The South Shore's most unassuming musical superstar might strike you, on first glance, as a college professor, or, with his tightly tied ponytail, like a slightly eccentric tech entrepreneur. Greeting an old friend as he slid into a second-row seat at last August's North River Blues Festival at the Marshfield Fair, there was certainly nothing flashy or pretentious about the man beyond his obvious enjoyment of the music.
But a few minutes later, the headliner, blues guitar giant Walter Trout, invited his old pal on stage for a few songs. With that same "aw shucks" attitude, the piano player proceeded to deliver a solo that seemed to incorporate the history of soul music, with a side trip to New Orleans gumbo, before resolving into the rock 'n' roll fire that deftly brought Trout's song to a climax.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Anthony Geraci!" Trout shouted as the crowd erupted in cheers at the tune's end. Not long after, Geraci melted back into the crowd, accepting a handshake here, a pat on the back there. Just another day of stunning listeners, for a guy who's been obsessed with music since about the age of four, when he told his non-musical parents he really wanted a piano.
On Saturday night, Marshfield resident Geraci takes a break from touring the world to bring his Boston Blues All Stars quintet to the Spire Center in Plymouth, with special guest Diane Blue added to the bill. (The Spire Center is located at 25½ Court St in downtown Plymouth, and the show begins at 8 p.m., with tickets priced at $25-$28, available at the door or through Etix or the venue's website, Spirecenter.org, call 508-746-4488 for more information.)
Whether it's a weeklong gig in a swanky Swiss hotel in the Alps, or a night jamming in the subterranean rooms of a foreboding Transylvania city center, Geraci loves to play. And the 15-minute drive to The Spire just means he's closer to home and his beloved garden, where summer will find him growing a variety of vegetables he'll add to his gourmet-cooking experiments.
Geraci has recently been notified that he's nominated for the esteemed Pinetop Perkins Award from the Blues Music Foundation in Memphis, which is widely considered the blues equivalent of the Grammys. Pinetop Perkins was not just a seminal figure himself, but also a beloved sideman in Muddy Waters' classic bands, and the award named for him is basically the Pianist of the Year. Geraci has won that award in 2021 and 2023 and has been nominated for it six times. Overall, he has been nominated for 16 Blues Music Awards, including citations for Album of the Year and Band of the Year.
The Blues Music Awards winners are announced every May in a major event in Memphis, which also includes a week's worth of panels and discussions and attracts fans and many of the genre's leading lights. This spring, like many others, will see Geraci going directly from the awards to a couple weeks in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to take part in extended clinics and teaching as part of the Pinetop Perkins Foundation, which seeks to mentor and support young blues talent. Geraci has been a major figure in that foundation, and it is a labor of love, and way of giving back to an old friend. Geraci had gotten to know Perkins through his own vast performing experience and developed a friendship that led to Perkins using Geraci's home as a base for his New England gigs over the last decade of his career. (Perkins died in 2011 at the age of 97.)
"I'll be down in Clarksdale, after the BMAs, helping raise money for the Pinetop Perkins Foundation," Geraci noted when we talked last week. "It's a chance for younger students to learn from some of the real working musicians who keep this music alive, like (Brookline native and former Muddy Waters Band guitarist) Bob Margolin. We'll hunker down in Clarksdale for a while doing that, and you should hear these kids; seven or eight years old and just killing it musically. It means a lot to me, since Pinetop was a good friend, and stayed at my house, when I was living in Connecticut, and then later in Rhode Island, whenever he had shows in New England or around Boston. I knew him pretty well. He'd get up in the morning, and just hang out all day, playing my piano; just a wonderful man."
Geraci didn't become one of the genre's most prominent musicians overnight, of course, and he's had a long and storied career since he joined his first band with a bunch of school chums at age 10.
"I just turned 70 this year, so it's been 60 years as a working musician," Geraci said with a small chuckle.
To provide a quick synopsis of that long and varied career, Geraci, who grew up in the New Haven, Connecticut, area, made his way to Boston's Berklee School of Music in the early 1970s. It was a heady time on the Boston music scene, with the two connected cellar clubs Paul's Mall and The Jazz Workshop, on Boylston Street, bringing in jazz and blues stars for weeklong gigs. Geraci and some of his musical buddies made full use of every opportunity to hear and even sit in with the greats passing through town. By the time he was graduating Berklee, Geraci had begun playing with a young local guitarist, Ronnie Earl, and a singer/harmonica ace named Sugar Ray Norcia, and their group had become the house band at The Speakeasy, a blues club near Central Square in Cambridge. All these factors led to meeting more and more blues stars and getting more work.
