By Jason Kelly
The South Bend Tribune | April 13, 1997
Lisa Germano wondered about the weather back home. “Cold and wet,” she was informed. “It’s beautiful here,” Germano giggled, referring to sunny southern California, where she spent most of March recording her upcoming album.
But the Mishawaka-born musician, who now calls Bloomington home, could have been referring to her suddenly sunny outlook on life.
She expects fans to notice that change when they listen to her fifth solo album, which she hopes to release late this year.
“The songs,” Germano said, “are a little more positive.”
With a melodious but melancholy style that captured her sadness and captivated audiences, John Mellencamp’s former fiddler found her solo niche about six years ago.
“Lisa Germano makes music so beautifully tragic and depressing that it seems nearly fatal,” a Rolling Stone reviewer wrote of her 1996 release, “Excerpts From a Love Circus.”
And that album was considered a bit more upbeat than her previous “Geek the Girl.”
“Here’s hoping one day she completely steps off that depressing merry-go-round,” was Entertainment Weekly’s conclusion to its review of “Excerpts.”
Germano never considered her music that morose. To her, it was merely a way to express and examine her feelings and, theoretically, to heal.
“I always tried to have the end project be positive,” she said. “A lot of people thought (‘Geek the Girl’) was depressing, but that wasn’t the point. It was about the sad situations you put yourself in when you don’t love yourself. You have to look at it, feel sad, grieve, and move on.”
Moving on for the 39-year-old Germano meant leaving behind the bitter memories of failed relationships, including a divorce, and the haunting fear of being pursued by a stalker.
For nearly a year while she was with Mellencamp’s band, Germano lived in fear of an obsessed fan who insisted that God wanted them to live together.
He ultimately checked himself into a psychiatric ward, and it was been three years since she was been victimized.
Her fear manifested itself in the song, “A Psychopath” (on “Geek the Girl”), which tells the story of a woman cowering beneath the blankets of her bed with a baseball bat to protect herself against “a psychopath who says he lives me, and I’m alone and I’m cold and I’m paralyzed.”
Germano found solace in her songs, which seethed with the anger and anguish that she felt over the false relationships she forged for fear of growing old alone and toward the mysterious man who haunted her.
That personal pain reached a poignant peak in “Geek the Girl,” which included liner notes that read, “this is the story of geek the girl, a girl who is confused about how to be sexual and cool in the world but finds out she isn’t cool and gets constantly taken advantage of sexually, gets kind of sick and enjoys giving up but at the end still tried to believe in something beautiful and dreams of still loving a man in hopes that he can save her… ha ha ha what a geek!”
“Geek the Girl” tracks like “Cancer of Everything” and “Phantom Love” reveal the depths of despondency. “They were looking at relationships that you’re in for the wrong reasons,” Germano said. “I can only say that because it happened to me.”
She’s since left that bitterness behind, living now for herself rather than searching for companionship for its own sake.
With a glass of wine and a feline audience, Germano does most of her songwriting at home, slipping into her most fluent language, which she has spoken since aga 7 when her parents, Betty and Rocco Germano, both longtime local music teachers, first required her to play a musical instrument.”
“Being Italian,” she explained, “I was raised very passionately.”
That passion pervades her life and music. And now that she has less to lament in her life, her music likewise will be lighter.
Free from the frustration and fear that followed her for so long, Germano’s always personal songs will no longer be weighted in sadness.
“I’m very emotional, and most of my songs are about feelings. I can’t be Miss Depressing anymore, because I’m not,” she said. “It still sounds like me, though. I can’t not be me.”
Featured Image: Lisa Germano: Smiling more these days. (Photo: Andrew Catlin)