Rock Out for a good Cause

Antimo Onzo is more than he appears. During performances he wears a dark blue collared shirt, weathered blue jeans, and a broad-brimmed black cowboy hat. While he talks about his influences from country music like Tim McGraw and Rascal Flatts, it is easy to jump the conclusion that he is a country boy through and through.

But his New York accent betrays his Flushing, Queens roots. He picks up his acoustic guitar and grips the purple pick. His quiet, soft-spoken speaking voice, morphs into an emotive, strong instrument, more powerful than expected.

Onzo wrote his first song his senior year at Oviedo High School after a car accident claimed the lives of two of his best friends. The fact that he is performing and recording already at the age of 22 would have you believe that it has been relatively easy for Onzo. However, when he was in his teens, he lost the hearing in his left ear due to abnormal development of the ear canal. The condition was only recently remedied by surgery, but had frustrated him, especially in live performances where it made it hard to stay in key. For the first time since the surgery, Onzo will perform live at a Thanksgiving benefit for the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida.

“I love music, and I’ve always wanted to do charity work, so this was a great way to bring both those things together,” Onzo said.

When Miles Mancini, a communications professor at FGCU, told his class on the first day of school that they needed to have a class project, Bonnie Lacagnina did not hesitate. She walked to the front of the class and laid it all out, the Harry Chapin Food Bank, the music of Onzo and how the class could execute a Thanksgiving benefit concert to help Southwest Florida’s impoverished population. Lacagnina had met Onzo through her daughter, who went to Edison College with him, and immediately loved his songs.

“Some say his songs are depressing, because he’ll sing about death or a tragedy,” Lacagnina said. “But if you actually listen, the songs are uplifting. There is a turn around at the end. The subject matter seems depressing but there is always something to learn.”

The class project has also changed Ryan Uhler’s last semester at FGCU. While the class was brainstorming other acts that could play the show a fellow student mentioned that the local rock band Borne would perform for free but currently had no drummer. Uhler, 23, offered to play with them. He met the band and started playing drums for Borne. The covers the band played were exactly what Uhler grew up playing. The bill was set.

“We play everything from the Doors to 3 Doors Down, bar covers that everybody can get into,” said Uhler, who will perform live with Borne for the first time at the benefit show.

For every $1 in donations the food bank can distribute the equivalent of $9 of food. So, while they are still asking for canned food donations at the show, the take from the admission fee could provide a lot of families a Thanksgiving meal in a few weeks. In the five counties the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida serves, Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades, there are an estimated 110,000 people living at or below the federal poverty line.

Onzo will perform a new song at the concert, “Promise,” which he calls his favorite of all his work. The song tells the tale of a dying young boy, but carries an appropriate message for the event.

“Be the change you wish to see in this world . . . in your final sleep it’s not what you keep, it’s what you leave behind.”

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