Photograph courtesy of Joe Sharino
The Joe Sharino Band, led by a graduate of Willow Glen High who has enjoyed a 26-year career making people dance, headlined the first Dancing on the Avenue event.
Joe Sharino Band returns to headline at Willow Glen's annual dance party
The Us Festival is the only gig the Joe Sharino Band has played that was bigger than Dancing on the Avenue, which draws 20,000
By Sarah Gaffney
Joe Sharino is having a hard time convincing his 17-year-old daughter Alison, an aspiring singer, not to become a musician. "My daughter always says, 'Well, Dad, you've done very well and you've managed to dodge the drugs and the drinking and all the crazy stuff...,'" Sharino says. "So I'm saying the same thing my father used to say, which was 'Have something to fall back on,' " says the musician, who was one semester shy of a radio/TV broadcasting degree back in 1974 when he dropped out of San Jose State to pursue his music.
This Saturday, Sharino and his band will headline Willow Glen's Dancing on the Avenue for the third time. They'll be rocking the street from 7 to 10pm at the corner of Lincoln and Willow.
The frontman and founder of the Joe Sharino Band has been in the biz for more than 25 years. He has no tales of starving, rehab or playing scary biker bars to make the rent. In short, the Willow Glen native has done very, very well for himself. Since he started playing the local nightclub scene in 1974 (remember the Lariat and the Parlor?), the music business has brought him great joy and success.
"It's a great life. It's a God-given talent," says Sharino, who played accordion, guitar, piano, drums and flute while attending Willow Glen schools. "If you can use it and make money at it, it doesn't get any better than that."
While in college, Sharino began playing acoustic guitar and singing folk at clubs in Campbell, Mountain View and Santa Cruz. What began as a part-time job soon blossomed into a full-time, paying passion for the college student.
"In one year I went from making $30 a night to $400 a night," recalls Sharino, who was playing to standing-room-only crowds at clubs like the Garrett and Mountain Charley's. "This was back in 1974 when that was a lot more money than it is now. I thought, what am I in college for? This is the career for me."
Much to the chagrin of his parents, Sharino left his academic studies to pursue a music career. He made a promise to them, though, that as soon as the crowds left, he would return to college.
"I told them, 'I'm just kinda riding the wave here of this popularity that I'm enjoying. As soon as it dies down, I'll go back to college and finish,'" recalls Sharino, whose family home was on Curtner Avenue. "That was 26 years ago. I never finished."
In 1979, Sharino wanted to broaden his horizons by opening for major talents, as well as playing Nevada casinos. He formed the Joe Sharino Band, a cover group of four members that plays everything from Sinatra and the Beatles to Fleetwood Mac and Ricky Martin.
One of the band's first major gigs was the 1982 Us Festival in Southern California. The South Bay band was the opening act, performing to a crowd of 250,000. "Steve Wozniak, who started Apple Computer, was a huge fan of our band," explains Sharino. "He put that concert together with the Police, the Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty. All these famous bands and then one unknown band which was me ... it was pretty wild."
The Us Festival is the only gig the Joe Sharino Band has played that was bigger than Dancing on the Avenue, which draws 20,000. According to Sharino, the five-year-old Willow Glen festival was created specifically with his band in mind.
"Mary McClane, who used to run the Willow Glen Business Professional Association, formed the Dancing on the Avenue event around us, is what she told me," Sharino says. "We played the very first one because she needed somebody that could draw the people in. We've done them and they've gotten bigger and bigger every year. Last year is the only year we didn't play."
The Joe Sharino Band plays about 90 shows a year, more than 80 of which are private events. During the golden office party time of the mid- '80s, the band begin playing corporate events for valley giants such as Apple, Hewlett Packard and Intel. Nearly 15 years later, the band's primary business is playing corporate parties for companies throughout the United States and lots of dotcom shindigs in Silicon Valley.
"They're fun," says Sharino. "At all the corporate events, people just want to have fun."
Sharino, who divides his time between a home in Santa Cruz and a dream home he built in Oakhurst, has no secret for his band's rare, long-lasting success.
"I don't think that I have an answer," says the local legend. "We have the best musicians in our band. The thing that we do that's different than every other band: We genuinely have a ball doing what we're doing and it shows."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
