Spreading the roots BY BRIAN C. JONES

Paul Geremia is more than an extraordinary country blues musician. He plays mean 12-string and six-string guitars, the harmonica, the piano, and his voice is crystal-clear and earthy at the same time. But since he was 19, he’s also been digging deep into the authentic blues, searching out the last of the old-time musicians, unearthing their records to unlock the secrets of their styles and techniques. At 59, Geremia still takes to the road in his over-the-hill car, discovering and learning, while continuing to write his own music and performing with an energy and style unique among musicians in or out of the blues.

Q: I’ve read that you’ve have been playing the blues since you heard Mississippi John Hurt at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival?

A: John Hurt really knocked me out. Well, he was playing, he was finger picking and just his whole way about him, the whole aura — he had a lot of charisma, in his own way — and I just sensed there was something that was really a great deal of depth there, and it really caught my imagination.

Q: I know this is a hard question to ask, because it is so simplistic, but what was it about those blues and that style that drew you to it?

A: That’s a good question. I don’t really know. It has to do a lot with rhythm. If you listen to someone Charlie Patton, Son House or Skip James . . . you realize that they are playing real clean, and the intervals they are playing on the guitar are, they are specific — it’s almost like piano music. Whereas a lot of interpreters [are] sort of glancing over something, giving a rough idea of what it sounds like, they are not getting the real melodies, not accenting the notes in a way that distinguished one musician from another.

Q: Why were you so taken with the early blues musicians?

A: I realized that what I was listening to was the Rosetta Stone, so to speak, you know. And that if I was going to do anything with that music, I had to be able to get that; I had to be able to translate that musical lingo, and to make it part of my own thing. And so when I would hear something that I didn’t understand, that I couldn’t quite get it, it would be a challenge to figure it out.

Q: Tony Lioce, in a 1982 Providence Journal article, described your life on the road: crashing at friends’ apartment, driving an old Dodge that drank oil as often as it did gas, not having the cash to get a guitar fixed. Is the life of a troubadour still hard?

A: Yeah, I still have to be careful about how I manage my finances. I have to get by on a small amount of money. But I’m working, I’m working a lot more. Of course, the cost of living has gone up at the same time that my income has gone up, so I really feel as though I’ve just been treading water.

Q: How many live performances do you do a year?

A: You know, I really don’t know. Looking at a calendar, I gotta work enough to cover my rent, so forth. I figure if I work every week, that’s 50 some weeks. I think I probably do anything from 150 to 200 a year, something like that.

Q: What are you driving these days?

A: I’ve got a ’71 Nova now. See what I mean? I’m still treading water.

Q: Where do you live — Newport?

A: Yeah, I live in Newport.

Q: And what keeps you coming back? I mean, you’ve been all over the world.

A: Well, what happened, about 1990, I got married, and then I got divorced a few years later. And I didn’t have any money to move anywhere else. So I answered an ad for a furnished room, which turned out to be a nice converted space, a converted garage kind of space and a place on Ocean Drive. So it turned out to be lucky, and it was affordable for me.

Q: Can you actually see the ocean from where you are?

A: No. Almost. It’s out on Brenton Point . . . . I live with a woman who I met in Texas, who just moved up with me, and we are both living in this space that is probably designed for one person, but we are making it work. She just took her cat to the vet. The cat adjusted pretty well. He’s raising hell with the rodent population, which is fine with me.

Q: You do both what you call traditional country blues and your own songs, some of them topical. What are you thinking about these days?

A: I just finished a new CD, and one of the new songs is a rewrite of the old song, "Bully of the Town." I mean it to deal with our government’s abuse of the Posse Comitatus law of 1878 [which prohibits use of the military in civilian law enforcement], but it’s definitely aimed at the Bushites . . . . I’ve gotta another one called "Evil World Blues," which is also about homelessness and the illogical — the lack of logic implied with us going to war in a situation like this. I’ve been critical of Bush from the very beginning.

Q: What’s the name of the new record?

A: The name of the record? I’m not sure. I think I might call it Love, Murder, and Mosquitoes . . . . It’s not going to be out until the end of the year, unfortunately.

