of the music from 20 years past, you know, in the 70s. And you probably hit it. You just hit it at a great time, the music with the music of the 50s.

You know, we hit it when Grease came out. We went. We were invited to go see Grease.

It was down at Kingston Mine. It was a little play. It wasn't even on Broadway yet.

And we just thought it was great. So we started doing Grease Lightning and some of the other tunes from the original play. Then Paramount, then the guys who wrote the play used to come and see us when we play Rat So's in the attic and stuff like that.

So now it's a movie and they're going to premiere it in Chicago. The two guys who are still making a commission, Alan Carr was the producer. But they said, hey, let's get this Jade 50s.

But that's, you know, let's have them play at the premiere. So we get hired to play at the premiere of Grease. Libby Newton-John.

John Travolta didn't show up, but his sister was there. Big deal. But the funny thing, you'll appreciate this.

Sid Caesar was in the movie. Everybody was like passing over him to get to Libby Newton-John. Well, my dad, I used to sit on my dad's lap when I was a kid.

We watched the show of shows. I mean, Paul, you remember the shows. I mean, Sid Caesar, hilarious.

So I go up to him and I go, Sid Caesar. And he looks at me like, you remember me? I said, yeah. He goes, who are you? Why are you all dressed up? I said, I'm in the band.

We're about to go on. You're kidding. So he sits backstage and watches the whole show afterwards.

What are you doing tomorrow, Joe? I said, we're playing some party for Alan Carr's birthday. He goes, I'm going to be there. My wife and I get to the party early.

Sid Caesar's in the corner. Joe, Joe. I was just like, is this the coolest thing in the world? Sid Caesar.

Nobody wanted to pay attention to him. It's calling me, you know. I have so many millions of stories.

Chuck Berry stories and Jerry Lee stories. Those aren't good ones. So how far did you travel? Where'd you go to? Anywhere exciting? Well, yeah.

A couple of years ago, I ended up on the steps of Saddam Hussein's palace in 2004. John Brandt was on bass. Timmy Scruggs on drums.

Vic Lubinicki on keyboards. And Ronnie Stetta on lead guitar. And I was on guitar and vocals.

I brought Mike Shlifka doing sound. And I brought Cliff Russell, who was the brother of a fallen New York firefighter, Stephen Russell. And we called it the Stephen Russell Memorial War Tour.

And we toured all. We ended up for one month doing a lot of times two and three shows a day in Iraq and Kuwait. Let me think.

Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar. Some people call it Qatar. United Arab Emirates.

Djibouti, Africa, which is a place I'm glad I went, but I never want to go back. We would tell people, where's your tour? We tell the colonel at a base or a general. We said, we're going to go here, here, here.

Oh, in Djibouti. And they go, Djibouti. And then they'd hug you.

And I was like, what is Djibouti? And Djibouti is on the Horn of Africa, right above Somalia. It's one of the worst places on earth that all of our special forces are. When we knocked out the Somali pirates, they came from Djibouti.

So we played Djibouti. The capital of Djibouti is Djibouti. It's Djibouti, Djibouti.

Like New York, New York. I got to use Saddam's golden toilet. What's that? I said, I got to use Saddam Hussein's golden toilet.

Oh, nice. We played his palace. And I said, I saw this on the news.

There's a golden toilet. Or they said, yeah. I said, OK, can I use it? And they were like, yeah, come on.

So when I flushed the toilet, all the soldiers outside the door started cheering. And I didn't think I'd entertain the troops doing that. But I did.

Speaking of the troops, are you a veteran at all yourself? No, I'm not. My father was a veteran. And when I was a little boy, he told me one time, if you ever want to feel great about yourself, serve your country.

He was a World War II vet. And I miss Vietnam. Yeah, I missed it.

I just missed it, too. So I'm 65. So I missed it.

And by the time, this is something John Brandt and I share. After September 11th, I called to join. And I was too old.

And John was too old, too. So when I called him to go on this, I said, John, I got an adventure for you. He goes, what do you mean an adventure? I said, well, it's a tour.

And it includes Iraq. And it's so funny. John goes, are you serious? I said, dead serious, John.

Now, is this through the National Veterans Museum that you? Well, I'll tell you how that started. Your founder and CEO, I understand, right? Yes, yes. When we came back from Iraq, I was in awe of what our young men and women do.

I, you know, you're there on the front line. And, you know, you see them on TV. But when you see them up close, they're 18, 19, 20, 23, all the front line kids.

