Cotton Pickin Kids Is Now Cipollari: The Story Behind Our Name Change
Savio here, the mandolin player of Cipollari.
If you've searched for the Cotton Pickin Kids lately and landed here wondering what happened to them, here's the short answer: we didn't go anywhere. We just started going by our real name.
We are Cipollari — the same family, the same siblings, the same porch, the same bluegrass you've always known us for. New name. Same sound.
How "Cotton Pickin Kids" Was Born
The name was never supposed to be permanent. It was never really supposed to be anything.
It happened at a shade-tree band contest at the Summertown Bluegrass Reunion in Tennessee. Our dad, Fabio, walked up to the registration table with a carload of kids and no band name to put on the form. When the woman behind the table asked what the band was called, he laughed, thought for half a second, and said the first thing that came out under his breath: "Those cotton pickin kids." It wasn't planned. It just stuck.
At the time, we weren't really a "band" yet — just a family who'd grown up around music. It started even before that contest, at a barbecue our mom and dad took us to, back when me (Savio) and Therese were the only two kids in the family. There, our dad met a bluegrass picker, Crate Shelton, and asked him to teach our aunts and uncles, since our grandfather was looking for someone to pass music down. We grew up watching them play, wanted in ourselves, and eventually Crate started teaching us too — nearly every instrument we play today, we learned from him. From there he got us going as a band and drove us to Summertown year after year.
That name carried us through years of festivals, porches, and videos that found their way to people all over — a lot of growing up done in front of an audience that watched us go from kids just starting out to a band people made a point to come see.
So Why Change It?
A few reasons, and none of them are sad ones.
The band that started as a group of siblings and cousins has changed shape over the years. The cousins who used to stand next to us on stage have grown up and gone on to build their own lives, as it should be. What's left, and what's been the heart of it for a while now, is the six of us — siblings — plus our parents and five younger brothers and sisters coming up right behind us, learning the same instruments we did.
We also weren't "kids" in the way that name described anymore. It fit when we were a handful of siblings ranging from toddlers to young teens. It fits less now that we've been doing this for years and are still doing the thing we've always done — just further along than anyone expected from a name that got invented on the spot at a registration table.
So we went with the name that was always ours to begin with: our actual family name. Cipollari.
What "Cipollari" Means to Us
There's no clever backstory here, and that's kind of the point. Cipollari isn't a stage name. It's not something we picked for how it sounds. It's simply who we are — our family's name, long before any of us ever picked up a mandolin or a fiddle.
After years of being known by a name that was born as an off-the-cuff line at a registration table, there was something that felt right about performing under the name that's actually ours. It's not a rebrand in the marketing sense. It's just us, introducing ourselves properly.
What Hasn't Changed
Everything you came here for is still here.
- The same six siblings: Savio (me) on mandolin, Therese on fiddle, Gianluca on banjo, Rosalinda on bass, Giovanni on dobro, and Cecilia on guitar.
- The same three-part harmonies people tell us stop them in their tracks.
- The same originals, written by Savio and Therese, alongside the bluegrass and gospel covers we grew up on.
- The same family — 13 of us now, with five younger siblings starting to learn the instruments we started on.
- The same porch, the same heart, the same music we've been making since we were kids too small to hold our own instruments.
We're still the band that learned to play together on a mix of gospel and bluegrass standards long before we were teenagers. We're still the band Crate Shelton got started, and we've kept playing in the spirit of everything he taught us.
When Crate passed, Tina M. stepped in to carry that on, and it's hard to overstate what she meant to us. She's a professional fiddler and vocalist in her own right, but what made her so important was that she was also an incredible band teacher. She didn't just sharpen each of us individually — our vocals, our instruments — she took the six of us and polished us into an actual band, tight and cohesive in a way we hadn't been before her. The harmonies we're known for now came together under her. She still teaches the five younger siblings coming up behind us today, passing on the same standard she held us to. And Zeb Snyder, who grew up performing in his own family's bluegrass band before going on to play guitar with Appalachian Road Show, has taught Giovanni dobro and Cecilia guitar, and worked with me in my final years of lessons. Every one of us learning this music has had someone who cared enough to hand it down properly.
We're still six brothers and sisters who'd rather make music together than do almost anything else.
We just finally have a name that will still make sense years from now.
Come Say Hello
If you knew us as the Cotton Pickin' Kids, thank you for sticking with us this whole time — you're the reason there's still a "we" to introduce under a new name at all. If you're just finding us for the first time, welcome. Either way, we're glad you're here.
Follow along as the story keeps unfolding — new music and everything else — over on our Patreon, where for $1 a month you get our videos months before YouTube, downloadable MP3s, and a vote on what we play next.
We're Cipollari. From our porch to yours.
— Savio
