Geri X

Tampa Bay, Florida based singer Geri X will be performing as part of the 2011 Steel Bridge Songfest in Sturgeon Bay. - FOX 11 News WI

Bulgarian-born Geri X is a composer, a musician and a singer hard to put a label on. Fans and critics spotted it from the moment she broke onto the Tampa Bay Music Scene: Geri is an artist with a singular sound you have not heard before. One can see it in the way she confidently plays her Babicz guitar, eyes half open and soul pouring out with a rich, crisp and mesmerizing voice. - Studio 10 Morning Show

In a world filled with generic music and pop packaged artists, Geri X is a breath of fresh air. A force to be reckoned with, she pours her heart and soul into her music. Writing music is second nature for Geri and she dedicates her time to bringing her passionate expression to her fans. - IMR Magazine

Bulgarian-born singer-songwriter and current St. Petersburg resident Geri X has been able to gain popularity both locally and internationally with her music. - USF Oracle

2011 Readers'Poll Best Singer/Songwriter Geri X performs at the Loafies. - ilovetheburg.com

Geri X named “Best of Indie” in European edition of Rolling Stone magazine. - http://www.suburbanapologist.com

Whether alone or with inventive, intuitive drummer Anthony Zollo, 22-year-old Bulgarian-born Geri X never fails to move attentive listeners. Her deceptively straightforward lyrics draw you in, and her hypnotically precise fingerpicking style turns the heads of the other acoustic players in the crowd, but it’s her voice that seals the deal. By turns fragile and bold, and always tinged with an alluring hint of accent, Geri X’s vocals perfectly fit her music’s combination of the timeless and the contemporary — it’s uniquely hip and eclectic American post-folk, but sounds like it learned about love and heartbreak somewhere unfathomably older than here. www.purevolume.com/gerix. - Weekly Planet/Creative Loafing

This young singer-songwriter quickly has become one of the area's most popular, and deservedly so. Her lyrics show wisdom beyond her years, her vocals have the beauty of folk and the directness of punk, and her melodies are always gripping. Simply amazing. (mekkarecords.com) - Tampa Bay Tribune

This 12-track effort from the young woman we named the best singer-songwriter in the Bay area this year more than delivers on the potential showcased by her usually less-orchestrated live sets, which often find her performing solo. Plenty of the tunes on Can't Make You Happy consist solely of Geri X's intimate acoustic guitar and expressive voice- and she doesn't need more to shine- but more fleshed-out songs like "Sinister", "Drowning is Romantic" and "Leapfrog" are particular highlights, if only because they put her yearning, deceptively straightforward style in a new context. Everything here is beautifully wrought and emotionally compelling without ever getting sappy or resorting to cliches. Unbelievable stuff.

-****1/2 (four and a half stars)
- Creative Loafing

Bulgaria-native Geri X is busy capturing the musical heart of Tampa Bay. Crowned best 2006 Singer/Songwriter, her latest release is described as “beautifully wrought and emotionally compelling without ever getting sappy or resorting to clichés. Unbelievable stuff.” - baamo.org

Let me start by saying I am not reviewing artists and albums. I am sharing. This is my music cookie jar, open to the public. Who doesn’t like cookies? I will be very surprised at myself if I ever post anything that I don’t just love. And I will be more surprised if you don’t love what I share. I am, after all, from Peoria, and my people have long been the litmus test for what everybody will enjoy.

So, my first group of artists is a band called Geri X, fronted by a singer-songwriter who is, in fact, named Geri. Currently they are based in my little beach town — St. Pete, FL. But they are sort of equal parts Florida, Wisconsin, and Bulgaria. And they don’t really belong here. They don’t sound like a local band at all, they sound beyond this place, and beyond all the places of their past. Their latest album is called “Anthems of a Mended Heart.”

The music is best described I think as indie. They are not quite folk, not quite rock and it isn’t such a singer-songwriter vibe because of the full band. You will hear more than an acoustic guitar (though the acoustic guitar will stand out and is lovely). Geri’s vocals are smooth, fluid, and sound effortless. She barely even opens her mouth and her voice just lilts out. Her lyrics are beyond her age, but perhaps not her experience. And the production value is pretty great considering they recorded most of it here.

