Canalside Band

Saturday August 14 1:00-5:00pm

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Pete Coccorese picked up a guitar when he was ten years old and hasn't put one down since. In the early 70’s he started the band Freeway, a mix of country rock, acid rock, rock and roll and blues (I know, huh?). Next was a stint with Backstreet Angel, a six piece band with keyboards and Sax playing a lot of rhythm and blues. He then began playing solo acoustic gigs at a variety of dive bars in NJ.  Along the way he reconnected with Randy Carone, one of the other players from Freeway. They started playing as an acoustic duo for a few years until they added Rocky Farrell and drummer Tim Neher and played a ton of venues as The Trouble Boys. After that, Rocky, Randy and Pete started playing as Rocky And His Friends before finding drummer Mike Ratti in 2009. That iteration of the band has played here at Villa Milagro many times.

​Rocky Farrell began playing bass in the late 70s and has played in numerous NJ bands over the years. He has played alongside Canalside guitarist and vocalist Pete Coccorese off and on since 1980. Most recently playing with the band Rocky & His Friends, which first began entertaining Villa Milagro music lovers way back in 2008. Rocky has always enjoyed inhabiting the role that the bass plays in music: being part of the rhythm section, linking rhythm to harmony, and supporting the vocal. In other words, both anchoring the music yet moving it forward.

Zach Romano started playing percussion in college bands in the late 1980’s. In 2006 he joined a band called Walnut Street out of Middlesex, NJ where they played the local bars in the area. After moving to Lambertville in 2008, he started jamming with local musicians in the river town area which led to multiple “sit ins” with local bands. In 2015 he was asked to join the Eastern Hellbenders where he played both drums and percussion. The band “retired” in January of 2020. After that, Zach continued sitting it with local bands until he joined Canalside.

Although Heather Ransome grew up as child of a musician and reconverted her bar and restaurant into a music venue that centers around original music, she herself was a late comer to realizing her own musical talents. Some surprising reactions to her bar room karaoke performances gleaned her insight that maybe she had some natural talent to work with and she picked up a ukulele to simply sing around the campfire and entertain her friends. Fast forward 15 years and Heather wound up singing in various projects over the years. She has sung and played ukulele, guitar and drums in Secondhand Muse, Fortune's Ridge, and Heather and the Ransome Notes and she was often brought in as a guest singer with Rocky and His Friends.