Steph Geremia
If Tomorrow
Blackbox Music
27 July 2023
When you are best known for playing an instrument, it’s a bold move for an artist to then – for only your third album – switch to making an album of songs. With ‘If Tomorrow‘, Steph Geremia has done just that. Born in New York, where she first began playing traditional and classical music, Steph has spent most of her life in the West of Ireland. She has built a strong reputation for her Irish traditional flute playing, releasing two well-received solo flute albums, The Open Road (2009) and Up She Flew (2018). Steph is also a member of the excellent Alan Kelly Gang, plays with Eddi Reader, and subbed for Kevin Crawford in Lúnasa last year.
Steph enlisted renowned Scottish fiddle player John McCusker to produce If Tomorrow, the line-up for which includes an A-list cast of musical friends and cohorts, including Eddi Reader, Kris Drever, Alan Kelly, John Doyle, Mike McGoldrick, Phil Cunningham, Donald Shaw, Alice Allen & Ian Carr. Steph says of the album:“’If Tomorrow’ is a deeply personal album I’ve been working on for nearly 3 years and though it’s my third solo album, it’s my first vocal album and it is really launching a new direction in my artistic identity. The album is about love, longing and loss, all of the emotions that have been heavily present in my own life over the past few years”.
The opening song, Blue Is The Color Of Lonesome (see the video below), is in Steph’s words: ‘My reimagined folk version of a bluegrass song I picked up at the iconic Nashville listening room, Station Inn, in 2016 while touring in the USA.” It was written by David & Don Parmley of The Bluegrass Cardinals and featured on their 1979 album Cardinal Soul. The original is slower, with a typical bluegrass tempo and sad mood. By contrast, Steph’s version, released as a single last month, moves along at a jaunty pace, the vocal sounding almost cheerful, all belying the loss of love the lyrics describe. With a shuffling rhythm, country-ish electric guitar from Ian Carr (a rare excursion for Ian) and a great tex-mex-like brass refrain from Graeme Blevins on sax and Tom Walsh on trumpet, it’s a very persuasive first track.
The musicians really swing on Walk On Boy. Choppy guitar (Ian Carr) and mandolin (Kris Drever) set the tone, with piano accordion (Alan Kelly) and cello (Alice Allen) weaved in and swirling brass adding lovely interludes. Written by Mel Tillis and Wayne Walker, released as a single by Tillis in 1960, and probably better known from Doc Watson‘s later version, it tells the tale of John Henry Brown who, after leaving home aged 10, goes to work on the levee, having no choice but to be entirely self-reliant: ‘Ain’t nobody in this whole wide world, A-gonna help you carry your load.’ There’s a reference to John Henry Brown’s prowess with a steam drill, which is suggestive of the widely played and recorded song John Henry. Steph’s vocal, and the addition of Kris Drever and Eddi Reader on the chorus, add a spiritual sensibility.
The effect of displacement is frequently represented in songs, traditional or otherwise. One of those here is Dougie MacLean’s Garden Valley, which featured on his 1988 album Real Estate; it has been covered by De Dannan and Cara Dillon, amongst others. Beautifully sung by Steph, she perfectly conveys the longing in the lyrics, ably joined by Kris Drever on the chorus after the second and third verses. There is a delightful instrumental break midway through, Steph picking up the flute, supported by John McCusker on fiddle and Michael McGoldrick on uillean pipes.
Musically, we are clearly in Irish folk territory on Get Up Jack John, with Steph playing the whistle and singing, De Dannan founder Johnny McDonagh playing the bodhran, and Michael McGoldrick on uillean pipes. Two citterns (John McCusker and Aaron Jones) and guitar (John Doyle) drive the rhythm behind Steph’s delightful, sea-shanty-like vocal, and what I assume is a reel sees the track out. The song’s title comes from when a boarding house landlord or landlady throws the sailor Jack out when he’s spent all his money, his ‘seat’ is given to John, and Jack returns to sea.
Two other songs fit well into the album’s themes of loss and longing. Phil Gaston’s Navigator, a song about the achievements and expendability of mostly Irish navvies who built the canals and railways in England, was written for The Pogue’s 1985 album Rum Sodomy & The Lash. It will, though, be at least as familiar as the version on Kris Drever’s 2006 Black Water album (also, of course, produced by John McCusker). The version here is more pensive, less forthright. Drever adds vocal weight to the chorus with a pleasing accompaniment combination of John McCusker’s low whistle and fiddle and Phil Cunningham’s piano accordion. Bob Dylan’s Tomorrow Is A Long Time, as good a song of love and longing as Dylan has written, suits Steph’s singing well, with impeccable vocal backing from Eddi Reader and superb, moody cello from Alice Allen. The song also gives the album its title from the line: ‘If tomorrow wasn’t such a long time’.
What stands out about Step Geremia’s singing is her versatility, being able to adapt to different sorts of songs. That is a handy skill given the rich, very engaging choice of songs on If Tomorrow – a diverse mix of bluegrass, country, traditional style songs, familiar and not-so-familiar songwriters, and one self-penned song. John McCusker’s production is exemplary. The multiplicity of musicians play a wide variety of arrangements to suit the range of songs, the accompaniment always providing real depth, always unobtrusive, and always in service of the song. Making a first vocal album is a leap that has paid off for Steph Geremia.
Order here: http://stephgeremia.com/