Anthony Geraci has mastered many forms of music with his sophisticated songwriting and his exquisite piano playing. He performs and records with different outfits throughout each year. His work in blues music is well known, as he continues to play blues festivals around the world. Geraci’s latest solo CD, Daydreams In Blue, captures the essence of old time Chicago blues as well as jazz piano bars. Each number he has on here has its own panache and Geraci features Boston’s renown roots singer Dennis Brennan on vocals and harmonica along with trumpet man Scott Aruda and saxophonist Mark Earley and other local notables and a couple of surprise guests from the national blues scene.
Opening track “Love Changes Everything” is a classy Chicago blues number. Geraci’s cool, slippery piano line ripples across the song with their own special zeal before Geraci sublimates them to make room for Monster Mike Welch to shoot through it all with tasteful, sizzling guitar lines, intervals of notes that sizzle in a greasy pan as well shoot across this number lean, mean emotional.
“Tomorrow May Never Come” lets the album’s featured vocalist Dennis Brennan belt out a slow boiler emotive hot plate. Singing with a soulful rasp, Brennan makes the listener feel what this song is all about. Emotion comes gushing through as he pleads with his baby to come back to stay. A considerate, rocking chair groove is thick enough for anything to build itself upon, and the horn section is just right, thin, spicy lines following a Mike Welch chord progression that works off the groove with its own cool.
Brennan is a vocal force of nature., It is no surprise he is an even more powerful presence on “No One Hears My Prayers.” He fills in the space above Geraci’s gentle keyboard line with a desire for another’s company, burning with unique passion. Walter Trout guests on this one, and he proves his immense worth, a guitar line that, like the vocal, just erupts with passion, drive, and its own fiery presence.
Moving at a skippy, R&B pace, “Daydream Of A Broken Fool” showcases Geraci’s ability to make a tender piano line hop, skip, and jump. His jaunty melodic work flavor this piece with colorful emotions, a carefree attitude that finds feature Dennis Brennan at his lilting best. He just glides over the piano joy ride and a pretty Monster Mike Welch whistling guitar part. It’s the space that all of them leave open that make this one feel so large.
Brennan‘s soul-drenched harmonica flight powers the cool, bluesy “Mister” with more of his driving soul man passion. His harp line ups the ante for this piece, requiring Geraci to lay down a flinty piano line, one that tickles the soul with its sudden movement of notes. Michael “Mudcat” Ward puts his own lawyer of motivational groove under all of this, his smooth bass pulse. Mudcat is God. He is not an ordinary side man. He makes the lower register rise up in spirit, making the feelings happen as much as any other player.
“Tutti Frutti Booty” is bopping fun. Its groove moves like cool Chicago from the 1950s while Geraci’s barroom piano line slips and slides around the groove with a hip persistence. Piano notes zig zag around the palpable Armstrong-Ward groove and serves up a plate of boogie each time it moves around the rhythm section.
Contrasting, standard “Jelly Jelly” is a light piano bar number. Geraci pays out a soft bluesy tinkle. Special guest Troy Gonyea picks a forlorn guitar line that whispers the pain of this song. Meanwhile, Brennan sings it with all the lonely guy at the end of the bar sadness one can imagine a singer doing in this downtrodden setting. Yet, the mourning vocal line here expands into something that makes the sadness empowered, something felt deep inside a listener when the singer is that good.
Brennan continues the mournful beauty on “Dead Man’s Shoes,” a composition he penned with Peter Wolf and Troy Gonyea Only here he adds a touch of the mysterious. One can feel the song as it ponders who had worn a pair of shoes before his final walk. Brennan’s harmonica cries out the pain and longing for knowledge, His voice rides the range of this edgy blues number, a vocal presence that looms over a large mystery as distant notes from piano and Troy Gonyea’s lead guitar dovetail and drive each other to greater intensity.
“Hard To Say I Love You” is a fine excursion into bluesy jazz. Brennan croons a forlorn mellow line. He sings of the impending doom found in many old blue songs. Belied by the light tone of this piano bar number, lyrics here need to be finessed to milk the emotional content out of them. As this number picks up some speed, Brennan belts it more intensely. It’s an interesting study in contrasts and the steadiness of piano and voice make it happen.
Getting back into a down tempo Chicago style, Brennan makes “Living In The Shadow Of The Blues” come to beautiful, three-dimensional life. Singing over a barroom blues piano line, Brennan makes this story song feel like a personal conversation. Only a few singers can make it happen on an emotional level for the listener by singing in this breezy, low key approach. It doesn’t hurt that groove beneath the upper registers keep it anchored in an emotive, sensitive motion.
The crawling “Crazy Blues/Mississippi Woman” is packed with tasteful nudges of bass, sensitive drum patter, rippling piano notes, and a sly electric guitar that doubles back over the groove. Brennan puts his own personal stamp on this Geraci original with a spreading rasp that moves over this number like he’s spreading butter over a heated slice of bread. Brennan’s plaintive appeal to a Mississippi woman sounds out with authentic emotion as well as perfect wrap around the sonic landscape of this song.
Close out track “Ode To Todd, Ella, and Mike Ledbetter” quietly sums up the loss Geraci felt as he lost his friend musician Mike Ledbetter to a seizure as well as his family pet Ella who needed to be put down around the same time his own son Todd lost his leg in an accident. Geraci tinkles a gentle emotion out of his ivories, a cascading interval of notes that turn with personal warmth.
Geraci and his gang offer up so much down and dirty blues on this Daydreams In Blues album that one can picture them accepting several blues music awards next award season. With Geraci inspiring so many fine performances out of his friends, the album rises to exceptional heights in interpersonal chemistry, creativity, and personal finesse. Recorded and mixed by Jack Gauthier at Lakewest Recording Studio in West Greenwich, Rhode Island, every number resonates with a clarity in its subtle nuances. It would be perfect if Mark Earley’s name was spelled correctly in the credits.
