Toni Lumiella

a dream becomes reality

I got my first guitar by age eleven from my father. The neck had more about a banana than the instruments of my idols Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt of Status Quo. Well, don't wonder, it was a classic guitar with steel string! I really didn't care even if that was incredible hard for my fingers. I was just the happiest kid of the world! Since then playing guitar and singing became my biggest passion. With fourteen years I had my first band, playing really acoustic.

With my first salary and my savings I was able to buy my first electric guitar – a meaningful moment not only for my but my parents, brothers and sisters and the whole neighbourhood…no more silence!

Two souls in one body; on the one side the rebel, loud, extrovert, on the other side the melancholy, calm and introvert.
Extrovert: In the 80ies I was a real hardrocker with long hair, tight jeans. Until the beginning of the 90ies I played and sang melodic hardrock.
Introvert: Folk, Blues, Country and Ragtime were also a very important part of me a that time.

In the middle of the 90ies I began to open to different music styles, especially Funk, followed by groovy styles like R'n'B, Soul and Acid Jazz. I liked to play in different bands the different styles and to mix it all up in my own band, with acoustic and electric. Every instrument gave me other world of possibilities to express myself.

Since learning my first chords on the guitar, I was starting writing songs. The lyrics were quiet always in english. I was grown bilingual, italian and swiss german. So it was a natural process to start writing and singing in italian to be able to express better deeper feelings and to play around with words and meanings. I'm sure to have found my musical destiny. Were this travel will go I don't know but I will follow to play only my own songs. Songs with themes that are touching me. In the styles of rock and pop with different influences.
Composing has become something like a meditation, writing lyrics kind of overcoming a personal situation.

The possibility to work with world class musicians like Alfredo Golino (Laura Pausini /Eros Ramazzotti) and Paolo Costa (Nek) and technicians like Jon Jacobs (Laura Pausini/Nek/Elvis Costello), Reto Peter (Green Day/Black Eyed Peas) and Howie Weinberg (Nirvana/Rammstein/Sheryl Crow) was an incredible experience and motivation. Sogno reale – a dream come true, the title of the actual album.