LULING, La. (WGNO) — Kevin Gullage is as at home inside Mariano’s Italian eatery as he is playing on big stages. That’s due in part because Mariano’s was one of the first places he started playing publicly as a teenager.
“I played here for 7 years. From the age of 12 to about 19 that’s a long time, earning bones, just getting my bones in,” said Gullage.
Along the way, Gullage also became an alumnus of the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp, NOCCA, the WGNO Twist stage, and graduated from Loyola’s music program last year, but like most musicians, he was impacted by the pandemic.
“It was like everything that I’d been working for so long was going up, up up and COVID happened and it just shut down.”
Along with it went dates in China, South Africa, and Hong Kong. Gullage says it was a gut punch. The shutdown gave Kevin and his musician dad Tony Gullage a chance to spend more family time doing the things he loves like fishing and spending time with his chickens but travel and playing have resumed.
His talents will be on display this Sunday in a new episode of American Idol.
“It’s monumentally exciting actually, just everything behind it was so forward-moving that it happened so fast.”