And they're driving you around. And they're saluting you. And they're, oh, Kenny, they're bringing.

I said, no, don't bring. I'll bring you something. We're here for you.

It was almost embarrassing how great they treated us. And I just said, we have to do something for these guys. Well, I get a call from a guy named Tony Weber who builds museums and designs museums and designs artifacts or not.

He doesn't design the artifacts. He designs displays using artifacts. And he said, I'd like to get your best idea on a museum.

So he flew to Chicago. And we started at 10 a.m. for breakfast at the Skokie Holiday Inn. And we got kicked out at 11 o'clock at night.

And I had a napkins. I had five, maybe 100 napkins with stuff written on them. And I took it home.

And I put it in an outline. And I sent it to him. And that was 2005, 15 years ago.

And two years later, we started formalizing it into a bigger plan. And it was time for me to start putting a board of directors together. I started reaching out to a lot of three.

And they were one-star generals when I met them. They had become three-star generals and colonels and put them on a board of the record. But I needed a four-star general.

So I reached out to James Conway, who was the commandant of the Marine Corps at the time. He had just retired. And I talked to him.

And I said, you know, come to Chicago. Let me show you my idea. If you think it's dumb, I'll never bother you again the rest of your life.

I promise you. And he goes, all right. So he flew to Chicago.

And he says, all right, I have to talk to my wife. And three days later, he called me. He goes, I raised my right hand.

I'll sign whatever you want me to sign. I'm your chairman. Let's do this.

So we're in the process of being funded. And when that's funded, it will be the biggest museum in the world. And I don't want to lay out the location yet.

Because we once said the location. And other companies came in and bought the land next to it. We don't want that.

So I promise I'll come back. And we'll talk about it when we announce it. But it's going to be incredible.

It's much more than a museum. Hundreds of hologram features. It's a $6 billion project.

And we believe we have the funding ready to go from some very patriotic, wealthy contributors with deep pockets. That's great. That sounds great.

Outstanding. Outstanding. And there'll be a lot of work for musicians, patriotic musicians.

We don't want any of this. Please end the war stuff. And we don't want police to start the war.

Believe me, the troops don't want war. But you've got to be a pro-veteran. You have to have that kind of slant.

And if you're a pro-veteran, we'll have a lot of work. We're building. Of course, I'm an entertainer.

So there'll be five stages. There'll be a lake stage. There'll be a main stage.

I mean, we're bringing everybody in. It'll be a great thing for Chicago. That sounds great.

Sounds awesome. Let's take a time out here for a second. So now, did you quit playing? Or did you continue to play through the 90s? So the end of jade 50s, I started doing a lot of TV commercials, singing them.

Shasta and You Sweet Talker, Betty Crocker. And I ended up working, doing a lot of things for Freddie Hoffman, and the Snuggarees, and Alucard Entertainment. I don't know if you've ever felt this, Bennett, in the noodles.

But I just couldn't sing Mack the Knife one more time, or Rock Around the Clock. I was just like, I can't do it. I can't do this.

And so I called jade 50s off. I said, no, we're done. I get a call from the festivals, Naperville and a couple of the other festivals.

I said, no, I broke the band up. They said, well, put a band together. We want you.

Get a band and go put it together. So I get a call the next day from another fest, Schomburg Fest, on and on. I thought, well, I'll put the Joe Cantafio Band together.

So I got some other musicians. And this time, I got to get paid instead of splitting everything evenly. The Joe Cantafio Band ended up becoming Joe Cantafio and the Giant Killers.

And that's right about when John Brandt left Cheap Trick. So I had Mike Arturi. Phil Miller was on guitar.

Right. Yeah. I played with Phil for quite a while.

The guy's something else, isn't he? Oh, yeah. That guy could play. And I had Keith Grant from Jade 50s played with us, played another guy.

We had three guitars. And then I put a full horn section together. Mike Chikowitz, Jeff Newell, Chip Godalman, Jimmy Teister, Jim Sinceri.

Oh, and Paul Cassino on keyboards. We brought in Kathy Shea to do background vocals with us. But six guys sung.

I mean, we were doing Temptations. I mean, with this big horn section. So we called it the Giant Killers.

And then that lasted until about, I'd say, 91, 92. And then I took some time off. I was just fried from 73 to 92.

Always playing, always on the road, always producing festivals. And I had started a production company, KCM Productions, with two other guys. I left that, went off on my own, and started Global Events.

