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Weathering the Storm
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Back in 1987, Damien DelRusso had a tough time sleeping—in part, because he’d just gone through a divorce and was living on his own. But there was another reason.
Over the next five years, as Damien rebounded from divorce and met Nancy Smith, who would become his second wife, he combined middle-of-the-night with daylight songwriting sessions and ended up with more than 300 tunes. But it would take almost another 20 years before he’d polish the songs enough to produce the jazz-inflected Looking Through Rain, a collection of 11 artful songs that sells for $12, with $1 going to the Foundation Fighting Blindness. “We chose the Foundation [as a beneficiary],” Damien explains, “because it’s the only organization actively trying to help cure RP. I’m legally blind, and I can relate to people with RP. So we thought, ‘This is a good thing.’” What makes the CD even more significant is its title, which, aside from being the title of one of nine instrumental tracks on the album, is not meant to be metaphoric. “It’s literally what I see,” explains Damien, who was first diagnosed with RP in his early teens. “I’ve lost about 90 percent of my vision. Some people describe it as blurriness, but, for me, it’s like these raindrops coming down. Every day, when I get up and look outside, it’s always pouring.” Damien grew up in northern New Jersey, the third of eight siblings, six of whom had RP. “Had” because three—two brothers and a sister—have since passed away. His dad, who, at 92, died earlier this year, was a quality-control inspector for the federal government, and his mother ran the household. Although the six kids grew up knowing they had weak eyesight, it wasn’t until the eldest son was diagnosed that Mr. and Mrs. DelRusso sat the others down and said, essentially, “You’re going to slowly go blind.” Not everyone took the news well. One turned to alcohol, and there were, as to be expected, bouts of depression. But Damien—a high-schooler still able to play sports and hang with friends—was more accepting. “Then I graduated, and I wasn’t college material,” he recalls. So his dad, fearful of his son’s limited prospects, steered Damien toward the New Jersey Commission for the Blind, where he took a course in piano tuning. This made sense. Much of the family was musical, playing either guitar or piano, and although Damien hadn’t yet started playing keys himself, he had an affinity for it. “I thought, ‘Hey, this is fun’ – not only to be able to tune a piano, but, when you’re done, play a song or two,” Damien says. “And people liked it. They’d ask, ‘Do you play parties?’ I wasn’t ready at first, but then I took lessons and started doing it. There was great satisfaction in that.”
Neither Nancy nor Damien, however, performs on the CD. They decided, after years of producing “demos” – or low-cost, semi-professional recordings of their songs – that they’d shell out the money necessary to hire a producer and professional musicians. And Damien, usually not one to complain about RP, concedes that the disease has hampered his playing. “That’s the part of blindness that bothers me – that I can’t see the keys as well, especially over the last five years,” he says. “It’s part of the reason I’ve semi-retired from performing.” The investment paid off. Looking Through Rain is a strong album, and though “jazzy”-sounding, it runs the gamut, genre-wise, from rock (“Ain’t Doin’ It with You”) to Broadway (“Each Time I Look at You”) to classical (“Song for Steve”). The former was written for one of Damien’s younger brothers, an accomplished pianist who died, in 1991, of complications from AIDS. Despite his hardships, Damien continues to remain upbeat. He has, after all, 300 more songs he’d like to see make it into recordings and, in Nancy, a co-writer as enthusiastic as he is. They have plans, in fact, to release a CD of songs that all include vocals. His biggest challenge is promotion. Looking Through Rain has gotten good reviews and some air time on the Internet, but because Damien isn’t on tour, playing his tunes for audiences, promotion is mostly word-of-mouth and the result of his networking. “I’d like to get to the point where I can donate even more to the Foundation,” he says, almost apologetically. “I know they have doctors and scientists working hard. And if we can help them find a cure, I’m more than happy to give them the money.” If you’re interested in sampling and/or purchasing Looking Through Rain, you can do so at Damien DelRusso’s website, iTunes, Amazon.com, cdbaby, or Filanthropists.com. |
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