Guitarist, singer, songwriter, teacher and Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame inductee John Baldaia remembers as a young boy hearing music on the record player wafting from his older brother’s room. At 11 years old Baldaia could not have imagined that the music seeping through the walls of his childhood home would one day be the catalyst for an ideal and a musical way of life — one that would find him prospering, shifting, regrouping and enduring into the next century.

Recently I had the pleasure to sit down with Riverside resident Baldaia to chat about his life in music. I found him to be articulate, interesting and upbeat. The music business is famed to be an orbit where failures and successes can often cross paths and collide. But never during our conversation did he convey any negativity or regret. In fact, he waxed poetic and with positivity regarding the demands that accompany an artist’s sphere.

From records to passion

How and why did his lifelong musical journey begin, I wondered.

“Well, my first remembrance of music I would say was hearing it coming from my older brother David’s room (Baldaia is from a family of four boys and two girls). I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. I heard Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, stuff like that,” said Baldaia. “Also, my brother Peter, who is the next in age to me, had a fantastic record collection. I gravitated towards the folk music he listened to. Buffy Sainte-Marie, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell. Soon I started listening to folk on my own and it was interesting to me, which then brought me pretty quickly to the blues, because they are very close anyway. And hearing the blues brought me to wanting to play the guitar.”

“Once I started to buy my own albums, it was just blues stuff. That’s what I was attracted to. The British invasion didn’t really hit me. It was great stuff but I just didn’t want to play it. That style of music didn’t pull me in.”

Acoustic guitar to a rock band

Baldaia was playing his acoustic guitar and listening to all the acoustic Delta blues heroes. A steady diet, the likes of Leadbelly and Mississippi John Hurt, proved to be an important stepping stone for the next phase of his musical progression.

“The Delta music brought me to BB King and the electric blues players like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and John Mayall,” said Baldaia. “Once I started hearing all that stuff, it really peaked my interest. So, when I was 16, after playing acoustic guitar for a while, my parents finally bought me an electric guitar. From there, I just took to it like a bug in a rug.”

In the summer of 1975, Baldaia, along with three musician friends from Pawtucket, joined together to form a rock and roll band. Like all joint artistic endeavors, it was born out of friendship and the echoing of similar musical affinities. This collaboration was the birth of future Rhode Island music scene luminaries, ‘The Wild Turkey Band.’

The Wild Turkey Band

“When I finally met the guys, we hit it off.  We decided to jam and found we had the same kind of mindset, not really influenced by the pop stuff but more the stuff that I was listening to. They had the same taste as I did,” said Baldaia. “We were into the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, anything that was southern rock with a tinge of blues. Charlie Daniels and Marshall Tucker, too.

“In twelfth grade I was having a hard time in school. Not academically, I did well academically, but I had a hard time connecting and feeling like school meant anything to me because I knew what I wanted to do. The band was jelling and all I wanted to do was play, so I dropped out of high school.”

Surprisingly, Baldaia went back to school to finish high school and even more surprisingly, before finishing, dropped out yet again.

“When I left school again, I was living at home. I told my mom that the band was really taking off and that’s what I wanted to do. My dad had passed away and she said to me if you want to play in the band that’s fine, but if you’re going to live in this house, you’ll have to get a job,” said Baldaia. “That’s when I got a job where my mom worked at a manufacturing plant. I honestly can’t remember how long it lasted. All I could think about then was the band.”

When The Wild Turkey Band was at its peak, they were playing more than 240 gigs a year, five to six nights a week, 48 weeks a year, attracting large audiences. But despite all the success, Baldaia started to feel like he wasn’t where he wanted to be.

“Five years of the band was enough for me. I could have gone another 10 years for sure, but I thought that at the end of it I would be no further along musically after all that time,” said Baldaia. “I wanted to be a better musician and be successful, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it. I could play by ear and learn music by ear, but I wanted to learn the language of music. I guess I felt I would be more of a legitimate musician if I learned the language, so I enrolled in Berklee School of Music in Boston.

A Berklee student

“I thought I could play the guitar pretty well, but when I got to Berklee the musicians in the room opened my eyes to what I couldn’t do. The experience and chops that the students there already had was a huge awakening for me. It told me I wasn’t ready. So, by the second semester I dropped out. It was a combination of finances, the long drive and how I felt about my playing at the time.”

Baldaia acknowledged that this became a long dormant musical phase in his life. “It was a period of stagnation for me and really no playing out.” At this point he joined the ranks of the 9-to-5ers.

“I was working jobs that I didn’t care for and wasn’t very happy about it. I had had some guitar students over the years, teaching casually, and I really liked it,“ said Baldaia. “The idea of teaching music always appealed to me. I’m a lifelong musician, and I felt it was a good way to continue my love for it. So, at 35, I decided to go to RIC to get my teaching degree.“

A music teacher

“After four years at RIC, in 1997, I earned my music teaching degree. This kept me involved in music. Teaching the kids was a joy, which I did for 25 years in East Providence. It was enough to keep me rooted in music,” said Baldaia. “Writing music out for my kids every day, arranging it, the concerts, the musicals. It was very intense and very busy, but it was very gratifying and kept me involved in music. I could’ve easily given it all up, like a lot of guys did. Teaching gave me a second chance for making music.”

A 50-year reunion

Just a few weeks ago The Wild Turkey Band reunited to perform for a 50^th-year celebration of Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel and The Met Cafe. Along with the their band, the weekend event included legendary acts Rizzz, members of Roomful of Blues, The Schemers and Steve Smith and the Nakeds. The sold-out shows drew hundreds of fans. In an interesting twist of fate, the event coincided with the 50-year anniversary of Baldaia meeting the boys from Pawtucket.

“I’ve been so fortunate in my life, meeting the guys when I was young, playing music, filling the clubs, creating a wide following, inducted in the R.I. Music Hall of Fame and then going back to school to earn my degree and getting a teaching job. And of course, meeting my wife Linda, an East Providence gal, which is literally the best thing that ever happened to me.”

The passion still burns

As we wrapped up the interview, I asked Baldaia for any final thoughts.

“Music still burns in me. I’m retired now but I still want to play and learn. I have my studio at home, my headphones, my computer and my digital workstation. I’m listening and learning, whether it be Larry Carlton, Steely Dan, a certain guitar line or some Fusion tune, because I still want to continue to progress,“ said Baldaia. “After all these years, I’m still in it.“

You can find John Baldaia on Facebook and Instagram.

Michael Khouri is a Barrington resident writing occasionally about the Rhode Island music scene. Reach him at mkhouri@cox.net.