And I just had enough of it. And I took some time, and I went back into the stock market. I did pretty well there.

And Mike Arturi talked me into putting Jade back together again. And so we did that. And I'd call my friends, hey, we need a Thursday night gig.

Freddy Hoffman goes, all right, come down to Excalibur. Every Thursday night is yours. We'll give you 500 bucks.

We all had other jobs. So 100 bucks a guy. Let's go.

And that band, I had Bruce Gordon on bass. Stuart Swanland from Marshall Tucker Band decided to move to Chicago so he could go to Cubs games. But he still played with Marshall Tucker.

But he played with me when he wasn't with Marshall Tucker. So he was on lead guitar. When Marshall Tucker started doing more gigs, then I replaced him with Frankie Capek.

And you can't find, you know, I always had, you know, I'm a guitar player, and I'm not bad. But I know I'm not the best, that there's better guys out there. And Phil Miller and Frankie Capek are two of those better guys.

And a funny story about Stuart Swanland. So this guy from Spartanburg, South Carolina. And I said, okay, we're gonna do the back of the Beatles' Abbey Road Album.

He goes, I never heard it. I was like, well, here's the record. Take it home and learn it.

We'll rehearse it on Thursday. He comes back to rehearsal. And he says, I said, so what'd you think? I want to tell you something.

Them Beatle fellas were pretty darn good. I said, you never heard the Beatles before? He goes, I'm from Spartanburg, South Carolina. We don't listen to no limey fags.

He's gone now. Tragic ending to his life. But what a great guy.

What a great band. Mike Arturi on drums. And then we had Mike Hanco on keyboards.

So that started it up again. I'm doing a show with Frankie Capek on Friday. Tell him I said hi.

Give me a kiss on his cheek. Great guitar player. Great guy.

Funny guy. Funny guy. My daughters miss him.

Get Frankie back. I said, if I ever decide to play again, Frankie's my first call. Well, besides John Brandt, yeah.

We did an interview with him a while back and talked about The Kind. Oh, yeah. Because he was in The Kind for so many years.

Loved by you. He wrote it, yeah. And he had some great stories.

He had some really funny, great stories. If he didn't mention me, tell him I'm going to punch him in the nose next time I see him. He was with me for 10 years.

Wow. Yeah. Great guy.

Great guy. So what are you doing now? So now I'm doing the museum. Right now, I get a call to do a lot of things for veterans.

I spend a lot of time in the VA hospitals for free. It's time to give back. I show up with my guitar.

And sometimes I go bed to bed. Sometimes I do a concert in the cafeteria. I've gotten other guys.

I've gotten Ron Hawking and Bill Archer and all those guys to get together and do that. My little nephew-in-law is in Seventh Heaven, so I get them to show up and do it. American English, Eric always volunteers the guys to show up at the VA hospital and play.

And then everyone, well, I don't know if we're going to do it this year. I don't because of this COVID thing. We probably won't.

But every year, we do a concert for the veterans, American English and Joe Cantafio. And we sell out this high school auditorium at $10 a ticket. And then the veterans run the show.

They take the money. We play for free. Schliffka does the sound for free.

And I play for free. And they get 100% of the money. And they divide it between five veteran causes.

And one of them is Heinz VA Hospital. So that's basically what I do. And play guitar.

And I write some screenplays for some movies. And still sing in commercials once in a while. You know, life is good.

Tell me about the 101st Rock Division. The 101st Rock Division was the... So we were going to go to Iraq, and we were going to call ourselves Jade. And I just thought, what a wussy name.

I can't get in front of these brave... All right, ladies and gentlemen, here's Jade. So I said, we'll become the Fighting 101st Rock Division. John Brandt goes, yeah, who are we fighting? So I took the pencil.

Okay, we are the 101st Rock Division. Everybody goes, that's kind of a cool name. So we get to Iraq.

Yeah, I like it. I like it. Yeah, it's kind of a tough name.

It sounded... It's funny. Yeah. But some of the generals didn't understand it.

101st Rock Division. Well, ROK, one of the generals says, what's the Republic of Korea sending their division here for? Rock Division, R-O-K, Republic of Korea. They thought we were South Korean gymnasts or something.

Oh, my God. I said, no, it's a band. Get R-O-C-K.

So they would give us these uniforms, the army one. And they can't say army on it because that's against law. So one of our first uniform, it got said 101 Rock.

