Wheels Fargo and the Nightingale (formerly Wells Fargo and the Nightingale)’s an original Italian quintet that combines old genuine bluegrass music with the wild hillbilly and rockabilly sound proper of its founders.
The band was born on September 2006 as Wells Fargo & the Nightingale of a Wainer and Antonella’s (T-Model Boogie) idea, immediately realized with a third important element, Mauro aka Jim Singerof P-51 Airplanes. After some months of rehearsals the band debuts on summer 2007 as a quartet (6 strings banjo, rhythm guitar, double bass, washboard and four singing voices) and ads later on a key fifth member on the five strings banjo picking.
Now the final combo is a quartet composed by Antonella Tambakiotis (lead vocals and low-cost percussions!),
Wainer Rimondini (double bass and vocals), Mauro Jim Singer (guitar, banjitar and vocals) and Cousin Marcellus Ghirri on fab 5-strings banjo.

To tell the whole story we have to go back to 1989 when Wainer founded in Bologna his first rockabilly band ,The Jailors, as lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, following the neo-rockabilly sound wave of the eighties but covering only original songs of the fifties. The band played so many lives around Italy and Europe for over ten years and ended up with a self-produced and self-distributed recording with even some original songs.
During those years Wainer left the guitar for the upright bass, his actual instrument, and created a new rockabilly trio on 2000: T-Model Boogie which featured Antonella, promptly nicknamed The Nightingale because of her extremely high tones. She was a total spontaneous beginner at the time ,without a clue of what singing was, but she had on her side a wide popularity due to her job of tattoo artist in her Tattoodrome parlour, quite famous in the north of Italy, the many modelling experiences for important Italian photographers appearing on art magazines and Vogue Accessories, and as muse for known comic-strip artists as Roberto Baldazzini and Franco Saudelli. She’d even played a role in 1998 Italian movie Radiofreccia by Luciano Ligabue.
Most of all she could really incarnate the fifties rock’n’roll wildness with her exemplary look, voice and attitude.
The rockabilly band gigged a lot for some years and recorded first a live cd in 2003 ( “the Rock’n’Roll Swindle “…I’m not joking, that was the title!) and a self-produced studio session cd in
2005 called “Never Trust an Authentic” (well, we couldn’t totally forget our teenage punk roots..) in
complete countertendency with the fashionable authentic style. Actually the record was a mix of obscure rockabilly, rough rhythm’n’blues and country ,as that was the band style at the time (..there was even a weird rendering of a traditional Mexican song!). The band split up after they last live performance at theSummer Jamboree 2006 in Senigallia because Wainer and Antonella (…in the meantime they became a couple in life too!) were looking for a new, different inspiration for their music..something more definite and far in time.

The new project was born: strictly strings instruments, lots of vocals, alternative percussions and a feeling of old west.. a heavy frontier style, definitely bluegrass but wild and entertaining!
The couple recruits Mauro Jim Singer as lead guitarist and vocalist, who has a genuine talent and a rocking background: he’s been a passionate Paul Anka, Little Richards and Adriano Celentano’s lover since thirteen years old. Then at 15 he founds his first rock band and wins a prize as songwriter at the important MEI musical
contest in Milan. The powerful call of rock’n’roll arrives in 2002 with P-51 Airplanes, the classic rock’n’roll
band in which he currently plays guitar and sings. They recorded a self-produced album “Take-off”, and
successfully performed their classic covers at Senigallia’s Summer Jamboree 2007.

The Wheels Fargo guitar-bass-washboard trio begun to work well with old time tunes and fifties country hits featuring the great combination of their harmonized voices.
But the guys wanted a fuller background sound to support Jim’s solos; a rhythm guitar was needed so the young and very thrilled Andy “Big Boy” Damiano joins the band with his personal bowl hat and“medicine show” attitude to do the “dirty work”.

Their style was definitely evolving ,but quite for fun Wainer buyed (on Ebay!!) a really cheap 6-strings banjo, and finally Wheels Fargo and the Nightingale were born and ready to gig as you can see them today.