I imagine that for Geri, this latest album is something of a destination. The exhalation of a breath held too long, the sigh of relief at the end of a storm. Maybe I’m totally off base, but it seems like she has landed in a place both personally and musically where she has made some decisions and settled herself into a more peaceful bed. I’m not saying it’s entirely angst free, so those of you that search out singer songwriter types to get your angst on will not be disappointed. I guess I could try to compare her to another artist that you’ve already heard of, but I won’t. First of all, it’s bad music manners. Secondly, half of you will hate the comparison and half will love it, I lose either way. So, instead I will say that you should not buy this album because you like female singers who can play the guitar. You should buy it because it is fresh like the first day of summer. It is the perfect album for starting over, for popping into the CD player of the moving truck and driving halfway across the country. And it may make you feel, just a little bit, like everything is gonna be alright.

And now for the good part — the nine questions I will ask every artist willing to answer them (who is share-worthy):

V: What was the first full-length album that you bought with your own money?

GX: First full length album I bought with my own money was “Bleach” by Nirvana. Amazing.

V: Which comes first, the music or the lyrics? Please describe your songwriting habits.

GX: The music and the lyrics come simultaneously. I write songs in full sentences with the melody. It just pours out of my brain.

V: Has any fan ever just knocked you over with a story about how your music affected his or her life in some way? Or have you had an odd experience with any fans? Like, do you have a stalker yet?

GX: I have all three. Since I wrote “When I Die” I’ve gotten a lot of fan mail from fans that have lost loved ones and played the song at the eulogy, and it has gotten them through the grief. We also have crazy fans that argue with us about songs. Like the song “Talent is a Torture.” We have a fan that used to yell at me and tell me that I was all wrong and how could I say something like that when talent is a gift. Just ridiculous. And yes, unfortunately we have many stalkers. :/

V: What is the best live show you have ever seen?

GX: I accidentally ended up at a Killers concert with a friend who had free tickets.The Killers are an impeccable studio band but don’t live up to the sound live. The Dublin band called The Zutons that opened for them was absolutely AMAZING. They were just electric. Still one of my all time favorite shows.

V: What band do you think you could totally be best friends with, if only you could meet them?

GX: I think we would definitely be best friends with Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. They’re not so much bands but two incredible storytellers and musicians. If only we had the chance to meet them, gosh…

V: Besides your own, what other band name do you wish you had chosen? It can be taken already.

GX: Man, I wish we could have come up with The Misfits. Ha-ha.

V: Say you have a favorite little sister, just about to make her first album, not signed to a label yet. What will you share with her that you wish you’d known?

GX: Giving advice is always hard because you can’t follow your own advice let alone give it out. But the one thing I would tell her is don’t listen to anything anyone tells you. Always follow your gut even if people are trying to stop you. Only you know your goal and you know how to achieve it so do what you need to do to make it happen.

V: What is the dumbest or most annoying question you’re asked by journalists or fans? Please answer it for us.

GX: I was once asked on national TV in an interview about our new record “Anthems of a Mended Heart:” is your music inspired a lot by the oppression of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire?” …Let me tell you something… The height of the Ottoman Empire rule was like in the 16th or 17th century or something like that. I think that he just googled Bulgaria before the interview. And my answer is a very confused and dumbfounded: no?!

V: Imagine your band were a child. Who would be your band parents? Like, maybe your mom is Led Zeppelin and your dad is The Beatles. But, don’t choose those two, they’re mine.

GX: Our mom would be Edie Brickell and our dad would be Radiohead. Confusing relationship. Ha-ha.

