BAILEY KUZMA
Special to The Leader
On Oct. 5, Alison Pipitone, an adjunct instructor for the Music Industry program here at Fredonia, was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame.
“I’ve always liked music my whole life because my parents always had music on in my living room. They always played music,” said Pipitone. “It was the days of [the folk era] so like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell [and] Leonard Cohen [were] always on, and so I grew up with it being very important. So that always continued.”
Pipitone has always been attracted to songs and how they made her feel.
“I started playing guitar late, when I was like 18. That’s when I really started playing. It was just so I could be in a band. That’s why I started playing guitar. Then I found out I started to like writing songs,” she said.
The first band Pipitone ever performed in was one she formed while living in Los Angeles. It was called The Monas and it was made up of her brother and two sisters.
“We didn’t grow up together. My mother lived in California and my father was from the Buffalo area. So when I was 18 it was the first time we sort of all lived together, for the first time in many, many years. So for some reason we said, ‘let’s start a band,’ and so we started this punk band. It was an exciting time,” said Pipitone.
The Monas lasted for about five to six years and played at all the clubs in L.A.
“We sort of had some success. So that was the first band I was ever in. And that was really the only band I was in until that band broke up because my sister moved to Colorado and then I moved back to New York. [And then I] just started doing solo stuff and had my own band,” she said.
Pipitone moved back to Buffalo in the mid 1990s because she wanted to get away from the music business. But after she came back, her sister convinced her to go to Nietzsche’s to sing in Michael Meldrum’s weekly open mic. Meldrum liked what he heard and gave Pipitone a 45-minute songwriter spotlight.
Within about six months, Pipitone was signed to Dale Anderson’s Hot Wings Entertainment.
“My band now is called the Alison Pipitone Band. It is now made up of two guitarists, I play guitar and a lead guitarist. And then drums, base and then a back up vocalist. Pat Shaughnessy is on drums, Graham Howes is lead guitar, Marc Hunt is on bass and Natalie Howes is on backing vocals,” Pipitone said.
Over the past two decades, Pipitone has won countless awards, co-founded the Hamburg Music Festival, has released nine albums and has grown as a performer and educator.
Pipitone said she thinks of herself as a songwriter first, and then as a guitarist and singer.