The combo’s main inspiration is given by the fathers of the hillbilly music like The Maddox Bros and Rose, Grandpa Jones, Flatt and Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, Bill Monroe and many more...but the perfect tunes are mainly searched for in the rich underground of the old time classics, often with uncertain authors(The Muleskinner Blues or The Wreck of the ol’97 for example..).
After some months Andy Big Boy passed to the rhythm mandolin ,and in those days the guys found the fifth member of the band : the supernatural, self-taught authentic bearded hillbilly picker Cousin Marcellus and his sensational 5 string banjo! We like to think that we’ve met him on the Appalachian Mountains while he was playing on his rocking chair wearing his old overall and his even older confederate cap…but he modestly claims to be just a nice guy very keen on the banjo picking (actually he’s one of the few musicians in Italy able to handle a five-strings…and he teaches in an important music school too) and a great fan of the bigAmerican masters of the Kentucky tradition (..ok, we really found him on a rocking chair but it’s a shocking
pleasure to listen to him!)…the fact is that with his talent the dreamed vintage sound was finally achieved!

This is the time when The Nightingale starts writing original songs such as “Stage Hold-up”,“On the Railroad” and the Clash-inspired hit “Mama was a Bank Robber”, with texts regarding the band’s story (with a bit of fiction..) and the frontier’s classic atmosphere so dear to her.

Between 2007 and 2008 the band performed an incredible number of successful lives all around Italy on big
and small stages, on the street, at big country fairs like Il Salone Del Cavallo Americano(one of the largest in the north of Italy) and even as official performers in the orchestra pit of a big theatrical production (“Edo”, Kobayashi Group, directed by A.Saltini, 2008). They gigged in rockabilly clubs and big festivals too (VI East Coast Festival in Rimini, V Motorcycle Gang Jamboree in Bologna) and they performed a great successful set at the Rhythm Riot in November 2008.

in July 2008  the guys were finally ready for their first studio recording: “Mama was a Bank Robber” gives the title to this rockin’ bluegrass album which was widely awaited by friends and fans and is mmediately produced by “the German Sam Phillips” Andy Widder (hi Andy!) on his Part Records.

The CD is released under the name of Wells Fargo & the Nightingale but in the meantime something happened to the guys that explains the name’s change: this story has a strange end, or beginning if you prefer, because just a few days before this bio was written, Antonella has received an official warning from the Wells Fargo & co.’s lawyers of San Francisco not to use the name anymore, even if the related activities are so different.As a matter of fact the guys had adopted that historical name to remember the Old West atmosphere of the
pioneers, the Wells Fargo pony-express stage coaches and its frontier flavour…not certainly to overshadow the present financial multinational company which has inherited the mark. But they’ve been accused of counterfeit and unfair competition because of the huge diffusion on the web of links regarding the band and consequently forced to change their name.

The actual band is WHEELS FARGO AND THE NIGHTINGALE and basically nothing’s changed…not
the sound and not the look, but maybe the attitude did a little bit: I mean …they are real rockin’bandits now!
..this is literally a stage-coach hold up, even if unintentional!
Let’s hope at least that things will go as they always do in Italy: outlaw and famous!

In 2009-2010 the band gigs again, among many others european events, at the internatinal Rhythm Riot Festival in Camber Sands, UK, the Salone del Cavallo Americano 2009 in Reggio Emilia (Italy), the #10 Summer Jamboree , the #4 Hillbilly Rumble in Nurnberg, Germany, the Walldorf Rock'nRoll Weekender 2010 in Walldorf Germany, the Vintage Roots Festival 2010 Inzago, Italy.

In 2010 a new fifth element joins the band: young and talented Matteo Monroe Ringressi on 5-strings banjo, bluegrass mandolin and vocals. He'll be actively present in the new CD out in 2011.

Wheels Fargo and the Nightingale is now formed by:

Antonella the Nightingale on vocals and washboard

Wainer Rimondini on double bass and vocals

Jimmy Wells Singer on lead acoustic guitar, banjitar and vocals

Matteo Monroe Ringressi on 5-strings banjo, bluegrass mandolin and vocals
 

WHEELS FARGO AND THE NIGHTINGALE, the band in trouble with the bank!
www.wheelsfargoandthenightingale.it

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