- When Falls the Colliseum, Tampa Bay FL

There's both a soft and strong appeal to Bulgarian-born Geri X's singing, similar to Fiona Apple's. When she moved to Tampa as a teen, she barely spoke a word of English, and in fact even wrote some songs in Bulgarian. She made St. Petersburg her home in 2005, and her sultry alt-folk ballads, such as those found on her CD Can't Make You Happy, quickly struck a nerve. Pray that her April 6 show at the Globe Coffeehouse in St. Petersburg, billed as her "last Florida show," really isn't. www.myspace.com/gerix - TBT Magazine

X Marks the Spot
"I don't understand the big deal about my age," she snaps. We're sitting in Geri X's favorite haunt, the Globe Coffee Lounge in downtown St. Pete, and our interview has started off a bit tense.
A petite woman who could pass for a teenager, Geri X is perhaps the most heavily buzzed performer of original music in Tampa Bay. She also might be the pluckiest. "People come up to me and say: 'There's all these rumors about how old you are,'" she says. "I just tell them that I'm 15 -- this week."
Geri X's latest album, last year's Can't Make you Happy, helped win her Creative Loafing's Best of the Bay award for Singer/Songwriter. Its melancholy, minor chords complement moving, confessional tales. Take the leadoff track "Hothead": It finds the singer waking up with a sad young man in her room. She watches him wash his face with cold water and "paint [himself] back together."
"Take my hand," goes the hypnotic chorus. "Stay, I can make you happy, I can make you happy." Like many Geri X songs, it details a heavy-investment love affair. Deep subject matter -- especially for someone who is age 17, according to her promotional materials. The issue shrouds the Bulgarian-born artist in mystery. She's reluctant to set the record straight.
"What's your birthday?" I press.
"May 6," she replies.
"What year?"
"1984."
Awkward silence. Her nose wrinkles. "Yeah, I'm not 15 and I'm not 17 and I'm not 30," she quips. "Everybody puts whatever age they want on me because I won't tell anyone how old I am."
Until now.
Geri X tells me she'd rather not have her age run in the story. "I don't understand the focus on it," she adds. Or does she? Like the lyrics of her songs, she is candid yet peculiar -- and maybe not above letting the Lolita image linger in order to sell CDs or attract more attention from the national indie labels she says have contacted her. Regardless if she is 15 or 50, though, Geri X is an interesting artist, an expressive singer and an attentive scribe whose words worm their way under the listener's skin.
Her birth date out of the way, the subject switches to tattoos. She sports a striking design that sprawls from her left shoulder down to her chest and is usually visible when she performs. "My friend did it, I designed it," she says. "It was supposed to be a representation of the four seasons -- minus the snowflake that was suppose to go right here, but I never drew it.
"This is spring," she continues, pointing with the index finger of her right hand. "And then autumn is the leaves and these are summer and then it goes into winter here."
We move from body art to bio. Geri X's family moved around Europe before landing in the Bay area about five years ago, when she was in high school. She currently lives on St. Pete Beach with her mom and sister, who is a painter.
"My mother is very creative," she says with affection. "She's out there."
Does Geri X consider herself "out there?"
"I hope I'm not as big a kook as [Mom] is," she says. "But I guess I am; we're all crazy -- our whole household."
Geri X's dad is an artist. She has no kind words for him, hence her refusal to carry his surname (which she won't reveal to me). Track number eight on Can't Make You Happy is titled "Father's Stamps." Geri X's singing is characteristically cool and detached, but she sinks her teeth into the lines, "You know you're just a gaping hole, a selfless loon, a failing starlet in a minor role/ Your eyes are leaking kerosene/ Be diligent, don't catch fire."
The discussion turns to Geri's days spent at Tampa's Blake High School, where early on she could not understand a word being uttered by teachers or classmates. "It was very frustrating," she says. "I'm a very personable person. I can strike up a conversation with anybody. It was very hard not being able to speak with people."
Geri X picked up English in six months, and a couple years later began expressing herself through rhymes set to sad music. A pianist and guitar-player as a child, she began penning tunes "a couple years ago" and so far has written "probably 200," but only plays "maybe 20 of them." Her first forays into songwriting produced, she says, "some pretty depressing shit."
Geri X released several homemade CDs before Can't Make You Happy came out last year on the Tampa-based indie label Mekka Records. In addition to 10 originals, the disc includes an impassioned reading of Leonard Cohen's postmodern hymn "Hallelujah," which was most famously covered by the late Jeff Buckley. "I was watching the Jeff Buckley Live in Chicago DVD, and I was just awestruck," she says. "That song just rips you apart."
At first, Geri X revered "Hallelujah" too much to record it. "I didn't wanna fuck it up," she says. But then one night she was on stage at Sacred Grounds in Tampa and someone requested it. She punched the song up on her computer to get the lyrics and chords. "I just sat there with my computer and my guitar in my lap singing it," she says. "That was the first time I played it."
The song continues to kill when she plays it live, as do originals such as "Hothead" and "Fever," the latter a highlight of the local compilation Southeast Music Alliance presents Volume Two: Tampa Bay & Beyond.
But despite a MySpace page peppered with glowing comments, weekly applause, a nifty award from the Loaf and recently being selected by BAAMO (Bay Area Arts & Music Organization) to play the 5th Annual Florida Bandango in Austin, Texas (during South by Southwest), Geri X adamantly insists that she does not like her own music.
"I hate all of my music," she deadpans. "I keep playing shows and writing music just so one day I can have a good show or say 'This song's fantastic.'"
Before we part ways, two and a half hours after meeting at The Globe, Geri X decides to tell a pirate joke that ends with the punch line "arrgh." She lets out an infectious belly laugh. "I'm not funny," Geri says. "Just funny-looking, and when I laugh it makes other people laugh."
- Creative Loafing