"That was a great time, when people might come out from Chicago and stay a month playing around our area," said Geraci. "We got to meet and play with people like Ted Harvey, who'd been Hound Dog Taylor's drummer, and Lazy Lester and Otis Rush, who we backed at The Speakeasy. That led to us going out on the road with Otis Rush, making three records with (blues harmonica legend) Big Walter Horton, and making the 'Super Harps I and II' records with Lazy Lester, and backing people like Chuck Berry when they came to Boston. I know how most people remember how ornery Chuck could be, but I got along really well with him, and I tell everyone Chuck Berry was really good to me."
There was only one time in those years when Geraci felt really intimidated.
"The only time I was really scared was one night at Paul's Mall when Muddy Waters called me up to sit in, and Pinetop stepped aside and let me take over his piano," Geraci said. "But once we got the tune going, I felt right at home. I was actually sitting next to Muddy in the green room, later, when the lady who'd written 'Brother Robert,' the book about her stepbrother Robert Johnson, showed him what was just the second photo ever found of Robert. Muddy, who known Robert Johnson back in Mississippi, just exclaimed 'That's him! That's him!' I've been lucky enough to be on hand for a lot of history like that."
Music fans need not assume a Geraci show is a trip down memory lane, however, as his current work is as thrilling and invigorating as anything he's ever done. He's on about five dozen different albums as a featured player, but his solo albums over the past decade have been uniformly excellent. His latest record, "Tears in My Eyes," was released just about a year ago, featuring Central Mass. guitarist and singer Barrett Anderson, and it offers a panoply of blues, rock and jazz styles.
The title cut, "Tears in My Eyes," is as rockin' a song as fans will find anywhere, with Barrett's strong baritone vocals a real highlight. "Broken Mirror, Broken Mirror" takes matters into a greasy, rolling, New Orleans kind of groove, while "OooEee" gleefully explores the Crescent City's boogie woogie roots. The beguiling instrumental "Memphis Mist" is a dreamy mood piece but rides a subtly gritty foundation that reflects the city. There's a classic slow blues ballad, "Now What?" - sung by guest vocalist Norcia - and the jazzy soul of "Emma Lee." Perhaps most striking, "Witchy Ways" suggests Geraci and his quintet have been woodshedding with the classic Allman Brothers Band, its country-blues-rock groove instantly indelible.
A teenage Geraci, moonlighting for a local music magazine, actually interviewed Gregg Allman at a New Haven, Connecticut, show right after their "Idlewild South" album came out. Later, Ronnie Earl's Broadcasters - including Geraci - opened for the Allman Brothers, and Dickey Betts would come out early to sit in on their sets. All that variety on the record doesn't surprise longtime fans. It's all just part of the amazing versatility and stylistic mastery of Geraci's music.
Geraci's resume' includes long stints with Sugar Ray and the Bluetones, Ronnie Earl's Broadcasters and even the more recent The Proven Ones with Woburn's Brian Temptleton and Kid Ramos. All of those connections are still strong, and the players are all still friends and frequent collaborators, but Geraci's focus over the past decade has been on his Boston Blues All Stars. He still writes music almost every day. Anderson's emergence into his role as confident and compelling frontman pleases Geraci immensely.
"I had been aware of Barrett Anderson for very many years, since he had played with Ronnie Earl and Monster Mike Welch," said Geraci. "But he had never been out front, until six or seven years ago he put out his own record and began performing more under his own name. I was looking for a guitarist around that time, so I gave the kid a call. I love his energy, and after all these years, I must say he is one of the best band members I've ever been around. Barrett is just a good family man, and a happy-go-lucky guy who elevates everyone around him, and coupled with his obvious musical ability, he's just a joy to have in our band."
Geraci had just returned from a recording session in Phoenix, with blues-harpist/singer Bob Corritore and ex-B.B. King drummer Tony Coleman. He's aiming for a May return to the studio for his next album under his own name and has most of the new material already mapped out. Fans at The Spire Center show will likely hear some of the new tunes. Future dates include shows in Baltimore, Florida and then Utah, and this fall has a European jaunt on tap. Meanwhile, spring planting is right around the corner.
"When I'm home, I'm home," said Geraci. "I get a lot of joy out of my gardening, and cooking. When I'm home, I get up, go to the gym every day and then either play piano or work around the house. We play the same places touring musicians play around here; The Spire Center, Jimmy's in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, or The Bull Run in Shirley. We work really hard every gig, but we love what we do, and we appreciate seeing the local fans. And, it's really nice to be able to sleep in your own bed."
Sad news this week that rocker David Johansen died at 75 from cancer. Best known as the singer for the proto-punk New York Dolls, Johansen's lengthy career also included his late-1980s to early-'90s alter ego as Buster Poindexter. In that role, he played the comically smarmy singer for a tropical swing band, providing a dazzling array of classic jazz and R&B while also tiptoeing along the edge of campiness. The song "Hot Hot Hot" was unforgettable. The Poindexter shows we caught at Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square in those years were always revelatory for their musical sophistication, combined with Johansen's peerless skill at making it all fun.