Q: How do you keep this incredible schedule? I can see doing it in your 20s and 30s, but this is a huge pace.

A: Well, I’m still interested. Now I don’t look up old musicians when I’m traveling, because there’s hardly anyone to look up, anymore. But I do find old records in junk stores. I’m still learning material I didn’t know existed.

Q: Many of the people you talk about — Blind John Davis, Pink Anderson, Blind Lemon Jefferson — these guys are gone. But are they are sort of living through you?

A: Well, in a way, I guess maybe that’s true. As long as I can still hear the music, I’ll be inspired by it, and I’ll be learning from it. I can hear a record and tell you what key that it is in and probably figure out how to play it in a few minutes. I’ve had to be able to learn how to do that, whether it’s with a guitar or a piano . . . . The piano has a lot to do with sustaining my level of absorption, I guess you might say, because I’m a rudimentary piano player compared to a lot of other people.

Q: Boy, it doesn’t sound that way.

A: Well, thank you, but I really have a lot to learn on the piano, so I’m always listening real hard. I never get bored. I never get bored listening to music that I like. There’s always stuff that — I’m always able to find stuff that turns me on or is a challenge to me to try to learn, and I really want to learn it.

Q: Are there new Paul Geremias, young people as inspired by the music as you were?

A: Well, yeah, I’ve been running into some people. There’s a kid who plays here [at Billy Goode’s in Newport] sometimes. I think he’s from, I’m not sure where he’s from, to tell you the truth. But he plays here, and apparently he knows a lot of my stuff, and I don’t even know him. But I’ve always run into people on the road, who do opening shows for me and so forth, who really surprise the hell out of me, even in Germany. When I was in Germany, I ran into guitar player — a singer and songwriter — who does his own stuff, but is also doing my material, and who has been playing it exactly the way I did. And some of that stuff is not easy to pick up, I know that. So this gives you a feeling of satisfaction. And so there’s a few, not a whole lot, but there’s a few.

Q:Can the music continue?

A: Oh sure, I think so, oh yeah, I think so. I don’t see why it can’t. I mean, the only thing that’s going to prevent it would be a continued destruction of live music venues, which are — they are hanging on by a thread in a lot of cases. I just read in the Times where the Bottom Line is in tough shape in New York City — they may be closing. But as long as there are outlets for people to play live music, I think it stands a good chance. It’s hard to know what the future holds. But barring that, there are still recordings that people can listen to, and there is always the occasional individual who has the knack for picking stuff up and playing it. I realize, though, it does make me feel old sometimes [laughs].

Q: You play in a lot of loud bars and places, people talking all the time, not listening closely to the music — it’s not exactly church-like. Does that drive you crazy?

A: I think if you are going to play in bars, it’s something you have to contend with. You either deal with it or you don’t do it. I prefer not to have to deal with it, but I have to work, [and] I can’t eliminate all those places from my schedule. I do play more places where they listen more. But I think it’s good training to deal with that. If you can do a good show under those circumstances, it will probably stand you in good stead when you get in front of a concert audience.

Q: You grew up and learned your music and songwriting in an idealistic time. Many of us at the time thought music would change the world. Did you think so?

A: No, no, I didn’t think that. I thought it was very naïve, very naïve way to think, but I did feel as though playing music — I don’t know — I felt that it could help, that the music could definitely help . . . and writing songs which inform the public and express views which are contrary to what are looked upon as being immoral, or whatever, is a fine thing. But I didn’t think it was going to change the world. I thought the political activities of the 1960s could change — make a big change — and it did make a big change. I was really disappointed that things didn’t turn out a little bit better than they did.

Q: You’ve written how many songs?

A: I don’t really know.

Q: Do you have a favorite?

A: It’s usually the most recent one is the one that goes through my head. I’ve only got four originals on the new CD, but I like them a lot. And I’m not really too concerned how many songs I write. I’m more concerned about whether or not what I’m writing is quality stuff. Although I may not be writing as many songs as I did years ago, I think the stuff I’m writing is better quality. I know the music is more together, and the recordings that I’ve made of that stuff, I think, is probably better than I would have done back in those days.