Not quite 25 years ago, The Bigfellas formed as a band of kooks, lunatics and music lovers.
I'm writing this looking backwards as Shay has died and we'll have two last hurrahs of music releases - one a Christmas album, the other a full release called "You Are Here" - sometime in the next 18-30 months.
Shay and I already had recorded most of the basic tracks.
After that, there's really no more Bigfellas per se; it's pointless and blasphemous without the Irishman.
It's been such a fun ride, from the get-go.
Thank God it's been fun, because there surely was never any money in it.
But we got to have some fans, meet lots of people, have unforgettable experiences and leave behind original songs and recordings.
Today, I want to commit our origin story to the written word, for better or worse.
The Start
You're supposed to start a band when you're in high school, not after 30.
But for music lovers like us, seeing mediocre bands performing in public lit a fire under us.
The best kept secret for artists is that being inspired by the greats is rarer than you'd think.
What's surprisingly common is to watch bad artists kind of succeeding and think, "Jesus, we can be better than that."
The whole thing started with my friend Tim Gadzinski.
We'd been bi-coastal friends for probably about five years, with home-and-home visits between San Diego and NYC/New Jersey.
One particular day we were in Manhattan in the early 21st century.
The two of us were somewhere in Times Square, likely not far from Smith's a favorite watering hole no longer with us.
In some Times Square store, we saw some dumb poster for an idiotic party service called The Goodfellas with 3 schmoes who looked vaguely like mob types to come to your party.
This was early in The Sopranos era and only maybe 10-12 years after the Goodfellas movie.
To this day, this sounds like the most unwelcome and head-scratching party activity I've ever heard of.
Big Italians eating your food and making De Niro faces?
Tim and I got into a riff making fun of it, "Ladies and gentlemen, The Goodfellas" with "Goodfellas" spoken quickly almost like a one syllable word.
Somehow, with Tim and I both lovers of food and drink, and not small dudes, that became "The Bigfellas."
Not long after, Tim and his wife moved to San Diego.
Once there, the two of us naturally started a band and there could only be one name.
First things first, so we put an ad in the San Diego Reader under Musician Listings looking for a drummer.
The first one we heard from was a crazy Irishman for whom anything goes.
We all instantly were joking, loved the same music, and dealt with the insane overheating of rehearsing in my unventilated garage.
There we were, Bigfellas 1.0.
As much as the band has accomplished since, that first trio was magic.
Tim was, and is, a perfect frontman or lead singer.
Great voice, which is undisputable.
Stage presence.
And a great look-at-that-big-guy look followed by "holy shit, he can sing!"
And then there's Shay, who made every song have the energy of a vintage Who or Clash gig even when there was just eight obligatory friends and befuddled strangers in the audience.
It's so tempting to phone it in when there was no fan energy, but Shay simply would not let that happen.
Ever.
Before we ever had a bass player or an audience, the amount of sound we would generate, sometimes without Tim touching an instrument, was amazing.
We gave people better originals and harmonies than the tiny audience deserved - like "I Wanna Go To IKEA" or the energetic "Cathy Guertin", the unexpected soul nuttiness of "Hey, Drunk Girl", a signature "Psycho Killer / Coming To America" medley, with a space for TIm and I to trade spontaneously quoted and rhyming lines from other songs, all ending with the hyperkinetic "Coffee & Ketamine."
My only regret is that this wasn't filmed.
I cajoled clubs into booking us even though we had no audience.
Tim & I learned to translate or understand Shay's accent, and Shay always marveled at Tim and I being able to shove down a full pizza immediately before taking a stage.
Smoke breaks, methhead audience members, I've never had so much fun doing something so pointless.
Wait, there’s more - Part 2 is coming next week (available September 1, 2026) where you get to hear how we ended up.
