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	PAUL GEREMIA LIVING THE BLUES

Roots music — hell, every type of music — has unsung heroes, artists who labor in obscurity but are nonetheless special. For more than 30 years, Rhode Island’s Paul Geremia has lived a life as close to that of his Delta and Southern-flatlands blues heroes as a white Yankee can, traveling the world to make a living finger-picking his six- and 12-string acoustic guitars and singing original and classic tunes.

Last Tuesday, Geremia made a rare local appearance at Johnny D’s in Davis Square, playing two sets that were a living exposition in early blues history as well as his own. Starting on 12-string, he delved into the Blind Willie McTell classic "Statesboro Blues." With his bulky body in a Hawaiian shirt and his brushy-moustached face bent low over his instrument’s wooden body, Geremia seemed an unlikely channel for this old-time music carved from the heart of the Jim Crow South. Yet his deft ascending chords and chiseled lines told its story. And when he slid into his own song about a dead lover, "Still Think About You," the sound and subject matter slipped neatly into the tradition.

Geremia’s fans, a mostly male clutch of middle-aged listeners who hung on his every note and syllable, were treated to a clinic in country-blues technique as his right thumb flew over the strings, picking out bass tones to match the melody and rhythm lines of his first three fingers. His 1997 Live from Uncle Sam’s Backyard (Red House) boasts the same kind of energy. And like the old masters, Geremia has plenty of idiosyncrasy in his craft. His right hand frailed, strummed, plucked, muted, and popped strings as he called out the lyrics of such near-forgotten figures as Pink Anderson and George Carter or played "Wonderful Affliction," a number from his "divorce trilogy" that’s laced with regret and release. And like many of the original bluesmen who returned to the music in the 1960s to influence scores of players of Geremia’s generation, he seems determined to carry on.