Rocco Deluca
with Caitlin Anne Webster, Eric Halborg & Cole Rudy of Dragondeer

Music has been a part of DeLuca's makeup from the start. "My dad was a touring guitar player for some amazing blues artists. I remember he and my uncles would have these late night jam sessions and I would hang out with them and then end up crawling into Uncle Joe's bass drum and falling asleep to the drone," smiles DeLuca. As he got older, he discovered the DOBRO® steel guitar and it wasn't long before primitive folk music from both the south and the Appalachian Mountains made their way into his world. "Most of my friends were into punk and my family's roots where in blues, so the two extremes were really all I listened to," he explains. After playing out at parties and penning songs, Deluca spent the next decade honing his musical craft. He became the local opener for Taj Mahal, John Mayall and John Lee Hooker, played with Johnny Cash and after a series of eye-opening experiences in Europe; he returned to the States and landed a 2-year residency at the Gypsy Lounge just outside of Los Angeles. After years of performing and touring, the time came for DeLuca to take his experiences and lay them down in the form of a demo, but not without a certain amount of hesitation. "I always thought of the 'music industry' as this drunk girl at a party who forgot who she came with. I loved making music, but being a cog wasn't for me. At the same time no one was putting out the kind of music I wanted to hear, so I cut my demo and tried to keep it as honest as possible." In 2004, that demo was passed on to Jude Cole and Kiefer Sutherland's Ironworks label and it was clear to both of them that what they were seeing was something amazing. "We thought of him as a real diamond-in-the-rough," says Cole, "and that's exactly what we were looking for."