Yeah, we know, Geri X has received ample ink in Creative Loafing -- especially lately. And, yes, she's currently living in Wisconsin playing cities like Milwaukee, Madison and Beloit. But St. Petersburg is still her home -- at least part-time -- and she did spend the past year or so here as the leading lady of the local coffeehouse circuit.
Geri X earned her dedicated fanbase with detailed tales delivered in an impassioned whisper across sparse acoustic guitar plucking -- and occasional backing from her bassist/boyfriend Greg Roteik. The prolific 22-year-old has written hundreds of songs and released several CDs, including her latest, Can't Make You Happy, which came out on the local indie imprint Mekka Records.
"I write every day," Geri X says. "I could probably release a CD every week. I write a bulk amount of material and then at a certain point I just pick and choose certain ones that are more fun for me to play -- the ones I get more into. I record those and put them on CD."
The Bulgarian-born artist with the intricate tattoo running down her left shoulder writes frankly about past experiences. She covers the rather touchy subject matter with a poet's eye for specifics. The intimacy of the material endears Geri X to listeners, especially the many women who follow her from show to show. For the artist, it's a cathartic endeavor. "It's a form of therapy," Geri X says. "[But] it can be very frustrating sometimes."
Enthusiasts nationwide pepper Geri X's MySpace page with glowing comments. The singer attributes her widespread popularity to the persistence of her fans. "I love how they share my CD with people," she says. "They'll come to a show and buy five copies and say how they're mailing it to places like L.A. I'm so thankful that people want to share my music with their friends."
So, what does the future hold for Geri X?
"I've gotten offers from major record labels but what they had to offer didn't make sense to me -- so, they kind of turned me off," she says. "Right now, all I really want to do is tour. I want to be on the road. I want to play shows. That's the only way I can reach people."
- Creative Loafing

