A trumpeter, conductor, and composer, he also leads the Raiders House Band, David Perrico is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

A native of Youngstown, Ohio, he says he cut his teeth with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra before moving to Las Vegas in 2004.

Here, he'd earn his Masters in Music at UNLV and performance shows with Donny and Marie, Natalie Cole, Tony Braxton, and Gladys Knight.

He's the creator and director of Pop Strings Orchestra and Pop Evolution.

David Perrico, also the leader of the Raiders House Band at Allegiant Stadium, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(David Perrico) Thank you.

It's great to be here.

-I want to go back to Ohio and start with your introduction to music, and how did you come into contact with the trumpet, specifically?

-That's a funny story, actually.

My father played saxophone.

It was 4th grade.

Went to school with my own clarinet.

There weren't any trumpet players in the band, so the band director handed me a trumpet and said, Try it, and here we are.

-Now, did Dad want you to play the clarinet?

-He did, the clarinet and saxophone.

-Why?

Well, saxophone, because he played it?

-He played the saxophone, and you generally start on a clarinet, you know, before you graduate to the saxophone.

And the trumpet just came really easy to me.

It was natural and it was fun.

I loved it right from the get-go.

-In what capacity did Dad play the saxophone?

-He played all the way through college, just the first year of college, and then he got drafted to Vietnam, so he quit playing.

-Wow, okay.

But then returned home and said, I want you to play music?

-Yeah.

-Very cool.

-Pretty much.

-How did he react to the trumpet?

-He was surprised.

I sent you to school with a clarinet, and you came home with a trumpet, you know.

So imagine an Italian father, the way they react.

[laughter] -No.

Can you give me an impersonation, maybe?

-I don't know.

[laughter] -Hey, how proud is Dad of what you've accomplished?

-Oh, it's-- he hasn't really said that much through the years, you know?

He's always been quiet about it.

But recently, he's, he's been out in Vegas, you know, multiple times a year, and he's always supported me and very complimentary now, yeah.

-Oh, I imagine.

Being the leader of the Raiders House Band, the only house band in the NFL, that's tremendous.

Tell me about the history of that, though, because at one time the Raiders had a house band back in the day?

-Yeah.

In the late 60s, when Al Davis owned the team, they had-- it was more of a pep band.

It was set up like a big band style in the end zone area.

And the conductor at that time was Del Courtney.

And then they had some bands playing when the Raiders moved to LA at the-- I think it was the Coliseum.

They had bands playing, but it wasn't really a house band in the, in the sense of what we're doing now with live TV and playing all the interstitials and halftimes and with guest artists and hitting all those marks.

-And this is something that I think our crew will appreciate.

Can you describe what it is like?

You have an earpiece in, like I have now.

-Sure.

-And you are told to play specific songs and given time frames?

-Yes.

-Tell me how hectic this sounds.

-Yeah.

So each game has about a 54-page script of cues.

We're in there throughout.

We do collaborations with the Raiderettes.

So for instance, if the Raiderettes-- we collaborate with them.

It might be a one minute and eight second version of "Sweet Child O' Mine."

And then out of that version, I'll have a 20 second, 30 second, 40, 50, 1 minute, 1:30, 1:48, you know, whatever is needed.

And then so they're already prewritten and arranged, and then they'll call it down to me what they want.

-And sometimes they change it at the last minute?

-They can.

Yeah, we've changed things on the fly.

-Have you ever gone overtime?

-No.

Actually, no.

We've been-- such great musicians in the band, and we've hit pretty much every cue.

-What happens if you don't?

There are consequences?

-There are consequences.

Yeah, the NFL can fine.

You can be fined.

I mean, especially if there's a 20-second interval and then the kicker is lining up for an extra point.

If we're still playing and they're going to kick, we can't do that.

Yeah.

-Which is, off camera you had told me, why a lot of stadiums don't implement a live band.

They rely on perhaps a DJ instead.

-Yeah, yeah.

-So there's a lot at stake there.

Very cool.

What did you think when you got this opportunity?

You spoke directly with Mark Davis, correct?

-Mark Davis and-- Mark Davis later.

It was more of the production team that was wanting to have somebody local, from the Vegas community, and there was, you know, a handful of bands that were up, that auditioned, and then we auditioned.

It was about a four-step process that we went into the stadium, and then the speakers weren't working right, and they didn't hear us right.

So then we had to go back again.

And then they gave me some songs to write, to see if I can write for this, these cues, and then came back.

And, yeah, it was quite a process.

But, you know, it's an honor.

It really is.

It's so fun.

-You know what is also pretty neat is that you have an all-female six-piece string section.

-Yes, indeed.

Two fold: I mean, number one, the diversity of the band.

If you look at any of my groups, the diversity, and then also it's, you know, it's that girl power, that presence there.

And they're all, our string players, is very unique to Las Vegas.

There are such great commercial players, where, not only can they play classical, they can play in rock or jazz or R&B, funk, whatever it is, which is very unique to the string players that we have here.

-And you are also very unique, I think, to this Pops Orchestra, right?

Is that the genre you would consider this?

-Yeah, Pops is-- yeah.

That's a broad term, but you know, Pops, for me is everything that is popular.

And it could be something that Mozart wrote that we'll put a rock beat to it.

So that's, that's the fun part for me, as an arranger, is kind of reinvigorating or invigorating some of these standards that people know, like, say, just an Earth, Wind & Fire song and maybe putting our twist on it.

