Las Vegas showman notches 100 No. 1s on iTunes charts

Songwriting can be an insular process. Every morning over the past few years, Frankie Moreno has taken his coffee and his ideas to his home recording studio.

Usually, the prolific Vegas songwriter and showman comes out with a song. One-hundred times, the song has reached the top of an iTunes music chart.

No. 100, a song called “Bombs Away,” landed Saturday, topping the iTunes blues charts the day after it was released. Thus capped a period dating to the COVID shutdown where Moreno issued at least one single a week.

A Vegas resident for two decades, Moreno celebrated Saturday at Sahara Theatre, his first show ever at the hotel. A couple hundred FM Army fan-club members turned out, as is customary. That’s the contingent who has lit the fire for Moreno’s remarkable achievement.

Mayor Carolyn Goodman proclaimed Aug. 12 as Frankie Moreno Day (yours truly stood in for the mayor for the on-stage annoucement).

The iTunes effort actually started five years ago as a self-propelled challenge (and for Moreno, they are all self-propelled) to write and perform 10 original songs over 10 weeks for a series at Myron’s at The Smith Center. He worked closely with his brother, Tony, during that run.

It was a crazy artistic workload, but the process led to six albums reaching various Billboard charts (including the regional Heatseeker charts). During the pandemic shutdown, Moreno dropped new singles regularly, playing all the instruments in isolation.

Moreno issued those songs on iTunes, usually dropping at 9 p.m. Thursdays. He mobilized the FM Army, headed by president Kathy Cornelius, to buy those tunes at $1.29 apiece (iTunes takes 30 percent of those sales).

The platform updates its listings daily. Moreno estimates 500,000 fans are on his email list, which has been growing since FM Army was launched in February 2017. About double that number are in Moreno’s social-media reach. Cornelius has placed FM Army index cards on tables at all of Moreno’s shows, in Las Vegas and across the country, building the base every day.

“We realized pretty early on this is a numbers game,” Moreno says. “People ask, ‘How did we do this?’ By talking to the people who come to the shows. It’s all about the fan club.”

To explain the creative productivity, guitar and studio great Pat Thrall — who has been mixing Moreno’s most recent singles and albums — says the artist has “a photographic memory for music.”

Moreno says, “It just seems when I need a guitar solo, I have a lot of files in my brain for how to do that. When I was 7 years old, I could hear a full Mozart concerto once and play it perfectly. I can’t really do that now, and I can’t explain it, but that’s how I am.”

Until sequestering himself during the COVID shutdown, Moreno found musical ideas while traveling. He hears birds making music and mentally records the melodies.

“Birds never repeat their melodies, so I would kind of bank those sounds,” he says. “So I’m plagiarizing birds, I guess (laughs).”

Moreno is often asked whey he’s not more famous nationally or internationally. His music is far more popular within the FM Army than FM radio. He jokes, “Yeah? Why am I not more famous?”

Moreno doesn’t have the power of a record label — he owns his own. He’s not present music to execs who run radio stations across the country. He has no specific music category (somehow, he’s charted on reggae, classical and even spoken word, in error). He makes his living with his direct marketing through iTunes.

In a world where a clip on TikTok can break an artist, Moreno still releases fully realized records, expertly produced, singles that belong on albums.

“I can’t stand TikTok,” Moreno says. “I’m a grown man. I look at it, and I cannot wrap my head around who that is supposed to entertain. I’m just still into writing every day and making new music for whoever wants to hear it.”

Cool Hang Alert

Big ups to Juliet Cocktail Room at The Venetian for bringing in top-notch VegasVille performers. We say this even before the place has celebrated its grand opening, which is Thursday with “American Idol” Season 4 finalist Mikalah Gordon. The popular, and busy, Nieve Malandra is in Saturday and anchors the rotation of performers at what was once The Dorsey and, before that, the Bourbon Room.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.