Sugarpie & the Candymen began in 2008, when five musicians from Piacenza and Cremona – small towns in Northern Italy – decided to share their passion for swing, manouche jazz, blues, soul, pop, and vocal close harmonies. A band was born, with the challenge to marry all these musical styles.
The band is made up of singer Miss Sugarpie, aka Lara Ferrari, and her Candymen: Jacopo Delfini (gipsy guitar and harmonies), Renato Podestà (electric guitar, banjo and harmonies), Roberto Lupo (drums) and Jacopo Sgarzi (double bass). From 2008 to early 2016, the lead vocal chair was held by Georgia Ciavatta.
Very soon the band became a full-time commitment, starting an intense tour in hundreds of jazz clubs around Italy and Europe. This first period allowed Sugarpie and the Candymen to work out both their sound and their repertoire: their musical caleidoscope has the most diverse artists one close to the other, such as Led Zeppelin and Django Reinhardt, The Beatles and Bessie Smith, Van Halen and Benny Goodman, Guns 'n' Roses and Ray Charles, Queen and Peggy Lee and so on.The challenge has been won!
In 2010 the band kept evolving and started writing and performing their original songs, both in Italian and English.They started playing the bigger stages of prestigious festivals all around Europe, and they even did a brief US tour. In the summer of 2011 Sp&TC played at the Ascona Jazz Festival winning the Audience Award.
Sugarpie and the Candymen have released three albums under the IRMA Records label: the first, eponymous, Sugarpie And The Candymen in 2009, the second one Swing'n'Roll in 2011 and the third Waiting For The One in 2014.
Some of their songs had radio airplay on the major national radio stations in Italy (RadioRai1 and RadioRai2) and Switzerland (RSI1, 2, 3). In December 2011 they performed live at the historic radio program Caterpillar, on RadioRai2.
To further enhance their sound, the band had the opportunity to collaborate both live and in the studio with some brilliant Italian and American musicians, such as Michael Supnick, Dean Zucchero, Paolo Tomelleri, Rudy Migliardi, Gregory Agid, Davide Ghidoni, Gianni Di Benedetto and Mattia Cigalini.
In summer 2014 the band met Renzo Arbore, a very famous Italian TV and radio personality and jazz musician himself, and started a collaboration that gave the band the opportunity to play at the Christmas Concert in the Vatican (aired on the national TV in December 2014), the opening night of the Cremona Jazz Festival (April 2015) and the web/radio program Webnotte during the Umbria Jazz festival in July 2015.
In 2015 tha band played also at the EXPO in Milan for Nutella and other famous italian brands. In the fall the band played live at two prestigious radio shows, such as Webnotte and Radio2 Social Club, introducing their 4th album Let it swing, a tribute to the great Beatlles in a progressive-swing way.
On the 6th of November 2015 Let it swing was released and the single Come together (music video) has been on air on various italian radio stations. October 2017 saw the release of Cotton Candy Club, with the single Così splendida (music video).
In December 2017 Arbore Plus was released for Sony Music, a triple CD retrospective by Renzo Arbore, where Sugarpie and the Candymen accompany him in the only two new songs: Esattamente come tu (music video) and Mamma mi piace il ritmo.
