Vinny Adinolfi saw his dream to make it in Vegas come true in 2016 when The Bronx Wanderers landed a nightly gig at Bally’s Windows showroom. The family affair, inspired in part at the suggestion of actor Chazz Palmienteri, includes sons Vinny Jr. on keyboards and Nick on drums. The boys started playing with their father as kids, and add pitch-perfect hits by the Beach Boys and Queen to dad’s predilection for the music of his childhood Bronx, especially the songs of his idols Dion and the Belmonts.

The Bronx Wanderers’ set list could be the soundtrack of an outdoor summer party in an Italian New York neighborhood circa 1977.

Yeah, I mean basically the show is like a kind of soundtrack to my life because it opens up that I grew up on Arthur Avenue, and Dion came out of our neighborhood so the first two songs are “The Wanderer” and “I Wonder Why.” And then the ’70s, when I do get a job at a record label, we’re doing stuff with Private Stock Records where Frankie (Valli) was doing “My Eyes Adored You” and “Who Loves You” and all that stuff that was coming out then. It just became this thing where we move into the Four Seasons. Tommy DeVito was a friend of ours that had seen the kids and I play years ago and I picked his brain. This was right when the play (Jersey Boys) was about to happen. … Then the play explodes and there’s like a million Four Seasons bands, so I said to him, “I want to do something with the kids,” and he helped me put that first medley together.

So it kind of started out with a Four Seasons medley?

We started out as a Dion tribute band because that’s what came out of the neighborhood. Chazz was my friend from A Bronx Tale.

How did you meet Chazz Palminteri?

I just knew him from the neighborhood. He’s probably about, I’m going to say, 10 years older. He was in a band in the neighborhood called Razzmachazz, so when I was a teenager growing up he would be playing the clubs. He was a good singer, and he always told everybody he was going to be a famous actor some day. Everybody knew him and he was great, but Dion was the guy.

What kind of Bronx were you born into?

Out of our neighborhood, everybody ate, slept, breathed Dion. He was the guy. You saw one of the Belmonts walking down the block, that’s Bronx royalty. The same thing with The Regents, who had the song “Barbara Ann,” and the Earls who had the song “Remember Then.” These guys were all in the neighborhood so we’d always see them in the neighborhood, and these guys were national recording artists so as a kid growing up, you could touch them. If you were a kid in Memphis Elvis was behind the big, gated walls. You couldn’t get to him but in the Bronx you could reach out and touch them, and there’s his cousin and this guy went to school with him. Everybody knew everybody, so it was really cool.

What music did you hear in the Bronx when you became musically aware?

The whole thing was, growing up I wanted to be like Dion. That was the music I absolutely loved. I got to hang out with all those guys and I would sneak in bars and watch the Belmonts’ drummer. The guy that does the bass in “I Wonder Why”—his name was Carlo—he had a band called the Midnight Sun. I’d sneak in bars to watch them.

But Dion was kind of done by the time you got into music, right?

At that time—I’m gonna say late-’60s, early ’70s, when I first started sneaking into things—he had come back with “Abraham, Martin and John,” but he was doing folk stuff. He was playing the Village.

Yeah, you were appreciating this guy from the neighborhood, but music had moved on.

And I appreciated that he was doing folk stuff, singer-songwriter stuff. The guys in the neighborhood were all playing, everybody was starting to get heavier. I was the guy the neighborhood who … what’s the word? I didn’t fit. Everybody around me was listening to Aerosmith.

You were like the guy in the ’70s that listened to rockabilly.

Which was the truth. All my friends were listening to Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith. Steven Tyler’s dad was the vocal coach at the next school down the block. Mr. Tallarico. So now, I’m from the Bronx. You can’t join the chorus. It’s not Bronx, so finally in my senior year, I did a talent show, and the guy in our school was Mr. G, and Mr. G said to me, “I want to introduce you to Mr. Tallarico.” And they both yelled at me. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You should be taking vocal lessons. You’re really good.” “Ahh, I never thought about it.” I wanted to do it but I didn’t want to be the outcast of the … I was on the baseball team, football guy. I didn’t want to be with the choral guys. So I never really did it, and it wasn’t until I was, you know, finally in my senior year that I said “You know what? This is really what I wanted to do.” And I was lucky enough. Dion was working with Cashman & West at that time. I knew him enough from the neighborhood to contact him and say, “I really want a job in the record business.” And when I went to the offices of Cashman & West I said, “I want a job. I know Dion. I’m from the Bronx,” and they’re looking at me like, “Who is this cat?” So they get him on the phone and they say, “There’s some kid here says he knows you and wants a job,” and they gave me a job. And the rest is history.

How did you parlay that into producing?

I kind of went in there with this whole attitude that I wanted to be a singer.

What kind of singer did you want to be?

