(City Salvage Records)
Curreri's lyrics and guitar work play with you a little before revealing the big secret: He seems to be having a pretty good time with all this, which seems almost blasphemous in the oftentimes sad, serious world of the singer-songwriter. His songs dance around the blues, kick around the country and end up laughing, sometimes joyfully in the ditch.-- Style Weekly
BEST LOCAL SOLO MUSICIAN 2001 -- 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.- C-ville Weekly's "BEST OF 2001" issue
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." Curreri's songs and inspired performances have since caught the attention of a wider circle, leading to touring engagements with 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. Curreri's music asks your full attention - he has his own way of saying things and sometimes it takes more than one pass to get inside it. Indeed, his songs seems to shift on you every time you hear them. He aims for the miraculous and, well, there it is. Long Gones to Hawkmoth is a brilliant recording and a great place to start with Paul.
1. Miles Run the Daffodil Down
2. Senseless As a Cuckoo
3. Blame Love
4. Bees
5. On Hopeless Love
6. Southfried Backyard Train
7. Another For Allen and Sally
8. Maria
9. Beautiful Gun and a Locketful of Honey
10. God Moves On the City
11. Hawkmoth
HAWKMOTH
by Paul Curreri
Sunrise kicks the soot-black
Gun into its belt.
Thank God, it?s time to rise and move about!
Grounded just in daybirds,
Waylaid very well
By the morning sun and soul all figured out.
Dim at first and brittle,
Like smoke across a table --
Good God, I squint, I trust this thing is stable.
And though it owed me only routine
(like shadows in the forest),
That daylight choir lit me into chorus.
Big-eyed hawkmoth, rise you up
And hang where you may.
If you keep a perfect distance,
Nectar pulses through.
It was a good day!
I knew just what I knew.
The train it whistled: Welcome --
Absolute and clear.
Deserted houses? ghosts were in my ear.
The firmament stopped trembling
and covered up its teeth.
Born into the whisper so to speak. (chorus)
But come a trouncing blue jay,
Veteran and fluent,
Says, "Born for nothing, I can see right through it."
I said, "Blue jay, ain?t for you to say
Who?s hallowed and who is not.
Just for you to pick which side you?re on."
Onward till the day fades
And the guitar quits the buzz,
And the arm of river I?m on loses gust.
Till then, prize the soft initials
Of wetted lips that bust
To take in morning and spit out just as much. (chorus)
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