Vincenzo

I started playing the drums when I was 7.

My mom wanted me to learn to play Beatles songs, but once I heard AC/DC’s Back in Black CD, I just wanted to play AC/DC.

I learned to play a bunch of AC/DC songs plus dozens of our own original songs and numerous other classic rock songs.

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The first time we ever played in public was at our Cub Scout talent show where we played TNT and Back In Black but we did not sing. A month later was a talent show at our school, and we played TNT, Back in Black, and Highway to Hell and sang the songs too.

A video was filmed about us at the catholic school talent show. You can see it on our website under rockumentaries. If you like it, press the like button so all your friends can see it too.

We held our first real concert when we were 9 years old at Rock Star University’s HOUSE OF ROCK. We played 6 original songs and 6 AC/DC covers. You can read the full page article that ran in the newspaper about our performance here. It was quite a show and I realized how much fun it is to perform in front of 300 screaming fans!

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When we were 10, we delivered another big, live concert playing 12 original songs and 6 AC/DC songs at HOUSE OF ROCK and Jack Blades from Night Ranger interrupted our final bows to give us his personal guitar that he signed “To Vittorio and Vincenzo, Keep Rockin! Jack Blades, Night Ranger” Jack then asked us to play his favorite AC/DC song, Highway to Hell. I said we would play it if Jack would sing it, so Jack joined in. It was cool. Jack told the audience we were the greatest ten year old rockers he had ever seen. That was quite a compliment coming from the lead singer of Night Ranger. Those guys have been rocking the world for 40 years! You can read the article that was in the newspaper about the show here.

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One day when we were rehearsing at Rock Star University a legendary rock producer by the name of Ron Nevison stopped by to watch and listen to us. Ron Nevison has engineered and produced music for over four decades including multi-platinum albums for Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, The Who, Heart, Chicago, Damn Yankees, KISS, Night Ranger and many more. After watching us play Long Live Rock N Roll and I Like Doing This the Best, he offered to produce our first studio album.

We Are V² Debut Album

So we spent 14 days over the summer in the studio, producing our first album, We Are V². It was a lot of fun, but was also a lot of hard work and rehearsing. But it really came out good. So good that we were nominated for 7 Los Angeles Music Awards. We were told that no artist had ever been nominated for 7 LA Music Awards so it was quite an honor.

We played two songs at the LA Music Awards show on November 12, 2014. We played the title track to our debut album, We Are V² and a song off the album that was nominated for Rock Single of the Year, Long Live Rock N Roll. Before we had finished our two song set the entire crowd was on their feet screaming and applauding for us. It was really cool.  After we completed our songs, the producer of the LA Music Awards, Al Bowman came on stage with SEVEN LA Music Award plaques. We won ALL 7 Categories!  Boy was that exciting! Check out the video of our LA Music Awards performance that has had over 1.5 million views.

You can see a full page article about our LA Music Awards night that was published in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat here.

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We went to Disneyland for the next two days and even stayed in the Mickey Mouse Signature Penthouse at the Disneyland Hotel.  Life is sweet!

Our debut album did really well on the music charts.  We had several singles from the album reach #1 on DigitalRadioTracker.com’s National Rock Chart and the same singles charted in the top 15 on Billboard’s Hot Singles Sales with a few reaching the #1 spot.

You can hear all the songs off our debut album by subscribing to our fan club.

V² Second Album Cover

We went back into the studio over Christmas that same year with Ron Nevison to produce our second album, Pass the Rock N Roll Torch.  Here is a picture of the album cover.  Pretty cool. Vittorio plays the Star Spangled Banner on it, we cover AC/DC’s Long Way to the Top, complete with bagpipes and we added 8 new original songs. It’s a cool album, and like our debut album, we were only 11 when we completed all the songs in the studio.

