Greg Piccolo has spent a lifetime making music, but the show he brings to Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem on April 24 is about something more specific than a long career.
It is about songs that waited.
When we talked ahead of the show, Greg kept coming back to that idea. This new record is not really about being known as a sax player, and it is not even about being known as a singer. It is about songs he wrote over the years, songs he believed in, songs he felt deserved a chance to finally be heard.
That gives this Godfrey Daniels date a little more weight. It will be the first time audiences hear some of that new material live, before the record is released in June. For Greg, that feels like the start of something he has been moving toward for a long time.
He talked about writing songs since the 1980s and about realizing that some of the material he had held onto still had something to say. He described going back through songs he had never released and deciding they were worth bringing forward now. He said they “deserved a chance,” and that this record became the place to give them one.
That is part of what makes this project feel different. Greg is not chasing nostalgia here. He is not just revisiting the past. He is opening a door on work that stayed with him and finally giving it a proper home.
He recorded 15 songs for the project, then narrowed the final album down to 11. The record is called Who Knows What the Future Holds and is set for release on June 19. The Bethlehem show gives people the rare chance to hear those songs before they are officially out in the world.
Vocals are also part of that story. Greg sings on the new material, but even that came across less like a reinvention and more like something that had always been there. He said singing has been part of his work all along. What feels different now is how fully it connects to the songs themselves, and how central those songs are to the record.
That made one part of our conversation especially interesting. Greg described the pull he has felt for years between different parts of his musical identity. On one side, the saxophone. On the other, the songs. Keep playing the horn. Get the songs out. In his own words, that tension stayed with him, and this record is his answer to it. He is getting the songs out now.
There is also something right about this happening at Godfrey Daniels.
For generations, the Bethlehem venue has been the kind of room where music lands differently. It is close, direct, and built for listening. That matters when an artist is bringing in songs that have lived in notebooks, memories, or unfinished corners for years. In a room like that, the songs do not have to fight for attention.
They can just be heard. Godfrey Daniels has been doing that kind of work since 1976, and it is part of what makes a night like this feel especially fitting. (godfreydaniels.org)
Greg also talked about where all of this started. Before the decades of touring and recording, before the records and the stages, there was just a kid who loved music, sang with his sister, played records, and decided at 13 that instead of mowing lawns, he was going to start a band.
He did not come up through a formal path. He learned by doing, by listening, by jumping into it. That instinct still feels present in the way he talks about music now.
Listen to the full conversation here:
k: https://lehighvalleywithlovemedia.com/podcast/gregpiccolo/
