Our Story
We're Cipollari — formerly known as Cotton Pickin' Kids — a bluegrass family band from Alabama. We're a family of thirteen: our parents, and eleven kids, six of whom make up the performing band today, writing and playing our own contemporary bluegrass music rooted in tradition.
It began at a barbecue in Jones Chapel, where our dad — who wasn't even into bluegrass at the time — struck up a conversation with a man named Crate Shelton, a bluegrass music teacher who could play every instrument except the dobro. That one conversation changed the course of our family's life. Crate started teaching us, and for years he was more than a teacher — he felt like a second granddad, always right there beside us, patient and supportive, especially every year at the Shade Tree Band Contest at the Summertown Bluegrass Reunion in Tennessee.
Back then, it wasn't just the six of us — it was cousins, aunts, and uncles too, all learning together as one big family band. We went to Summertown year after year, barely able to play the first couple of times. By the third year, our aunts and uncles had moved on with their own lives, so it became just us kids and our cousins carrying it forward. That year, at the registration table, we needed a band name on the spot — our dad hadn't thought about it — so he just said something about "Cotton Pickin' Kids," and it stuck for years. Our cousins have since moved on too, married or getting there, but the music stayed with us.
When Crate Shelton passed away, a professional vocalist and fiddler named Tina M. stepped in to carry on his work — not just teaching us instruments, but polishing our harmonies and helping us grow from a family who could play into a real band. Tina still teaches our younger five siblings today, the next generation just starting to learn. Along the way, Zeb Snyder also became part of our story, teaching mandolin, guitar, and dobro — he still teaches guitar to our sister Cecilia and dobro to our youngest brother Giovanni today.
Rooted in that traditional bluegrass foundation, our sound has grown into something that's ours. Savio plays mandolin and wrote every original instrumental the band has released, including "Northern Lights," which many listeners have called an instrumental masterpiece. Therese plays fiddle and wrote our biggest hit, "Gumball Machine." Gianluca plays banjo, Rosalinda plays bass, Giovanni plays dobro, and Cecilia plays guitar. We're especially known for our harmonies — strong, layered vocals, often carried by the three girls singing together, which has become one of the signatures people remember us by.
We go by our real family name now — Cipollari — but that random moment at a shade tree contest, and the people who taught us everything we know, are where all of this truly started.
People come and go from a story like that. Teachers pass on their knowledge and move on to rest. Cousins grow up and build lives of their own. But the music stays, and so do the people who choose to keep showing up for it, chapter after chapter. That's exactly what our Patreon family is to us — not just support, but a part of this story that keeps going.
Every single dollar helps carry this family's journey forward. If you'd like to be part of the next chapter, joining takes less than a minute.
If you've never heard of Patreon, here's the short version: it's simply a website where you can support artists you love directly, the same easy way you'd pay for anything else online — just your card, a couple clicks, and you're in. No app to figure out, nothing complicated.
For just $1 a month, you get to watch our music videos a full four months before they go up on YouTube, download 40 of our past songs as free MP3s, and help pick the next song we film.