Again, out of touch. I was watching guys like Paul Anka in the ’70s. Tom Jones had hits in the ’70s. Engelbert (Humperdinck) had hits in the ’70s. One of my teachers was one of Engelbert’s bodyguards, so I got to go backstage in the ’70s and saw him. He had “After the Lovin’” at that point, so he was hot again. So all those Vegas 20-piece orchestra guys, that’s where I wanted to be. I wanted to be one of them, so I go to Cashman & West with this whole attitude like … Dion had an album at the time called “Return of the Wanderer,” and it was a good kickin’ album, and I said, “This is the type of material I’d like to do.” I became so valuable to them that they just kind of took me in. I had three fathers: Cashman & West, and their third partner was a guy named Phil Kurnit. Phil basically took me under his wing. He was the attorney that ran the label. And they said, “You gotta not be a kid, and you gotta not be stupid. Six o’clock at night, we’re home. All these guy are out on the road, they’re living at hotels. They’re never home, never see their family. We’re home every night, we have dinner with our families, and this is what you want.” So Cashman & West start taking me to sessions. They start letting me sing backup. I got to do some stuff with Henry Gross, which was really a thrill. When I see Henry, to this day, I bow down and I kiss him. My first gold record was “Shannon.”

Did you play on it?

I sang backup on it but I didn’t get credit on that because I was just the kid in the office, but Henry was just super to me at that point and the thing is they gave me a gold record. That was the first one that went on my wall, and it just kind of started. I was their assistant on everything. I went in and assisted them on the Return of the Wanderer album. Then from there we did Fire in the Night, which was really a stiff and went nowhere, but we got to work on that. Then the next thing you know it branches into they want me to start doing A&R stuff. I brought them Twisted Sister because I had played with Twisted Sister in bars in the Bronx, and they passed on them. They didn’t want to go that route. They had just come through a rough period. The whole record business was changing. The whole payola thing was rough, and they just really … they said, “You know, we really don’t want to go down this road. We’re happy doing publishing, light projects. We’ll put a Dion thing out. We’ll put a best of Jim Croce out,” and then it was all starting to work. A little bit later on Cashman does the song “Willie, Mickey and the Duke” (“Talkin’ Baseball”), which kind of changes the whole dynamic where all of a sudden we’re like a sports label, and we’re doing things for all the major league teams. We had a football song and we had a thing for Wimbledon, and we had a song for The Masters.

How far back does Bronx Wanderers’ history reach? It started way before your sons joined the band, right?

The band with the kids started 14 years ago. I was playing in a band called Streets of the Bronx, which was Dion’s band when Dion wasn’t touring. I was Dion and the band was his band, and I kept telling them “We need to tell them. He’s going to get mad.” Long story short, he finds out, to which he was not happy, and fires everybody. Now I’m with his band and we’re playing, and the drummer gets a kidney stone attack. I had done an off-Broadway play, and my wife picked me up with my young son. And he comes in and he says he wants to play drums, so the funny thing is the music director (of the play), to break my chops, says, “Let the kid play.” So now he sits in with the band and he kills it. He does the overture from the play, and I’m like “How did you learn that?” And he’s like, “I took the tapes out of your bag at home.” I had no clue, I mean, I knew he dabbled at the house, but I had no clue. So now the music director, joking around, says, “Well, we got our understudy.” Two days later, I’m playing with Dion’s band and the drummer gets a kidney stone. We have no drummer. The music director (of the band) says, “Do you know anybody?” And I said, “Listen, I know this is going to sound off the wall, but my 11-year-old can keep a beat.” So we put Nicky in, and Nicky winds up just keeping a straight beat. We plow through the job, Chazz is in the audience taking pictures of him, and the place goes crazy because he’s 11 years old and he’s like three feet tall. And the place goes berserk, so Chazz looks at me and says, “You’re crazy. Why don’t you start a group with the kids?”

After Nick started sitting in on drums with your band how did you bring Vinny in?

I started bringing Nick in to play with those guys, and Nick starts walking around with a wad of money and Vinny got all mad. He’s like, “Where’s Nicky getting all this money from?” I said, “Well, he’s working with Daddy.” He said, “Well I want to work with you.” Vinny was a piano player and we already had a piano player, but Vinny could also play guitar. So I said, “Tomorrow, you’re going to play guitar.” So he played guitar, Nicky played drums, the other guy played keyboards, and the next thing you know we’re like this novelty act sitting in with them. And I said to the guy, “We’re starting to get really popular, as it’s all about the family even though it’s this other guy’s band.” And I said to him, “You’re either going to make me a partner or I’m going to leave.” And he didn’t know about my contacts or my connections, and he said, “You’re going to die.” And we left him, and the thing was Chazz said to me “Do a tribute to the neighborhood. Do a tribute to Dion. Call it The Wanderers. You’ll do great.” So we start the band, we call it The Wanderers, I think we did one or two jobs, and I got cease-and-desist letters from everybody—the movie people, there’s another band called The Wanderers, there was some kind of company called The Wanderers. I couldn’t use the name. So I called Chazz. I said, “You know what? We’re all from the Bronx. I’m going to call it The Bronx Wanderers,” which at that time I was horrified because it sounded like motorcycle gang and I said, “I’m really not happy with this. I really think it’s going to be a scary name.” And in hindsight it’s the best thing I ever did because so many people resonate with the word “Bronx.” The next thing you know we explode with it, and the kids and I left. We really started as a trio and I started calling in other friends.