And we would put this uniform on and we walked through the dining facilities. And the troops go, I love your radio station, man. I listen to it all the time.

101 Rock. Like, no, we're a band. Forget it.

So 101st Rock Division, it got kind of scary. We're in Balad, Iraq. And sitting in front of us is the 101st Airborne.

Some of the bravest rangers you'd ever met in your life. And we got on stage and I'm like, we thought it was kind of cute today. I hope we didn't offend anybody.

So the one guy goes, we'll start playing. We'll tell you. We're like, oh, my God.

So we did the show. The show was pretty good. First song we started off was Born to Run.

The second song we did was Hocus Pocus by Focus, which is not an easy song to do. And we're playing in front of a lot of allied forces. So all the guys from Norway, they were going nuts when we did Golden Earring and Hocus.

It focused. And so some of the 101st Airborne guys ended up ripping the patch off their shoulder. And I have a stack of patches, the Screaming Eagle for the 101st.

So it went over well. We busted our little hineys doing that, flying in C-130s and helicopters. And but we did it.

We got shot at. I remember one time, it's a true story. We're playing in Balata, Iraq.

And we hear this rat-a-tat-tat going in the background after a song. And then we hear this big gun go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And one guy goes, that's us.

And then you hear the rat-a-tat. And that guy goes, that's them. And I mean, you're on stage.

You can hear it. That's how close they were. So I'm like, can we still play? Guy goes, keep playing.

So we played another song. Song ends. Boom, boom, boom.

That's us. OK, we play another song. All we hear is rat-a-tat-tats, rat-a-tat-tats, rat-a-tat-tats.

And so over my microphone, I'm trying to be funny. I'm an entertainer, right? I yell, could somebody please kill him? And then you're boom, boom, boom. And you hear nothing.

And a soldier yells up from the back, we got him. And the whole audience stops laughing. And on with the show.

We never heard another gunshot for the rest of the show. Yeah, you think about it now. I'd be terrified.

But when you're there in the situation, you're not. You're surrounded by hundreds and thousands of people with heavy machinery and machine guns and tanks. And we got to rag and all that.

So that's how we got to the gig. Did you have to haul all your gear and everything there? Yeah, yeah. We hauled our, we had more than 70 pounds.

So I couldn't bring a twin. I had to bring a Princeton. You bring all the small gear.

We brought a little tiny PA system that Schliff could figure the whole thing out. We packed it onto a C-130, onto a pallet. They put a net over it with our guitars and keyboards.

And we ended up getting drums donated to us by Pearl. And we did every show. We blew the PA out.

We had two speakers left on our second to last show. We blew those out on the last note. We had to do one more show in Bahrain.

And I didn't know what we were going to do. I said, Mike, do we have any nail polish and glue left to fix the speakers? Because the speakers are shredded. We get to this gig at the NAS base in Bahrain, which is all Navy SEALs, all Navy.

These are the black shirts with muscles growing on top of their muscles. These guys were, and they have their families there. There's a big submarine in the bay.

And we go into where we're supposed to do the concert. And there's green grass and beautiful flowers planted. I hadn't seen flowers and grass anywhere in the Middle East.

And there are four A7 speaker cabinets, the horn and the 15, four of them, two on each side of the stage. The guy, they had like a 12th channel soundboard. The guy, no, no, no, we run the PA here.

They got a PA. We did a great show. Yeah, met SEAL Team Six.

A lot of those guys, we lost that helicopter crash in Afghanistan, but met the guy who eventually, you know, Rob O'Neill, who eventually got Saddam, who eventually got Osama bin Laden. But he was a kid, you know, back then. He wasn't, he, this was well before they got Osama bin Laden.

But we met all those guys. They had a cheeseburger place that they ate at. And we got in, we were honorary guests to go in there and have cheeseburgers with them.

It was kind of cool. A lot of cool stuff to deal with the military. Met all the Medal of Honor winners, or recipients rather, the recent ones.

I got to play when Salvatore Gentile was the first living recipient since Vietnam, and he came to Chicago. And I got a call from Army Public Affairs saying, Joe, none of us are from Chicago, and he wants to do Chicago things. What's that, steak and lobster? I said, no, that's deep dish pizza, hot dogs, and Italian beefs.

Italian beef sandwich, that's it. Yeah, that's right. So I called Dick Portillo and said, we're going to stop it.

