To hell and back: Phil Facchini's rock and roll odyssey

Jun. 19—EDITOR'S NOTE — Third in a five-part series about Albany rock and roll guitarist Phil Facchini, who in his career has brushed up against, been a part of and suffered the harsh realities of the rock and roll lifestyle.

ALBANY — It's telling that guitarist Phil Facchini, who's played in 17 or so bands and counting over the 43 years that he's performed professionally, has never been the de facto leader of any of those groups, always a guitar for hire, much like the old West gunslingers who took on all comers for pay.

Facchini's explanation is as heart-breaking as it is a peek at what keeps him playing through ups and downs that would have devastated many artists.

"I've never been confident enough to think I could pull it off," said the man who, while playing "Stairway to Heaven" at a recent solo gig at Pretoria Field's Brewery, had a man in the audience throw his hat toward the stage, pick it up when Facchini took a break, and walk the rest of the way up to the stage to drop a hundred-dollar bill in Facchini's guitar case, proclaiming, "You did it justice."

"I told you how it was when I was a kid, how I didn't feel I was as good as the other kids — the only time they paid any attention to me was when I was playing guitar. That feeling has stayed with me ... even up to today."

So Facchini keeps playing guitar, his name floating always among the musicians who are out there looking for someone to take another guitarist's spot in a band, looking for someone to play a couple of make-or-break gigs, looking for a professional who can show up in the event of an emergency and play, in a pinch, the band's repertoire without breaking a sweat.

Facchini started playing guitar at age 3, and by the time he was 10 he'd played his first professional gig. Since that time he's played with at least 17 bands, some of them here-today, gone-tomorrow, some so close to breaking big the guitarist winces at the memories.

"I had a benefactor around 1995 who had agreed to loan our band $100,000 to get a project started," Facchini said. "We were going to buy the equipment of Harlequin Angel, who'd just come off the road — truck, PA system, light show, everything. It was a done deal.

"But on the day we were supposed to start putting this band together, my mom called and said we had to fly to Detroit to bury my friend Brad Wright, who was going to be the band's singer. He'd overdosed, essentially killed himself. I went into a deep depression and took a long time to recover."

During his career, Facchini has played with the Black Fire Band, which he started with his musically like-minded friends Dave and Nathan Hebler, like Facchini, former residents of Michigan who moved to Albany. Leading up to his most recent gig as guitarist for U-Turn, Facchini has played with Metal, Leper, Cookie Monster, lost out on a chance to play with Sidewinder after he was recruited by the popular touring band but was found to be too green to handle the pressure, and Dennis the Menace.

His other gigs — that lasted anywhere from a few shows to several years — include Gasoline Alley, Danger Money, Shady Angel, Hippie Smack, a time with a loose collective of regional A-list musicians informally known as the Destin All-Stars who played shows along the Gulf Coast, lost out on a shot at playing a "Tonight Show" gig with Blackfoot/Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlock, Two Weeks Notice, Phil & Teresa Unplugged (acoustic sets with his ex-wife), the Geneva Band, Metal Mafia, The Trimm and U-Turn.

Along the way, there was an almost deal with Metal Blade Records (Gasoline Alley), with Flamingo Booking (Dennis the Menace), an opening spot for Great White (Shady Angel), the rigors of playing in bars where many patrons were either drunk or uninterested in the music that was being played, and the inevitable macho challenges of mooks who didn't like the fact that their dates were paying a little too much attention to the boys in the band.

"There's that line in that song by Bob Seeger ('Turn the Page') where he says 'All those same old cliches, is that a woman or a man?'" Facchini said. "That's real; we got that all the time."

Through it all, Facchini persevered. He lived with each devastation, dealt in his way with each break-up, and eventually moved on to the next thing. But the guitarist admits his gig with the Nashville-based Geneva Band almost broke him.

"My wife wanted to go to Panama City to see Eli play, and the guys in the Geneva Band came to the show," Facchini said. "I was introduced as a 'guitar player,' and they said they were looking for someone to play with them. 'Here we go,' I thought. They sent me six songs and called a few hours later and asked if I could learn those songs in the three days before they had a New Year's Eve (2009) gig. I told them I already had the songs down.

"I played for them, and they laughed and said they'd never had anyone nail it like I did."

Facchini joined the Geneva Band, and they toured for a year or so. But, it turned out, to Facchini's frustration, the members of the band were negotiating to do an A&E reality TV show, "Geneva's Rocking Ride." During a period of down time during the taping, Facchini labored on with a band called Metal Monster.

Facchini left the Geneva Band — and music altogether, for a period — when, he said, he was supposed to be booked into a five-star hotel but instead was forced to sleep in a tent with no blanket or pillows on a 29-degree night. His room, it turned out, had been given to the merch girl.

"I haven't spoken to them since," Facchini said.

After decades of working various jobs between bands as a way of survival, but living for the next gig, Facchini said the humiliation he suffered at the hands of bandmates he thought were his friends dredged up the insecurities of his youth.

"I just told myself: 'I'm finished,'" he said.

The musician, who'd moved back to Georgia after the debacle with the Geneva Band, started pawning his beloved guitar collection, along with his other musical equipment, as a means of survival. He became homeless for a period, sleeping on an air mattress in the back of his Dodge Nitro that he couldn't afford to buy a tag for. He'd shower at truck stops, and when he'd saved enough money from odd jobs or the sale of another piece of equipment, he'd check in for a couple of nights at "the worst drug hotel in Thomasville."

Eventually, though, he felt the tug of that sweet thing that had always sustained him ... music. Friends "nursed me back to life," and he started looking for guitars to buy on the cheap or to fix up. He rebuilt an old car, got his own place in Albany and became sociable again. And he started back playing music.

He played here and there (notably at the Queen Bee Jam session at local radio station Q-102, along with Dwayne "Wimpy" Bowden, Walt Dunn, Sean Clark and Conner Griffin) before being mentioned as a possible guitarist for Kentucky band U-Turn. That audition yielded familiar results for Facchini: He hired on as the band's new guitarist ... the gunslinger back in his element once again.

Next: Trouble Man