Guy Tino

I'm able to read a room pretty quickly at this point, so I tend to operate entirely without a set list most of the time. I try to keep the volume at a low level during dinnertime at restaurants. My list of covers has grown extensively and includes well-known songs ranging from the 1950s through the modern era. I also pull out obscurities if I feel I have the right audience for them, and I'm currently saving original material for those moments as well. For weddings and other special events, I have taken requests and learned them ahead of time.

I'm a Connecticut native, raised in Sherman and now living in Brookfield with my wife and two children. I've been singing pretty much my whole life, but didn't start to seriously pursue music until attending Kenyon College in Ohio, where I joined a number of bands in a variety of styles while working toward my degree in English.
A couple of years after graduation, I co-founded the Newtown-based blues/rock band The Providers. We packed a lot into eight years, playing all over Connecticut and scoring opening slots at Toad's Place in New Haven for NRBQ, Johnny Winter, The Radiators, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters and Eight To The Bar. We also traveled to New York City to play legendary Greenwich Village venues Kenny's Castaways, The Back Fence and The Baggott Inn, and twice made the trek out to Kenyon to appear at Summer Send-Off - in 1997 with They Might Be Giants, The Gravel Pit and Regatta 69, and in 1999 with De La Soul and The Slip. Two of our studio efforts can be purchased from CD Baby or streamed on Spotify.
In 2002 I felt the need to move on from the band life and took a sabbatical from the local music scene to improve my guitar skills and develop my solo songwriting voice. Now that our children are older, I have been back out playing solo gigs regularly at various venues. Some of my most frequent stops have been Portobello, jj Stacks and Cibo Grill in Brookfield, White Silo Farm & Winery in Sherman, and J. Lawrence in Bethel. I've played twice at the Charlotte Bacon Acts Of Kindness Awards ceremony in Newtown and at three Brookstock charity events in Brookfield. I've also performed as a member of the Roots Rock Revue at Bridgewater Congregational Church since 2011 and have participated in various offshoots, including a Mardi Gras band, a tribute to Pete Seeger and Great Night Out on the Bridgewater pavilion. In addition, I'm plotting a return to the studio to record my solo material.

I have a small rig and can pretty much fit in anywhere. I play an Epiphone EJ-200 acoustic guitar and sing through a Shure SM58, putting both through a Fender Acoustasonic combo amp. I need just enough space to fit the microphone stand, the amp, a guitar stand, a music stand, and usually a stool as I tend to sit while performing most of the time.