She appeared on the Bay area scene about four years ago, an exotically pretty, shy girl with an acoustic guitar and a mysterious name:
Geri X.
She had a nebulous backstory: A Bulgarian immigrant, it was said, with some kind of trauma in her childhood. Even her age was up for debate; rumors spread that she could be as young as 15 or as old as 30 (a very young-looking 30). She wouldn't tell. Nor would she reveal much about her past. It was as if a talented kid had been dropped into the scene by a spaceship. She played countless local gigs and was amiable enough, but remained somehow remote.
And then she was gone, or mostly gone -- relocated to Wisconsin with her new boyfriend and bassist/guitarist, Greg Roteik. She returned sporadically for gigs.
Now she's back.
On a blustery Tuesday afternoon, the new Geri X sits in the tiny courtyard of the small St. Petersburg home she shares with Roteik, who's attentively at her side. A stiff wind rustles through the canopy of trees overhead. Geri X laughs easily, talks openly, sharing anecdotes and observations while occasionally smoking an American Spirit. Her hair, pulled back on top, is black save for shocks of Kelly green that fall down each side. Tattoos snake
along her upper chest and arms.
Turns out she did have a tough childhood. She says her father, a renowned painter in Bulgaria, was abusive. She seriously contemplated suicide in her teens, once taking a gun from her father's collection and holding it to her head. When she began performing in Tampa, the cool remove that audiences saw was a defense, and the songs she wrote served to salve her pain.
Then in August 2006 she met Greg and it all changed. Today, Geri X is not what you'd call a sunny gal, and she admits to still carrying around considerable emotional baggage, but, she says, "The cloud has lifted."
The singer/songwriter now performs in a three-piece that also includes drummer Matthew Bennett. She insists she's not the boss, that it's a collaborative effort. Her music -- to oversimplify it, an edgy brand of neo-folk with confessional, at times achingly intimate, lyrics -- has matured. Her new album, her sixth full-length, the aptly titled Anthems of a Mended Heart, came out Jan. 13 on the Tampa-based 24 Hour Service Station label. The music will be available on all the major digital-download sites, and CDs will find shelf space in select retail stores.
Everything's just about in place for Geri X's next move: making a serious career out of making music. "I want to pay my rent and my bills without having to fall back on working at a pet store or Starbucks or selling cosmetics [her current day job]," she says. "If I have a show, I want to think of it as going to work: 'I'm working at New World Brewery at 8 p.m.' To me, that's success. I don't have to be world-famous. It's not about major popularity. I want to do this for a living."
Eight months on the road, four months at home, give or take, is part of the plan. She has a legitimate shot at the kind of success she seeks, and you could argue that it should've happened already. Her ardent fan base is what drew Marshall Dickson, owner of 24 Hour Service Station, to Geri X.
"Matt [Bennett] brought the story to me," he explains. "She sold in the neighborhood of 20,000 CD-Rs on her own, with a coffeehouse fan base. I've seen the receipts. That is something real. I think she'd reached the point where her business knowhow had peaked. I want to make a bigger story out of it. If you've sold 20,000 copies of CD-Rs and you're still working a full-time job, something's wrong."
Dickson says that if Anthems of a Mended Heart moves 5,000 units it will turn a profit, and he'd be ecstatic if the album sold 20,000. He won't project numbers but believes Geri X has the goods. "She connects with her audience in a way that's very raw," he says. "They find something in her lyrics and her delivery -- it's totally genuine."
Geri X's ace asset is her voice. It's a nail file to the heart, unsettling, captivating. While she has solid pitch, the singer embraces her imperfections. She's sublimely undisciplined, more concerned with pure expression than craft. Geri X inhabits her lyrics, and has a knack for making her vocals conversational even while carrying a tune. You can hear her hurt. She's by turns brash and tender, volatile and vulnerable.
On Anthems, that voice is pushed way out in front of strummed acoustic guitars, basic bass lines and distant drumming. The boys don't harmonize on the choruses, but then the choruses can be hard to determine in her intuitively penned, elliptical songs -- songs that can take a couple of listens to catch onto, songs that don't sweat rhyme schemes or follow expected chord changes.
Though the music can be opaque, even difficult at times, it has resonated profoundly with a wide array of fans from, literally, around the world.
How do we know that? Not long ago, Geri X put up a survey on her website (gerixmusic.com) asking a few basic questions, among them: Where are you located? Tell us some cool venues you'd like to see us play. What local radio station would you like to hear us on? In return, she offered respondents two albums for free download.
To Geri X's abundant surprise, the surveys flooded in, many of them from places she'd never been, many of them accompanied by personal e-mails professing love of her music. She estimates she has as many as 5,000 surveys in a database, sorted by zip code. "We have enough names to book a small European tour and some regional American tours," she says. "What we created was essentially our own street team without having to send out posters to kids. I can hit up these people, tell them I'm coming into town and have them bring all their friends to the show."
