Trials of the Road

An adept finger-style guitarist, natural singer and expressive
songwriter, acoustic blues artist Paul Geremia has spent the last 40
years playing folk- and country-blues, creating a personal style
influenced by his heroes, such as Howlin’ Wolf, Son House and Skip
James.

Geremia’s a true journeyman, too, spending about six months out of
the year driving himself to gigs across the country, alone in his 1996
Nissan Maxima, the odometer of which showed about 268,000 miles earlier
this week. In a recent interview, he said he travels between 50,000 and
75,000 miles each year.

“It’s a necessity, but I also enjoy it. I don’t know about everybody
else, but for me, it’s the only really logical and realistic way to get
around,” said the 65-year-old Geremia, who was born in Providence,
R.I., and still keeps a home there.

But he’s just as often on the road.

“Sometimes, I stay with friends; I have a few along the way on the
road. But I often stay in motels on the road,” he said via cell phone
from a windy truck stop about 25 miles west of Omaha. “I play as many
gigs as I can. Out West, where I am now, sometimes it’s a little longer
between gigs, because towns are farther apart than they are back East.
It takes a little while longer to get from one town to another.”

Geremia will return to Tucson to perform in the lush and intimate
environs of the courtyard at Old Town Artisans on Friday, May 15. The
show will include an opening set by Phoenix’s Hans Olson, a member of
the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame.

Geremia has played in 48 of our country’s states. “I think I’ve
played in every state except Utah and Nevada. But I have a gig in
Nevada this tour, so I am whittling them down little by little.”

Although he’s playing often now, audiences in the United States
haven’t always been receptive to Geremia’s music. Tastes in music
evolve as trends ebb and flow.

“There were times when I was getting frequent tours in Europe. …
But the amount I have played in Europe has dropped off in the last 10
years or so, which roughly corresponds to the increase in my American
touring, luckily for me.”

Geremia, whose last album was Love, Murder and Mosquitos (Red
House), in 2004, started playing blues harmonica when 12 or 13 years
old, he recalled, and he first learned about the world of traditional
folk music during rehearsals for a school performance.

“I had a third-grade teacher who kept me after school and taught me
Navajo Indian songs so that I could perform them in a play or pageant
type of thing that they were putting on. That was my first exposure to
folk music.”

As a teenager, Geremia picked up the acoustic guitar and began
studying folk blues—he now plays 6- and 12-string guitar, as well
as piano. He soon became enamored with the early Delta-style blues
players. At 19, he finally got to attend the Newport Folk Festival.

“I always had wanted to go to the Newport Folk Festival, but I
wasn’t able to get there until 1963. That year, I was working and only
able to go for Sunday afternoon and evening, but I heard Mississippi
John Hurt, and that just twisted my head around. I don’t want to
overstate the effect, but that experience of hearing him was a little
bit like waking up after being asleep my whole life.”

Geremia spent a year or two in college, but dropped out to pursue
music full-time in 1966. His first album, Just Enough, was
released by Folkways Records in 1968.

“I found a $14-a-week room at a rooming house in Providence, and
I’ve been lucky ever since that I’ve been able to make my living by
(music). I’ve been lucky to have spent my life doing what I love
best.”

Soon, Geremia was sharing stages with the musicians he idolized,
such as Wolf, House and James, and becoming part of their legacy.

“I met them and knew them, so I got some pointers just watching
them, and I did get to open some shows for some of these people in the
1960s. Skip James showed me the tuning he used. Howling Wolf showed me
some things he learned from Charley Patton. But basically, I learned
everything I know from watching and listening.”

Among some of the other artists whose music he studied faithfully
are Woody Guthrie, Babe Stovall, Yank Rachell, Blind Lemon Jefferson,
Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red, King Oliver and Pink Anderson.

“Eventually, I learned how you adapt what you learn to what you’re
doing. Old 78 recordings also were very helpful. I haunted the
Salvation Army stores and junk stores looking for them, and I still do
when I am on the road. It’s a great resource, now that the old-timers
are mostly gone.”

Life as an itinerant blues musician can be lonely, too, but Geremia
said he has been less lonely during the last several years.

“I’ve sort of gravitated toward spending more time with a woman I
know in North Texas, whose family has a big spread down there on a
wheat farm. I even lived there for a while a couple of winters ago. And
then she comes and visits me sometimes in Rhode Island during the
summer. It’s been a big relief from the trials of the road.”

This article appears in May 14-20, 2009.