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Becki diGregorio was born and raised in San Jose, California.
She loved music early on and grew up listening (and singing) to
The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkle, The Carpenters, and anything
else in her mom’s record collection. Her first musical
instrument was her mom’s baritone ukelele discovered in the back
of a closet. Other instruments followed, including the clarinet,
electric organ, and banjo. Becki first picked up an acoustic
guitar in sixth grade and began to discover her own unique
chording style. Two years later she strummed a Takamine
12-string hanging in a music store and instantly fell in love.
“It sounded like heaven.”
In 1983 Becki took up bass and began playing in a local country
band (“I made enough to go to India that year”), and soon formed
a group that would eventually become “Seventh Wave,” a rock trio
based in Santa Cruz. The band scored coveted opening slots as
well as headlining such clubs as The Catalyst and Palookaville,
along with a host of music festivals around the San Francisco
Bay Area.
With her interest in songwriting developing, Becki joined the
Northern California Songwriters Association and began playing
solo acoustic shows of original music. She won several “Best
Song” awards from this organization, and was also awarded a
“Certificate of Achievement” from Billboard’s Song Contest for
her song “On The Edges Now.”
After singing on a number of other people’s recording projects, she
soon decided to record a CD of her own music. Released in 1996,
“seven worthies… of the bamboo grove” featured a collection of
original songs and a cover of the sixties psychedelic hit “Open
My Eyes” by The Nazz. The album became popular in Europe and was
picked up for distribution by Jarmusic in Germany. “seven
worthies…” has garnered excellent reviews from as diverse places
as Italy, Brazil and Japan.
Becki likes to refer to her CD’s as “five-inch pieces of plastic of
what I hear in my head.” The CD “god’s empty chair” (a line from
a Jack Kerouac novel) is her most recent offering. Among the
songs on the album, she says that “Cats In The Aviary” is for
her the most meaningful. “It’s about the struggle to maintain
your balance and sense of self, despite those who make you
question and doubt what is most important in your life. I see
these people as cats in an aviary – sitting, waiting, a constant
reminder of life’s uncertainty; they take the ‘flight’ away from
those who dream...”
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