Easier said than done? Maybe. But that's a lot of fans for an artist who was, until recently, totally independent. With that kind of an online response, it certainly doesn't seem as if eight months a year on the road is a pipe dream. Geri X and the fellas hope to be touring by spring.
Geri X's favorite memory from childhood happened when she was 3 or 4. Her father came home late, she says, and roughed up her, her sister and mother. "He said, 'I'll kill you if you're not out of here in 20 minutes,'" Geri X recounts. "So we packed up and spent two days away in a tiny town. We had pizza, went to the zoo. It was the greatest time."
She pauses and shrugs. "Then he apologized and we went back."
Peter Mitchev has long been a popular, well-connected painter in Bulgaria, where he currently lives. The well-off family split time between Plevan, Bulgaria and Versailles, France, with shorter stops in European cities where Mitchev was exhibiting his work. For 13 years, Geri X studied classical piano and hated it. To this day, she wants nothing to do with a keyboard.
She attributes her long spell under dark clouds, and much of the impetus for her music, to the "terror" her father perpetrated on his wife and daughters.
The family relocated to Tampa when Geri X was 17. She came under the thrall of Mariah Carey's "My All," which she now calls "embarrassing." "I'd belt out that tune," she says with a chuckle, "and that really got me wanting to be a singer."
She came down for lunch one day and announced her intentions. "My mom was really excited, but my father said, 'You can't do it; you're not good enough,'" Geri X remembers. "I decided then and there I would be a singer. For real."
Milena Mateev, Geri X's mother, who lives in St. Petersburg, says that Peter Mitchev made no attempts to assimilate into American culture, never even made an effort to learn English. She confirms that Mitchev was verbally and physically abusive to Geri and her younger sister Marina. He showed his work at Brad Cooper Gallery in Ybor City, but never gained much career traction in the States. This made him angrier.
After about a year, "all three of us told him he had to go," Mateev says. "For about a week, he tried different techniques to get back in, but I told him he couldn't. I bought him a [plane] ticket and drove him to the airport."
Her father out of the picture, it wasn't long before Geri X toted her guitar into Javatropolis on north Dale Mabry and started playing open mics. After that coffeehouse closed, she moved over to Sacred Grounds on Busch Boulevard, where she played every Thursday night for two years. The budding artist worked for free, but pocketed tips and whatever she sold in CD-Rs. She landed on the radar of several local bands, which recruited her to open shows with 20-minute solo sets. Starting about two years ago, Geri X did a six-month stint during which she was performing seven nights a week -- often in restaurants -- and had two other jobs. "It was the hardest thing I ever did as a musician; I was really spreading myself thin," she says. "But it did me a lot of good. It was probably the turning point when people started realizing that I existed."
In the late summer of '06, Greg Roteik was days away from returning to his home near Milwaukee to make some fast loot as a chimney sweep, then head back to Florida in December and beat the real cold. He had seen Geri X in a Pabst Blue Ribbon ad in Creative Loafing, thought she was cute, and checked out her music. Impressed, he e-mailed her two days before he was scheduled to depart. Would she like to get together and jam? She just happened to be online and e-mailed him back. "At that point, I figured nothing else in my life could go wrong, so why not?" Geri X says.
A small smile creeps onto Greg's pleasant, scruffy-bearded face as he says, "I'm glad I made such a powerful impression."
"No, I thought you were cute," Geri X murmurs, patting him on the leg.
She drove from her place in St. Pete Beach to his in Palm Harbor. The chemistry was instantaneous, and it transcended music. While Greg was in Wisconsin, the two stayed in touch on the phone and by actual written letters sent via snail mail.
It didn't take long before the two became a couple. They decided to change headquarters to Wisconsin. Although the pair played a few cool festival gigs up north, Geri X did not find the Milwaukee-area scene to her liking. "I was so used to being part of a [musicians'] family down here," she says. "It doesn't matter if [acts] even know each other, it's an unwritten rule that we help each other. Up there it's a huge competition."
"People that I considered close friends wouldn't even let us hop on a bill," Greg adds.
Geri X, her voice turning conspiratorial, follows, "And it's weird. They're not even ... that good. The music down here is so good, the bands are incredible."
Geri X and Greg Roteik have been musical partners and soulmates since. She tells me that Greg essentially saved her life. Sitting in the courtyard, I ask him how it feels to be someone's salvation?
"Well, I was at loose ends. She was my salvation, too," he says quietly. "At the time I didn't realize I was hers. We kind of put each other on pedestals, which has turned out pretty well."
It's patently obvious that he's her biggest fan. "I like to watch people watch her while I'm playing with her," he says. "She touches people more than anyone I've ever seen."
Geri X looks down and says softly, "Thanks." - Creative Loafing