Nonprofit Launches Video Series Bridging Past To Future

March 2, 2021

Lisa Bouchelle and Ronnie Garrison during an episode.

A local nonprofit has launched a new video series recalling the remarkable life of the late singer and guitarist Danny DeGennaro.

The Danny DeGennaro Foundation began rolling out the roughly 20-minute episodes on February 21, which would have been the musician’s 66^th birthday.

New episodes will released on Sundays on the foundation’s YouTube channel.

Lisa Bouchelle, a Bucks County native and singer/songwriter, will serve as the host.

“It’s meant to be her talking to them in her living room,” Ed Mero, of the Danny DeGennaro Foundation, said of the relaxed format for the videos.

The first six episodes of “Danny’s Creative House” feature DeGennaro’s former bandmates, including Bucks native Ronnie Garrison of The Excaliburs, as well as Steve Shive of the Grateful Dead spinoff band Kingfish, which DeGennaro performed in from 1979 until his death in 2011. Perkasie native Stephen Amoroso, who managed DeGennaro during his Kingfish days, will reminisce about working with the musician known to many as “Rio.” Amoroso is booking guitar virtuoso Steve Kimock – who toured extensively with the Grateful Dead – and is lining up joint dates with the Danny DeGennaro Foundation.

The video series will bridge DeGennaro’s legacy and musical past with the future for the nonprofit organization.

To make the series possible, foundation partner John Austin Mulhern, president of DDF JAM Publishing LLC and Danny DeGennaro Foundation Record Label, collaborated with George Koch, owner of The Soundplex in Pennsauken, New Jersey, to see how the nonprofit could team up with what has been envisioned as an up-and-coming musical hub.

“The two philosophies are almost synergistic,” Koch said. “It’s almost like a marriage made in heaven and we met at the altar.”

Through the partnership, the foundation’s scholarship award winners and musicians signed to the record label will receive studio time and rehearsal and performance space.

“It’s not just a multiplex,” Koch said. “It’s tied to a foundation that has its roots in mentoring and music.”

DeGennaro’s was murdered inside his home in Levittown in 2011. In the years since his death, the foundation has worked to keep his legacy alive.