Rik Palieri
WORDS BY TOM PROCTOR, PHOTO by JAMES LOCKRIDGE
Rik Palieri, joined host Brent Hallenbeck on 'Rocket Shop', Big Heavy World's local music radio hour on 105.9FM The Radiator.

Listen to a replay here or via Rocket Shop Radio Hour on iTunes or Subscribe on Android

Like all good folk singers, Rik Palieri knows how to spin a good yarn. Bedecked in denim, cowboy hat on head and sporting a handsome handlebar mustache, he strikes you immediately of a man that loves to tell a good tale and doesn’t disappoint the image he embodies. Known in the region for his prolific and storied career, he’s been everywhere, met everyone and gone down his own road coming out on the other side a great in his own right.

Visiting the studio to pick on his guitar and tell a few handpicked fables he sits down with us to discuss the true definition of the Hobo, Native American sweat lodges, and how life usually works out when you let it do its own thing.

Tom Proctor: You’ve had some incredible mentors, including Jimmy Driftwood and Pete Seeger, what would you recomend to young musicians looking for mentors of a similar caliber?

Rik Palieri: Life brought them to me. With none of these mentors did I have a plan to try and meet them. They all came to me through a natural way. Jimmy Driftwood for instance. When I was doing my school tour I was traveling around all over. I was playing in this tiny town in Arkansas, a town where everyone gathers around a wood stove and plays music together. It looked like something from a postcard. People were sitting there with guitars and banjos, women were knitting, men were whittling. This one man playing the windpipe, a man called Snowball, said to me “Jimmy would like you”, so I asked, “Jimmy who”, and he replies “Jimmy Driftwood”. I knew the name but I wasn't exactly convinced. When he found out I was sleeping in my van he told me to follow him and stay at his place. I drove nine miles out of town and when I got there he pointed across the street and told me that was Jimmy Driftwood’s place and I was to have breakfast with him the next morning. I thought he was pulling my leg, but I get up in the morning and knock on the door and there’s Jimmy Driftwood. He’s wearing his cowboy hat and a bright red shirt and says “Hi! Breakfast is on the table, been expecting you, come on in” and that was the beginning of our friendship. He taught me a lot about the music business, how I should never give up.

TP: So do you feel you career has a whole has developed through chance?

RP: Yeah, everything has developed that way. Let me tell you how I met Pete Seeger. I was a young kid, learning the banjo and a big fan of Pete. My sisters, who are a lot younger than me, they saw all my albums and assumed that I knew Pete. I did not know him at all. I had his records and occasionally went to the Clearwater environmental meetings which he ran, but I didn’t know him. He was playing in Central Park in 1975, and my mother takes the two girls to see the museums around the park while I watch the concert. My sisters get curious about what's going on, they hear Pete Seeger and immediately think that I must be backstage with my “good friend” Pete. So sneak backstage, find Pete’s trailer and go talk to him for a while. I know nothing about this. Pete’s playing in Hoboken the next day, so I get down the next morning and join in with a jam session that’s happening. Pete walks by, hears us playing, unzips his guitar case and starts playing along with us. I am floored, I’m playing with Pete Seeger. He looks at me and asks me who I am,