We're going to do a thing at an armory with some Gold Star family members. And a Gold Star family member is somebody who lost something. I lost my cousin in Iraq.

And so we did a big thing for all the troops in an armory, and then we went to Portillo's and Des Plaines. And Dick was there and met Salvatore, and Dick was just tickled pink. I said, bring a photographer.

And if you go into any Portillo's now, you'll see a picture of Dick Portillo with Salvatore Gentile. He's got the Medal of Honor around his neck, and a small picture of Barack Obama pinning the medal on Gentile in a small insect. And that's it all.

I'm so proud. I always tell my kids when we go into Portillo's, I was standing next to the photographer. Yeah, then I took him to the VA hospitals.

I took like three or four Medal of Honor recipients to the VA hospital because I have a pass because I played there. And I brought my guitar, and we went room to room, and they got to meet all the real heroes, the World War II vets. That's awesome.

That's awesome. Sounds like you've been a busy guy. You know what? I have a great life.

I have four beautiful daughters. I have six incredible grandkids. I have two grandsons.

I've never had grandsons or boys before. So Saturday night, my grandsons and I are going out for ribs. And tomorrow night, I'm taking my granddaughter out to noodles.

She likes pasta. And life is good. Life is good.

Do I miss playing? Not really. Do I love playing? I still love playing, but I don't. It's not like, oh, I need to put a band.

I don't want to put a band together. I don't need to do another gig. I love talking about, you know, the Chuck Berry stories and Bo Diddley.

And, you know, Del Shannon used to stay at my house when we toured. He was a house guest. And we'd come home at night, and he'd buy ice cream and cookies for my kids.

My kids, you know, today, they can't believe it. They're like, whose lap are we sitting on? I said, it's Del Shannon. He didn't run away.

You know? Yeah. Crazy stuff, but yeah, it's a fun life. That's crazy.

It is wild. Very good. So where could people find some more information about your museum and all that you're doing right now? Well, the museum work, there is a Facebook page for the museum.

It's called the National Veterans Museum. But we're not saying anything right now until we said something before and we blew it. So now General Conway said, we're flying under the radar.

And when General Conway, who's six foot four and looks like the general, when he says we're flying under the radar, you'd be quiet. You'd fly under the radar. But you want to find out about a gig? Just Joe Contafio on Facebook, my Facebook page.

I list everything we're going to do there. All right. Well, thank you very much for joining us.

You know, we appreciate your time and all you've done for, especially for the veterans. Well, you know, Ray and Paul, this is definitely my honor to do this. I don't look at doing anything for the veterans or the first responders as work.

You know, I think about it. We all sleep safe at night because of them. And so this is a way to pay back.

I'm lucky enough to be able to do it. Yeah, we're doing a show. We're doing a show on Friday night.

I saw that with Frankie. With Frankie and Five Guys AMO. Right.

And it's an honor for first responders and stuff. Yeah, I believe one of the guys in Five Guys is a Marine. Is a veteran.

Yeah, big ball, Jose. Yeah, God bless him. Yeah.

Yes. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Joe. All right.

Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for having us, Joe. It was a great, great time.

Some great stories. Thank you. I've got a million of them.

Thank you very much. All right. You guys have a great night.

You too. Thanks. Bye.

So that was Joe Contafio of Jade 50s. And the 101st Rock Division. And CEO and founder of National Veterans Museum.

And like I said, he's been a busy guy, isn't he? Very, very busy. You know, it's about time to start taking it easy. But man, he's out there working with them veterans now.

You know, entertaining them. Getting a museum together. Hey, great job.

Great job, Joe. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

He has some great stories too. And he's a pretty knowledgeable guy about the rock and roll business. He knew a lot of people back in the day.

Yes, he did. Yes, we could have probably talked for hours. But we thank Joe for joining us.

And thank you for joining us as well here on the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Where we can be heard every Monday night. Where's that, Ray? On the Road to Rock radio from the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66.

Check it out at RoadtoRock.net every Monday at 6 p.m. And right here on wherever you get your local podcast. Or we get any of your podcasts. Spotify and iTunes.

And you name it. We're there. We're there.

We're everywhere. We're like a fungus. That's right.

It forms on your tippity-doo. On your tippity-doo. I knew that was coming.

All righty. Well, thanks again to Joe. And hopefully we'll be talking to you guys next week with another edition of the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

Thanks for listening. Take care, everybody. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music that's played on this podcast.

The music is used to promote the band or musicians that are interviewed.