By day, you can find Rocco Bertini handling the day-to-day operations of the Atria Cutter Mill senior living community in Great Neck as its executive director.
But at night, you can find Bertini jamming out on the drums at a local Long Island bar with his rock band, El Camino.
“I’m a business manager, yet, outside of work I have this hobby of being a musician and a rock ’n’ roller,” Bertini said. “And having a good time doing it.”
At a young age, he began his musical career playing in a drum and bugle corps, and later, in his pre-teen years, he joined a marching band.
Bertini said that because he grew up in the 1960’s, when rock ’n’ roll became a more popular genre of music, he had an infatuation with that style of music.
“As rock and classic rock was born, all stemming off the Beatles, I was part of that whole music change,” he said.
When he was a teenager, Bertini said, he bought his first drum set and continued to play the drums until his early 20’s.
He said he had to “put it down” for 25 years when he needed to focus on finding a career.
After receiving his associate’s degree in hotel and restaurant management from a community college in the Catskills, Bertini said he then enrolled in courses with the University of Phoenix, where he received his bachelor’s degree in business administration.
He spent the next six years working in front office management positions at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and then for Marriott.
In the late 1980’s, Bertini said he decided to take a position as a restaurant manager at Millie’s Place, a popular food spot in Great Neck.
He then went on to work for Aramark, a service provider for various industries including healthcare and business, for 16 years, before leaving for the Compass Group, one of Aramark’s competitors.
After leaving the Compass Group, Bertini said he took a job working for the Atria Lynbrook senior living community, where he stayed for about three and a half years.
He said he was then asked by higher-ups in the company to transfer to the Atria Cutter Mill and serve as its executive director as they were seeking to get the building licensed.
“They asked me because of my experience and background, most notably my experience with the Department of Health in healthcare institutions,” Bertini said. “They asked me to come and do the licensing project and to be the executive director for this building.”
He decided to take the job, which he began on April 3.
Bertini said he is responsible for the building’s profitability and ensuring that the building’s 135 residents have all necessary services.
“My responsibility is to make money for the shareholders,” he said. “And as equally important is my responsibility to run an operation that delivers high quality standards, high quality customer service and engaging employee satisfaction.”
The building offers its residents various programs including entertainment, civic engagement, religious interests and creative expression, Bertini said.
“We create an environment that’s engaging, that’s fulfilling,” he said. “We provide all the services and amenities like a hotel.”
While maintaining the happiness of the building’s residents and employees is his day job, Bertini spends his after-work hours doing what he loves, playing music.
He said about five years ago he was eating at a restaurant with a friend who asked him about playing in a band together.
“I said ‘I haven’t played the drums with another live musician for 25 years,’ which was true,” Bertini said.
He said because of his career, he “had no life” other than work.
“I chose to pick up the drums again as a work-life balance opportunity,” Bertini said.
About four years ago, after gathering a group of musicians featuring a lead singer, two guitarists, a bass player, keyboard player and himself as the drummer, he said the band decided to see how the public would feel about their sound.
“We got our first break playing in a pizzeria in Freeport called Montana’s,” Bertini said. “We needed a place to play in order to draw an audience to see how we were doing.”
After getting a pretty good crowd reaction, he said the band sought out to play in bigger and better venues.
One night, while he was going to Montana’s to pick up pizza, Bertini said he bumped into the son of one of his residents at the Atria Lynbrook, who owned a restaurant in Freeport called E.B. Elliot’s, and asked him how his band could play at his business.
“He was surprised,” he said. “He was like you have a band? He knows I’m the executive director of an assisted living community. He wasn’t expecting that.”
After listening to a sample CD that El Camino had recorded, Bertini said the E.B. Elliot’s owner wanted the band to come play at the restaurant shortly after its grand re-opening after Hurricane Sandy forced it to close temporarily.
“The band El Camino really took off after Sandy because we had our first opportunity to play E.B. Elliott’s,” he said.
Bertini said the band has played all over Long Island in Freeport, Rockville Centre and Long Beach, and has a full summer schedule that will include playing at bars and restaurants almost every weekend.
“It’s a ton of fun,” he said. “We play classic rock ’n’ roll and contemporary rock ’n’ roll.”
Bertini said the band’s decision to play all genres of rock stems from the diversity of age within the group.
Three of its members are above the age of 50, while the other three are in their 20’s.
He said the band plays everything from the Killers and Matchbox Twenty to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Ed Sheeran and Eminem.
“We’re all over the place, we do a bunch of stuff,” Bertini said.
But he admitted that sometimes the band butts heads on what to play, with some of the younger bandmates wanting to play newer songs.
“I’m not opposed to it, I just don’t want to abandon my classic rock ’n’ roll roots,” Bertini said.
He said one of his favorite songs to sing is “When You Were Young’’ by the Killers.
“I hated it at first,” Bertini said. “Then all of a sudden I started singing it and started loving it.”
After realizing he liked the song, he said, he decided to record himself singing it and showed El Camino’s members.
“I shocked the band when they showed up for practice that night,” Bertini said.
While serving as Atria Cutter Mill’s executive director occupies most of his time, he said he will continue playing with El Camino as they seem to have a good thing going.
“I’m a much better drummer than I was 20 years ago, and that’s because I’m playing every week,” Bertini said.