-Yeah.

When you started doing that, did you get any pushback?

-Yeah.

The pushback, not necessarily somebody saying something to me, but if you try to get too clever as an arranger, people won't recognize the song, so you're basically just gilding the lily; you're kind of accentuating what's already great.

The song-- Journey wrote the song.

It sounds great.

So how can we add strings and horns and stuff and still make it sound like, you know, the recording?

-Okay.

I ask because I did hear you, in a recent interview, talk about the stigma of the orchestra, that perhaps orchestras should only be performing certain types of music.

-Yeah.

For me, I like to bridge that gap and make the orchestra, the symphony, accessible for all demographics.

So it's-- and that's what you'll see at any of our shows.

You'll see such a wide range of demographic, people.

There's something in there for everybody.

-Yeah.

So then take me back to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

What was that demographic?

How old were you?

What was its impact on you playing with them for, I think, six years?

-Yeah, it was-- Yes, it was eight years, actually, yes.

Six, eight, something like that, yeah.

This is 1994, and I was twenty, -one, -two, whatever it was.

I got a call to go out on the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, one of the last of the touring bands.

Glenn Miller was touring.

Count Basie was touring.

And these were all, quote/unquote, ghost bands.

Tommy Dorsey had passed on.

It was led by Buddy Morrow.

But it was 46 weeks a year, 46 to 48 weeks a year on a bus, mainly one-nighters.

And so I got the call to do that.

And the audition was basically the first night, you know?

You open up this book, you can't read the music, it's from-- the music's from the '30s and '40s.

And if you can cut it that night, then you got the gig.

-And you told me that you had a trumpet solo and you did not know, that first night.

How did that play out?

-Yeah.

I mean, that was pretty much it.

I mean, as opposed to today, in today's idiom arena, you may get the music ahead of time, you know, some PDFs.

But in those days, you know, 35 years ago, the audition was if you can just sight-read and play the job and play the solo or whatever was called for.

-Who was in the audience at those shows?

-Oh, gosh.

I mean, that's the thing about the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

I mean, we would do, you know-- it's almost like the road managers would just take a dart and throw it at the map to see where your next gig was.

We could be at an Elks club, a country club, or at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall.

So there was always a different demographic, but mostly the people that love to dance, you know, the big band era.

So that was a big part of the demographic.

-Oh, how cool.

And then the other members you are playing with, age range up to what?

-Oh, yeah, I was definitely the youngest.

So at that time, Buddy Morrow was the conductor, the trombonist, world famous, one of the greatest trombone players to ever live.

Unbelievable.

He was-- I think, at that time, he was 77, and he's-- and he's on the road doing the same thing.

Like, I'm like, wow, you know?

-Yeah.

-Sometimes we wouldn't check into a hotel.

We would just get two rooms, pull into town, and then guys would do what they need to do and get back on the bus, play the gig, head to the next city overnight.

-And I ask all of this because you did say you cut your teeth with that orchestra.

-Learned a lot.

Great musicians.

And like the age, like you mentioned, from 20 to 77.

All in between there, you know?

-Learning to work with all sorts of people, all different ages.

-Yeah.

-How do you think it impacted you?

I mean, that time, how is it part of you today?

-It's a huge part of me today.

Number one, the performance aspect of what I would call the old school entertainment, where the band looks sharp, the presentation is sharp, the music is precise, how to speak, how to address a crowd, all these little nuances and stuff.

And the meticulous, being so meticulous about the product and presentation, I think that can kind of get lost sometimes today.

So I really took-- and on top of it, the caliber and the what was called for to play this kind of music and to execute it.

-Yeah.

And those qualities that you just mentioned are part of every band that you have created and are directing currently.

How many bands are you in charge of?

-There's 11 that I created.

-Wow.

-There's 11 created out of necessity, actually, because people would ask us, Pop Strings, Hey, we don't have enough space to put the 15-piece or we don't have the budget.

So I started thinking, why don't I just put together a six-piece band, an eight-piece band?

I'll call it this, this one that.

So when you go to my website, you'll see all the different bands, and then you can just basically a la carte, pick what you want-- -Yeah.

- --what fits your style and genre and budget.

-You said currently you're playing a lot of corporate events, because live music has declined since COVID.

-Yeah.

The live music for what I would call the blue collar workers in town, the lounges, the bands that play the lounges, those have basically disappeared.

And live music still is going here.

It's not-- you know, it's just more headliners, you know?

So if you're a headliner, you're doing okay.

The middle market, the blue collars, where you would go into a lounge like where we played at Cleopatra's Barge at Caesars.

We had a residency there for four years.

-Oh, my gosh.

And that's where Frank Sinatra had performed at times.

-Yeah, Frank, Sammy, Dean.

That was the hang.

It was really such an iconic-- I think it's now Caspian's now or something.

-Last question, because we are running out of time.

You said that you got to treat every check like it's your last in this business.

But are you still doing that, or have you gotten to that headliner level, in your opinion?

-I think, you know, especially in this town and in life in general, things are not guaranteed.

And this town can be very ephemeral; things are always changing, here today, gone tomorrow.

You know, that kind of thing.

So I do, I still approach and I'm grateful for everything that I have in the present moment, and I don't take anything for granted.

-David Perrico, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-It's been a pleasure.