By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

Don't let the dark suit, conservative tie and corner office at one of the city's largest law firm's fool you: Bill Savino can rock.

By day, he is a senior partner in Damon Morey LLP and chairman of the Business Litigation and Insolvency Department. At night, however, he loosens the tie, straps on a guitar and travels the local circuit to rock the blues as part of his band, Jelly Jar.

Though family and career commitments have whittled his playing time down to perhaps once a month, Savino's career as a bar-room musician dates back more than 40 years to his years spent growing up in Niagara Falls.

"My first instrument was a violin," he says.

He played the instrument, a gift from his grandfather, from age 8 until he took up the bass guitar in middle school.

"I started playing my first gigs in the 10th grade in the teen clubs," he says. "Then I started playing the bars when I was 16 in the spring of 1968."

So, did Savino see himself as a future musical star or did he have visions of being a corporate lawyer?

"I did not give up my dream of making it big until 1976," he says. "The people I was playing with made it and have not had a day job since, and I am now a lawyer."

At the time, the trio played avant garde jazz, a genre that is still Savino's passion although he says lack of venues and a shrinking audience of aficionados dictated the shift to playing R&B and blues.

"Doing so allows me to play with some regularity and have an enthusiastic audience that is easy to access," he says. "Playing more abstract music can be difficult."

Fot those who wonder how an aspiring musician ended up in a law firm, Savino says it came down to being realistic: "I was always a practical person, and I wanted to work with a safety net. You never go into a room you can't get out of."

Lawyers and corporate executives often have a hobby or two to help them escape the daily grind, but Savino scoffs at the notion that for him, music is a relaxing outlet.

"I'm pretty serious about everything I do. I'm pretty intense about the music," he says, adding that he hasn't had a drink while playing in 43 years. "I found that it took the precision out of my playing and I take every performance very seriously.

"I expect perfection from myself every time. I may never attain it, but I expect it."

Savino estimates he has been with a dozen bands over the years, including spending the last 16 with his current group. Decades later, the style of music may be different and the band mates have changed, but he still has the passion - though in some ways he is happy with the way things have evolved and that the pace has slowed a bit.

"When I was 16, there was a club we played called the Victory Lounge. It was brutal," he says. "The Sunday deal was you started at 3 and you played until 1 with an hour off for dinner. It was tough, but that was how you became a professional."

Savino says the pace was grueling, but as a young man in the 1960s, the crowds were great and the cash wasn't bad, either.

"I did the math, and the 2011 equivalent of what I was making then playing those six nights, adjusted for inflation, is about $35,000 a year," he says. "The compensation to bands in the '60s was so much better than what it is today. What we are making today is almost comical when compared to the buying power of what we were making four and a half decades ago."

According to Savino, the biggest change during his years in music is the recent evolution of the business - driven largely by technology.

"The music industry is broken because there is so much content available at every portal on a free basis. Add to that the Karaoke clubs and the clubs with satellite music and there is only so much room left," he says.

Things may be different, but as he leans back in his chair and tells stories of days gone by, it's clear that he thinks there are few jobs as cool as playing bass guitar for a crowd of appreciative fans. And for someone who has been at it as long as Savino, surely he must have some interesting stories about playing the club circuit, especially in the free-loving, musically driven 1960s. Savino the litigator smiles and proceeds to take a trip down memory lane.

"We played in some really bad places," he says of the early years. "I remember one time I had to kill a rat onstage with my amp. The thing was running across in front of me and I just picked the amp up and smashed it."

A true musician, he kept playing, squashed rat and all. But that isn't even close to the wildest thing that ever happened, he adds.

"After one show, a person tried to assassinate me and attacked my car with belts and chains," he says, matter-of-factly.

Say what?

It was Niagara Falls, 1969, and Savino was onstage with his band, which included Buffalo Music Hall of Famer Frank Grisanti, when a rowdy patron made a loud request to the band. Savino says he was never one to take requests, and after a few more attempts, he shot the man down with a sarcastic joke. Things went downhill fast.

"He told my band he was going to kill me, and he told them about other people he had killed," Savino says. "He was a scary guy and my band bailed on me."

Savino snuck out the back and made his way to his Mustang, planning to escape. Instead, he drove right into the path of the assassin, who was armed with a chain and ready to make good on his threat.

Some nifty driving helped Savino escape. A month later, his attacker beat a man into a coma. The memories of that night in the Falls are fresh in Savino's memory, even 40 years later.

When he wasn't crushing rats, evading murderers and knocking out some sweet music, he got the chance to interview some heavyweight musicians as a freelance writer in his early years.

"I've interview B.B. King, members of Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa," he says, adding that the Zappa interview was the pinnacle of young Savino's career. "Zappa started the interview by telling me I was wasting his time because he didn't like my first question. I had asked him who his influences in music were and he told me he was totally self-taught and the interview was over."

Or was it?

Says Savino: "I said to him, 'You're not self-taught because you play 12-tone music and you can't learn to compose that by listening to it.' "

Zappa was caught off-guard by the young man's understanding of music, so what began as a standoff turned into a 45-minute interview with a musical legend. It's just another piece in the musical puzzle of a man with a love of the bass guitar and a passion for playing out.

"I still love to play, and as long as they keep making the equipment lighter to carry and load," he laughs, "I'll keep playing."