November 7: Note from Brad about Tony Falco

Hello friends,

This note hopefully finds you the path towards peace and joy, however rambling it may be. Or maybe it’s straight and clear. If the latter is the case, you deserve that clarity. When I find it, I say to myself: Enjoy it; don’t question it or fuss around with it! Clear vision is welcome at all times.

Some of you may have had the good fortune to have known a great man, Tony Falco, who passed away recently on October 28, 2021. I offer my deepest condolences to Tony’s extended family and close friends. For those of you who might not have intersected with him, Tony was the proprietor of The Falcon, a treasured music performance venue in Marlboro, NY, up the Hudson River an hour and a half’s drive from New York City. It was much more than that, though, and you can read about The Falcon, Tony’s contribution to the broader artistic community in the Hudson Valley and beyond, and his own legacy, here.

I consider myself fortunate to have had Tony as a close friend. He was a model as a father for me, a few years ahead of me in life experience, and gave me good counsel over the years. He loved music as deeply as I do, and his tastes were broad. He turned me on to some grooves that were not on my radar. Tony’s passion for music was of the active variety, meaning that he used it to actualize a living space where musicians could share their music with a live audience. We musicians need fans who engage in our music, but all of us – musicians and listeners alike – can be grateful for someone like Tony, who made a bridge to connect the performers and audience. Thank you, Tony. 

Tony’s spirit lives on in his beautiful family: his wife Julie, and their children Adrianne, Lana, Lee and Julian. Our families had many happy gatherings when all of our children were younger, often at the Falco’s home. Back then, I wrote a song to invoke the joyful atmosphere of those get-togethers. The music had the sound of what I experienced there: the joyful sound of our children’s laughter, the feeling of celebration, and the sense of possibility. The song was called the “The Falcon Will Fly Again,” and was released on the record Highway Rider. If you’d like to, you can have a listen in honor of Tony. All of our kids are bigger now, already out of the nest or on their way soon. We are in a different phase of our lives, and the world is a very different place. But the music stands as a testament of that happy time, and Tony had a lot to do with that.

It’s funny with titles for tunes – sometimes you come up with something that only partially makes sense, but has a nice ring, so you go with it. When I thought of “The Falcon Will Fly Again,” I didn’t have any particular elegy in mind – the “Falcon,” literally and figuratively, was flying quite well at the time. I was just giving a nod to the energy of those family gatherings, and of Tony’s venue, and something about the “will” and “again” in the title seemed cool – like throwing a stone into the future and the past all at once, like music can do sometimes. But now, the title comes home to roost, as it were, and then to spread its wings once more, because the falcon will indeed fly again, through Tony’s spirit – one that will continue to percolate in all of us who knew him.

Wishing peace and well-being to everyone, Brad