Paul Curreri
From Long Gones to Hawkmoth
(5/02) Part front-porch drawl, part freight-train muscle, punch the guitar, country blues the town back to red and then keep going...
Arriving in October of 2000, Paul Curreri quickly became a focal member of Charlottesville, Virginia's bustling acoustic music scene (voted "Best Local Solo Musician 2001" Cville Weekly). His poetic country blues - at times relaxed, at times exploding - soon set the feet moving of audience after silent audience. WTJU's Aer Stephen referred to Curreri as "a ruffled gypsy gutter cowboy ... a true life adventure - a bright new voice," and Cville Weekly music columnist, Stephen Barling, called Curreri "inventive, powerful, and unpredictable."
City Salvage Records, the independent Brooklyn-based label that published Drawings and Other Failures by painter Andy Friedman, proudly released Curreri's first studio effort, From Long Gones to Hawkmoth, in June of 2002. Curreri's songs and inspired performances have since caught the attention of a wider circle, leading to touring engagements with the likes of Kelly Joe Phelps (who would eventually produce & play on Paul's follow-up, Songs for Devon Sproule), Hot Tuna, John Koerner, David Amram, Corey Harris, Chris Smither, Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, John Herald, Jeff Foucault, Jeff Lang, and Geoff Muldaur. "Paul Curreri gives what few other songwriters can," writes Matt Dellinger of The New Yorker. "It hits you soon and hard that you're hearing something exquisite."
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Also available from Paul:
"Songs for Devon Sproule" (May, 2003) the sophomore effort by Paul Curreri
& "The Spirit of the Staircase," (December, 2004)
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A FEW QUOTES FROM OTHER FOLKS:
"Curreri, a young singer-songwriter who blends his impressive facility for blues guitar and piano with an exceptional songwriting ability, brings a renewed eloquence to the medium."
- The New Yorker
April 16, 2001 issue
"...Or, pick a night, an evening with rain or mist and a shy moon, and get caught in the current of his clockwork acoustic guitar, get showered by the notes that arc off the strings like sparks. Curreri wrings bent and worried tones and hacks ringing, open-ended chords to punctuate points, or question arguments, or second emotions. It's a more lively conversation -- among himself, his guitar, his characters, his listeners -- than you get in a roomful of people."
- Mike Parisi
Music Columnist, The Hook
"It's not everyday that a musician comes along and with that first note you just know it's going to be a treat to listen to. I can honestly say that the music of Paul Curreri not only does that, but it continues to with each song, no matter how many times you've heard it. To classify him is like trying to classify the whole of the United States. He is a melting pot of Dylan, Prine, Simon, and Hurt all topped with Paul's own unique twist. I love this guy's stuff."
- K. Bartlett Shaw
Ashland Coffee and Tea
"There's a shitload of people making a living who don't have half the talent Paul Curreri does. No secret doors to walk through- he's just a great writer, a great singer, and a great guitar player- Paul's got every tool imaginable."
- Chuck Brodsky
Red House Records recording artist
"Enter Paul Curreri, the local folk scene's favorite new face. I'd been hearing a lot of good things about Curreri, and they weren't exaggerated. He's got a great style and delivery - and his songs have a "living" feel. He's inventive, powerful, and unpredictable; very uncommon traits in a solo acoustic performer. Definitely keep your ears peeled for him...
- Cripsy Duck
Cville Weekly music columnist
"Paul Curreri is as good at what he does as I
am at what I do."
- Peter Cunningham
NYC still-film artist, photographer
"Anyone who's seen Paul shock a noisy barroom into silence has experienced what it must have been like to see Dylan breaking onto the folk scene in the early '60s - though his charisma, surrealistic lyrics, and beat-angel voice are without precedent."
- Brady Earnhart
Charlottesville songwriter, JMU Poetry Professor
"Curreri cadence - talkin' to you - smilin' inside - disheveled stream of consciousness - a ruffled gypsy gutter cowboy - tattered and torn - slightly cuckoo, almost too sane - his songs paint images that wake the brain - trains, rivers, tumbleweeds, love, & lust - a true life adventure - a bright new voice."
- Aer Stephen 91.1 FM, WTJU,
Charlottesville, Virginia
"BEST LOCAL SOLO MUSICIAN 2001 -- In the words of the second of his two self-titled discs, the intended daydream has hit the street. Curreri can be just as elusive and charismatic as a 1962 Dylan... and full of himself, in a self-celebrating, fun, Whitmanesque kind of way. Plus, the well-traveled Richmond native's got rakish good looks, literary chops, and a vision of America chock full o' trains, fair maidens by rivers, and country roads. "
- Cville Weekly's "BEST OF 2001" issue
Blues: Country Blues