Home > MUSIC > Danny Kalb & Paul Geremia

• Tweet
• Outlook
• ICAL
• PRINT
• Email
• Feedback

• RSS

• Official Website
• Buy Tickets
• Add to My Favorites

Danny Kalb & Paul Geremia

Presented by Club Passim at Club Passim

July 19, 2009

Add Review/Comment
Comment on Facebook

Following a twenty year hiatus fiom the recording studio, The Blues Project founder Danny Kalb's trademark dazzling guitar'licks and blues-infused vocal stylings can be heard on four concurrent releases. They include: his solo-album debut Livin' With The Blues (Legend Records, French import); the double CD-set, Soul of a Man: Al Kooper Live (MusicMasters/BMG); the four CD-set, The Prestige/Folklore Years (Fantasy); and the upcoming The Blues Project Anthology (September 1996 - Ven/e/Polygram). Cumulatively, these multiple releases chart the evolution of Kalb's influential folk, blues and jazz guitar work, reating a stunning 30 year musical career retrospective. A protege of the great Dave Van Ronk, Kalb established himself on New York's seminal folk and blues scene itl the '60s, where he was first known as a solo performer and session player wjth Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, and others, and later in The New Strangers duo with Sam Charters. In 1965, Kalb founded Verve/Folkways recording group, The Blues Project, with Al Kooper, Roy Blumenfeld, Andy Kulberg, Tommy Flanders and Steve Katz. Even today, this important group flourishes with in- demand/sold-out shows and nlunerous album reissues/compilatiolIs (MCA, Polygram, Rhino, One Way). According to Sam Charters, "It was generally conceded... that ... Kalb was the most exciting of the new players. We met when we were both playing in Dave [Van Ronk'sl Rag-time Jug Stompers... After these apprentice years... he became a founder of The Blues Project, one of the seminal rock bands of the '60s... He still performs in Greenwich Village clubs, and... has been working on an album which combines his extraordinary blues technique with some of the new, free guitar music... His touch on the guitar is as exciting and as individual as ever." From folk to blues to jazz, nanny Kalb's experimental mindset and talent played a silSllificant part in redefining musical genres and bound~-ies. These four CD releases represent but the most recent chapters. Danny Kalb's story continues to unfold as he brings his incendiar, guitar style to a new generation of students, musicians and fans. www.dannykalb.net For almost forty years, Paul Geremia has survived solely by the fruit of his musical labours. Having abandoned all other means of support in 1966, he has been travelling far and wide ever since, performing in every capacity from street singing to club and concert bookings, throughout the U.S.A., Canada and Europe. In the years since, Geremia has built a reputation as a first rate bluesman, songwriter, a "scholar" of early jazz and blues, and one of the best country blues fingerpickers ever with his tools - six and twelve-string guitars, harmonica, piano and a husky soulful voice - and with an innate sense of the humour as well as the drama of the music, he keeps traditional blues fresh and alive with his performances. Combining his interpretation of the earlier music of people like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Scrapper Blackwell and Blind Blake, with his original compositions, he has created a style which is very much his own and which has received accolades in the U.S.A. and Europe, too numerous to mention. Geremia's background isn't typical for a bluesman. He is a third generation Italian-American who, as he laughingly puts it, "was born in the Providence River Delta". Growing up in a family that moved across the country and back numerous times weaned his appetite for music, history and travel, which served him well later on. During the sixties, Paul noticed that the music he had enjoyed playing on harmonica (his first instrument) was now referred to as "Folk Music" and was enjoying popularity. During his short time in agriculture college, he was mostly occupied with learning guitar and hitch-hiking to where the music was. He soon left college and hit the road permanently. He found paying gigs in coffee houses and "basket houses" in cities and at college campuses and made occasional forays South and West in search of the music he loved and what gigs he could find. During these years, Geremia crossed paths with people whose influences were beneficial to his development and understanding of the tradition. He worked as opening act for some of the early blues "legends" thereby gaining an immeasurable depth of knowledge from people like Babe Stovall, Yank Rachel, Son House, Skip James, Howlin' Wolf, and many others, especially Pink Anderson whose career he helped revitalize. Geremia has recorded ten solo albums, and has appeared on numerous anthologies and compilation discs. His superb recordings have made him a critical favorite and place him firmly among the legends who inspired and influenced him over the past four decades. www.paulgeremia.org