Frank Vignola

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KNOXVILLE — Frank Vignola has won praise from the masters. For several years he was sideman and back-up for guitar legend Les Paul. Mark O'Connor tapped Vignola to be part of his Hot Swing group. He's been a member of the David Grisman Quintet. He's backed up the likes of Donald Fagen, Madonna, Queen Latifah, Wynton Marsalis, Ringo Starr and many others on tour or in the recording studio.

Vignola recently recorded a duet album, "Just Between Frets," with modern great Tommy Emmanuel. And word has been getting out about Vignola's shows with his own trio.

"A sold-out crowd is a nice vibe, no matter how big or small it is," says Vignola from Washington, D.C., where he just performed a sold-out show at the Madison Hotel.

With the aforementioned credentials there's no doubt that Vignola is a musicians' musician, but he's also a guy who wants to please the crowd. His specialty is acoustic swing, but he can adapt everything from Mozart to Black Sabbath into his own style.

"I started at the age of six with a Les Paul and Django Reinhardt record that my father had," says Vignola.

Vignola's father was a semi-professional tenor banjo player, who encouraged his son's musical interest.

"He'd show me chords and I'd play along with records and play at his jams that he'd have every Thursday night. And it was then that I knew this was what I was going to dedicate my life to."

Vignola went to a performing arts school and landed jobs playing Dixieland and swing while he was still in high school.

"When I was growing up I was playing for 60- to 80-year-olds," he says. "I did things a little backwards, but in the right way."

While many kids growing up in the 1970s and '80s knew little about jazz, Vignola immersed himself in it.

"In high school I discovered Frank Zappa and was introduced to the music of Santana, so that was my introduction to rock."

Vignola performed in a couple of rock bands, but his heart wasn't in it.

His guarantee for getting gigs was that he was an ace rhythm guitar player.

"A lot of guitar players just concentrate on single line playing," says Vignola. "I remember my father telling me that if I played good rhythm guitar I'd never have trouble finding work, and that's been true."

Vignola was 22 when he decided to make a play for something special.

In 1987, he was performing in a society band meant for light entertainment for partying socialites. Bored with the gig, Vignola decided to pitch the idea of a Django Reinhardt tribute show to the owner of Michael's Pub, the most prestigious cabaret-style venue in New York City. The owner was known as difficult to deal with but was sold on the idea after Vignola gave him a tape of he and some players performing a couple of numbers Reinhardt was known for.

"First night, there's the New York Times reviewer, Newsday, Fox News. This guy went over the top with the press on it," says Vignola.

Reviews were ecstatic and Vignola and his band ended up doing the show for 17 weeks in a row.

Vignola says he's lucky to have come up in a time when he still had the chance to perform with pioneers:

"I played with Bucky Pizzarelli, Lionel Hampton, Hank Jones, Elvin Jones ... Those guys made jazz. They made up the vocabulary."

Another thing that the greats had is a sense of fun, which Vignola tries to carry on. His first duo on stage with Tommy Emmanuel is a good example:

"I invited him up to sit in and on the first solo he started to pretend that he was de-tuning my tuning pegs. So I started playing out of tune. I just thought, 'This guy is not only the greatest performer and guitar player I've ever seen, but he knows how to have fun.' Instead of having a big guitar battle or whatever, we were just having a good time - and that's when the best music comes out."

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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