A regional hit for our road that needs love. Route 22 starts at the Bronx border and runs all the way to Canada. When this hit (in 2010) it spread all around the world and I heard from soldiers in Iraq. They were homesick and this did the trick.

My one-man show about the lessons learned around my family’s Italian bakery was short-lived in 2009 but we filled several venues. Centering around a nickname given to me by my Grandmother and cemented in place after I would finagle my way into the back stage of the Capitol Theater in 1970 by “delivering” a sheet cake to the top acts. Janis, Traffic, Bonnie Raitt, and even the Faces with Rod Stewart, all got cakes from the Cakeman.

Video producer par excellance, Ed Asiano, helped make this as good as it is. That, and the one and only San Diego Chicken, Ted Giannoulas, agreed to make it all happen. He was the consummate professional. And, yes, we all lost it in the hen house. Unreal!

Ace (Mike Latini,) Cakes (myself,) and Ferret (Jim Nowak- great story, ask him) played in the mid-seventies together. After I discovered J.C.’s great studio, we all recorded there in one way or another. This song was the first Mike and I recorded on a Tandberg half-track in my Bronx apartment in 1969.

“Past The Milky Way” was originally my “High on a Mountaintop” where Ace and I and stripped the lyrics and wrote new ones. When he released it on “Space Invader” LP it shot to Billboard’s #9 on the Hot 200. Very proud of this one.