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We submitted it to the 25th  LA Music Awards and it won Rock Album and Rock Single of the Year! We also won a Producer’s Choice Award for the documentary, V² Behind the Scenes, The Making of 11 Year Old Rock Superstars, that aired on MTV’s Palladia Network. You can watch that documentary on our Youtube channel by clicking on this link: V² Behind the Scenes

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Before our 12th birthday we played our third, big, sold out concert at Rock Star University’s HOUSE OF ROCK. I think we played about 17 or 18 songs, but at the end of it, Michael O’Shea, owner of radio station 97.7 The River, Classic Rock for the North Bay presented us with an Gibson, Angus Young Signature guitar that was signed by all the 97.7 The River DJ’s and crowned us the Greatest 11 Year Old Rockers on the Planet! Vittorio thanked him for the guitar and we played Long Live Rock N Roll on it.  You can see a video clip of the concert on the Video Concerts Page.

You can read the article that was in the newspaper about the show here.

We then signed a deal with Audio Fidelity Records and Sony Red to distribute our third album entitled V²: The Beginning.  Here is a picture of the proposed cover, that we wanted. –>

The cover that was eventually decided on was this one.  It’s cool too.

Audio Fidelity Records told us they were going to promote the album heavily through their distribution channels but didn’t do much if anything with it, instead focused their efforts on the established classic rock acts from the 70 and 80’s that they already distributed.  We canceled our deal with them as soon as we could and went back to just having fun playing music and cutting albums.

While still 12 years old we played our fourth, big annual concert at Rock Star University. 22 songs! This concert featured our favorite classic rock covers plus our best original music. 107.7 The Bone, the SF Bay Area’s biggest classis rock station sent Paul Tonelli and Chasta (of the Lamont and Tonelli morning show) to see us perform. Chasta was pregnant with her first child, Codie so Vittorio dedicated his original blues song, The First Time I Ever Tried to her “Baby Codie” and jumped off stage to play the solo right in front of Chasta. She still talks about it on the radio.  At the end of the show, Chasta and Paul Tonelli interrupted our bows and presented us with a super nice hollow body electric guitar that was autographed by all the 107.7 Bone DJ’s.
You can see a video of the concert here and read the article that was in the newspaper about it here.

We then went back into the studio to make a new album.  We are big hotrod fans so we focused on our favorite cars songs and wrote some cars songs of our own. We called the album, Rock N Rods and it ended up with 7 of our favorite classic cars song covers like Little Deuce Coupe, Hot Rod Lincoln, I Can’t Drive 55 and we also recorded 6 original songs about cars.  Here’s the coolest part.  We have all the cars that the songs are about.  Yeah, we have been collecting hotrods for this album.  I’m not talking about model cars or HotWheel cars.  REAL hotrods with blower engines, flathead engines, four speed transmissions, lowered, tubbed, chopped and channeled, you get the picture. When I said we are big hotrod fans I wasn’t kidding.  So what we decided to do was make a calendar /CD package with the Rock N Rods CD attached to a calendar of the 13 cars that we wrote and recorded the 13 songs about.  A couple of the cars took a bit longer to acquire or build so the release of the calendar had to be pushed out to 2019.  The Rock N Rods calendar sold out during Christmas. It was a big success.

Half way through the Rock N Rods project while we were still 13 we held another, annual fan appreciation concert at Rock Star University’s HOUSE OF ROCK.  We introduced a few of our car songs and played our favorite classic rock covers plus our most popular original songs. Eddie Trunk from Vh1’s That Metal Show came to our concert and interrupted our final bows to present us with a That Metal Show guitar that he signed and proclaimed us the greatest 13 year old rockers in the world. Because he was such a big KISS fan we played Rock and Roll All Night Party Every Day on the guitar he gave us.  He loved it. You can see the video of the concert here and the newspaper article about the concert here.

