Pete Scully, TriAxis' own BDM, sings a duet with Stevie Wonder to close out a recent Mohegan Sun concert.

Pete, a Business Development Manager here at TriAxis, has long been known by his clients for "his pipes". However, over 10,000 Stevie Wonder fans, including Stevie and his 10-piece band, found out they could do more than help customers with disk storage-related solutions. Pete won a local contest held by a Hartford-based radio station, WDRC-FM, and receive a pair of fourth row seats and this once-in-a-lifetime chance to sing a duet with Mr. Wonder. The concert was held at Mohegan Sun Arena on Thursday, June 19th.

Pete and Stevie co-opted on the last song of the evening, "Another Star". This was not a planned song on their set-list, but it was what Pete wanted to sing, so they closed out the show with it.

Pete, who is usually talking to customers and prospect about storage products from the likes of CommVault, Compellent, Data Domain, Dell / EqualLogic, ExaGrid, Mimosa, Spectra Logic, and the like, was able to get back to his musical roots. In addition to having be a professional singer, Pete has done commercials (oddly enough, one for CA called 'Why I'm CA' to the melody of 'YMCA!') and voice-overs before settling down to high-tech storage sales. Pete takes off personal time each year to sing in a benefit concert, The Paper Bag series back on Long island, NY. This year, he will be opening up the concert with, quite appropriately, with "Karn Evil 9" from Emerson Lake & Palmer which begins with "Welcome back my friend, to the show that never ends..." Additionally, Pete will be singing "Enter Sandman" from Metallica, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" from The Tokens (in falsetto, he tells us), and Frank Zappa's "Kosmic Debris", among others.

When regaling us at the office about the show, Pete told us, "Prior to the start of the show, one of Stevie Wonder's producers met with me to determine which song I'd be singing. I had decided on "Another Star," because the song is better suited to sing in duet-style. He gave me the set list and told me that I would be closing the show with this song - with no rehearsal….gulp!!!!. It was then time for me to get back to my seat.

"The show was fantastic," Pete continued. "as Stevie likes to involve the audience throughout the course of the show. He played all of the classics as well as a few new songs. It then came time for me to do my thing. I was escorted side-stage, and at this point Stevie was telling the audience that I had won a singing competition through DRCFM, and that I'd be doing a duet with him."

As if that wasn't enough to make Mr. Scully nervous, he told us, "I had a chance to tell the crowd, 'I have Stevie Wonder as a safety net - How do ya like that?' What happened next??? I sang my butt off!!!"

What was it like to meet Stevie? "He was very gracious, in that he gave me the opportunity to meet with him at a party after the show. He told me that during the song, he was forgetting his own lyrics. He also gave me permission to use the photo seen here as it was taken by his photographer."

After The Paper Bag series in Long Island, Pete will be doing a cameo appearance at MumFest 2008 a few weeks later. All we can say is "Wow!!"


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