The Root Cellar: John Pinamonti & Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook by Mike Morgan

John Pinamonti and his band have been performing as a regular combo at Sunny’s Bar on Conover Street, Red Hook, since the year 2000. The history of Sunny’s Bar is wonderfully told in Tim Sultan’s book Sunny’s Nights: Lost and Found at a Bar on the Edge of the World (2016). I have no intention of competing with that; indeed I don’t believe I can. To my knowledge, nobody has yet written a book about John Pinamonti. So at least I can go there.

Leave Sunny’s Bar and Red Hook for a minute and travel deeper into the bowels of Brooklyn’s drinking past to a bar that unfortunately has fallen off the edge of the world, O’Connor’s. I first met John Pinamonti at O’Connor’s Bar in the fall of 1996 during the Yankees’ playoff run. Watching a baseball game there was a surreal experience. The publican Pat O’Connor (R.I.P.) would wobble on the stepladder, vainly attempting to position the rabbit ears for improved reception. The patrons would yell instructions to him, like “Stay there” “A little to the right” or “No.” Luckily the sound on the television set worked somewhat better than the visuals, so whenever the crowd at the stadium would cheer as a blurred and snowy flurry of activity took place on the screen, this would have a domino effect on the O’Connor’s viewers, verbalized by the universal query, “Wha’ppen?”

Pat O’Connor introduced me to John Pinamonti. John had just released his first record. Pat, who would butcher any name that was vaguely foreign-sounding sans an Irish one, would stick the John tape on the music machine and proudly announce, “This is James Palo Alto. I know him.” He would make all in his saloon listen. The drinkers became fans. Now, almost 24 years on, Pat O’Connor would have been proud of his kid, Johnny Provolone. Or was it Joey Pastrami?

John Pinamonti’s music springs from the waterway that irrigates the soil of the Americana roots tradition and struggle.

It helps keeps this hallowed ground rich and fertile. The original fettered ones and jazzmen ploughed these fields first, ensuring an abundant harvest. This is what entices a Bruce Springsteen to record the Seeger Sessions, what makes young white city-dwellers adherents of old black Delta blues pickers and hillbilly fiddlers, and what pays righteous homage to the variety of Hanks, Mels, Merles and all of the Kings (Freddie, B.B. and Albert). It’s what the young Elvis Presley listened to, and, if he hadn’t left us so soon, what the old Elvis Presley would still be listening to. It’s what Bob Dylan never freewheeled too far away from, and what Dion DiMucci always wandered back towards. It’s what fueled Maybellene’s Coupe De Ville, and drove big bad Bo Diddley’s bus. It’s the music that recognizes the sheer beauty of a Phil and Don Everly harmony, the forlornness of a Townes Van Zandt, the remoteness and lonely yearning of a Butch Hancock, a Joe Ely or a Roy Orbison, the twang of a Jesse Taylor, the poetry and hope of a Woody Guthrie to chronicle and survive grim times for poor people.

John’s material is another tributary of this mighty body whose waters sustain life, the whiskey river. We listeners are happy campers, safely settled ashore in the warmth of the whiskey tent. A wee bit of advice here, stay in the tent. Remember the saying about the river being made up of whiskey and the individual on the riverbank acting like a duck. It’s the diving to the bottom and never coming up again part, that’s what’s on the dangerous side.

Like many of his peers and those who came before him and will no doubt follow after him, John Pinamonti remains in large part an unsung hero, a best-kept secret, locked out by the all-consuming blandness of what passes for popular culture. This is through no fault of his own. It’s the nature of the beast. John remains undeterred. He soldiers on.

John Pinamonti’s own songs are parables and tales, stories of his experiences, the micro-macro of his vision of our neighborhood, the borough, the city, the country, the world and relationships, brought to you with swing and a honky-tonk beat to boot.

They are often about the things that we should see clearly and comprehend, but usually don’t. They can be topical or obscure. They are clever without him being a smarty-pants, sometimes funny (ha-ha, not peculiar), and sad without being maudlin for the sake of jerking a tear. Hell, now and again the words even rhyme. They are not put out there for everybody to agree with or feel good about. But they certainly provide food for thought. And these are hungry times for a lot of people.

A typical John Pinamonti show will consist of a stripped-down band, drums, bass and another talented guitar picker, with John doing all of the singing. The songs themselves will mostly be his own, with a healthy smattering of tasty covers by the likes of Snooks Eaglin, Tom Waits, Mickey Newbury, Jimmy Reed, Neil Young, even the Ramones, to name a few. If there is a visiting musician acquaintance in the house, John will always invite him or her up to join in. The audience is a participant at a John Pinamonti performance. Inclusion, rather than exclusion and elitism, is the order of the night. That’s downright refreshing.

For years, Sunny’s Bar wasn’t quite up to snuff with regard to the licensing crowd, so the tavern was unofficially referred to as a “Yachting Club.” Comparing Sunny’s Bar to a yacht club lounge is like calling the tiny square of faded green and dirt in the rear courtyard of my apartment building a golf course. Like any respectable yachting club, Sunny’s Bar only opened on Friday evenings, or at the occasional whim of its Shaman-like owner, Sunny Balzano (R.I.P. too). Smalltime mob men might congregate there as well as original residents of Red Hook, a dying breed. It is now a popular venue, drawing people from as far away as Manhattan. John remembers when this demographic shift finally hit him. The way he tells it, he arrived on a gig night back in 2014 and the joint was jumping, unusually full to capacity. A television show had been filmed there earlier in the day. Seated in a corner normally taken up by one of the cigar-chomping concrete-shoe characters was none other than Amy Schumer, comedienne and cousin of the Democratic Party stooge and poobah from Brooklyn, Chuck. She seemed to be enjoying the limelight. It’s hard to get rid of those Schumers. They’re as sticky as white on rice.

John was also playing at Sunny’s Bar the night when the yachting club cover was finally blown and the beefy City Marshalls arrived to padlock the doors. They meant business, and their business that night was to put the kibosh on Sunny’s business. Sunny immediately transformed himself from his swami/guru persona to a man of action in the marketplace, the hot items one, not the stocks and bonds one. He hustled a possibly too young woman bartender out from behind the stick, stuffed an envelope in his pocket and greeted the gendarmes openly, all before you could say “Fuck Chuck Schumer.” The opposing parties retired outside to parley. Whatever happened out there on the street remains a mystery. But the lawmen allowed the place to stay open that evening, which was not their original intention. That particular incident marked the swan song of the Sunny’s Bar sailing era. The ex-commodore Sunny had to temporarily call it quits for a year in order to straighten out the bar papers.

Lately on occasion, John has added a guest piano player to his outfit, namely Charlie Giordano, who is currently a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. That’s not too shabby. Charlie often accompanies John’s band at his Sunny’s Bar gigs.

Check out John at Sunny’s Bar. Perhaps then you’ll agree with Mr. Patrick O’Connor and have another exotic glass of Pina Monti for his pal, John Pina Colada. The John Pinmonti Band nights at Sunny’s Bar are worthy of top-shelf hooch, even if it comes from the cellar of the bar at the edge of the world.

The John Pinamonti Band will be performing at Sunny’s Bar on Friday, October 4, at 9 pm. Charlie Giordano will play with the band that night. John’s CDs are available for sale at his shows, or visit his website at www.pinamonti.com. Tim Sultan’s book can be found at any respectable Brooklyn bookstore that might still be left standing and from book vendors on the internet.

A Star-Revue Contributor