You can also see a video of the photo shoot for the back cover of the Rock N rods album here:

We had a bit of a personal setback when the Tubbs Fire burned down our Santa Rosa home.  We lost everything. Our home studio and rehearsal room and all of our musical equipment was lost including the special, autographed guitars that were presented to us at our annual concerts and the personal guitar Angus Young used in the 1980 Back in Black Tour that he endorsed over to us. It was heartbreaking.  At 14 we moved to another town and  attended a  new school.  Fortunately none of the cars were lost as they were located in a warehouse away from the fire.  In retrospect we were fortunate to not be in the house when the fire swept through Santa Rosa area or we could have lost our lives along with all our musical equipment.

The summer of our 15th year we rebuilt a 1936 Ford pickup truck and went back into the studio with Ron Nevison to cut a new album entitled Rock Show Girl. The 36 Ford was completed about the same time the Rock Show Girl album was released to special fans in the spring of 2019.

The Rock Show Girl CD has 14 songs.  Rock Show Girl is the title track and is one of our original songs.  The rest of the CD is our favorite rock songs about girls.  The song order on the  CD is as follows:

  1. Rock Show Girl
  2. Lola
  3. Walk This Way
  4. Every Rose Has Its Thorn
  5. My Sharona
  6. Fat Bottom Girls
  7. Layla
  8. Rock Candy
  9. Wonderful Tonight
  10. All Right Now
  11. Honkey Tonk Woman
  12. Girls Girls Girls
  13. Hey Hey What Can I Do
  14. Whole Lotta Rosie

You can listen to a few songs off our new Rock Show Girl CD near the bottom of this page.

The summer of our 16th year we went back into the studio again with Ron Nevison and cut another studio album, Studio Album 6 titled So Long My Love. The title track is an original song we wrote for a dear friend who lost the love of her life. The rest of the songs on the album are covers of some of our favorite rock love songs.

So Long My Love Album

Here is the list of songs:

  1. Wherever You Will Go
  2. Lullaby
  3. She Talks to Angels
  4. Tuesday’s Gone
  5. Hey, Hey, What Can I do?
  6. She Will Be Loved
  7. Every Rose Has Its Thorn
  8. Love Hurts
  9. Fire and Rain
  10. I Remember You
  11. Wonderful Tonight
  12. So Long My Love

You can listen to a few songs off our new So Long My Love CD near the bottom of this page.

The summer of our 17th year, during the COVID shutdown, we went back into the studio again with Ron Nevison and cut another studio album, Studio Album 7, titled The Originals. This album features 10 of our most popular, award winning, original songs we wrote when we were 11, now instrumentally and vocally RE-RECORDED, plus two, brand new original songs, for a total of 12 songs. Although we had to change some keys due to our mature voices and all the guitar solos had to be redone due to the key changes, we really enjoyed re-recording the songs and giving our fans two, brand new originals entitled Insidious and Never Meant For You.

Here is the list of songs:

  1. Long Live Rock
  2. Let Me Go
  3. Rock Show Girl
  4. Insidious
  5. The First Time I Ever Tried
  6. Never Meant For You
  7. Guitar Man
  8. Girls Stars Money Cars
  9. So Long My Love
  10. I Like Doing This The Best
  11. Pass The Rock N Roll Torch
  12. Hard And Fast

Here are a samples of a few songs off of EACH of our THREE new albums:

Samples

Rock Show Girl(V²)

Rock Candy(V²)

Every Rose has its Thorn(V²)

Layla(V²)

So Long My Love(V²)

Lullaby(V²)

Fire and Rain(V²)

Tuesday’s Gone(V²)

I Like Doing This the Best(V²)

Never Meant For You(V²)

Pass the Rock N Roll Torch(V²)

Insidious(V²)

If you would like to purchase our new albums in CD format, or purchase our bundle package then go to V2 Store to purchase.

And please get a V² hat and shirt to wear so people will ask you about us. When they ask, tell them to go to www.VSquared.Rocks and subscribe to our fan club. Every T-shirt and Hat that we sell goes toward our lessons and equipment so we can keep learning more songs and play better concerts for you.

Thanks for helping us and being our fan.

Vincenzo, V²

Vincenzo on the Drums