The music on Teddy Geiger’s mind

SINGAPORE – At first blush, singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger, 17, looks like your typical guitar-strumming, sneakers-wearing, T-shirt-clad teenager. But the minute you scan his bio-data, you’ll change your mind in an instant.

This guy has scaled heights people his age can only dream of.

Teddy ’s EP release, Stepladder, ranked No. 1 in Rochester and made the Top 10 in Billboard’s Heatseekers chart.

He composed 80 to 90 songs in a span of eight years. These samples of his creative outbursts are stashed away in his basement. Of these, he has recorded only 25 to 30.

His is a wisdom beyond his years. One listen to the chorus of Gentleman, a cut from his debut album, Underage Thinking, says why. It goes:

Deliver me now from everything we should not do/So unpredictable but still I know just what you’re gonna do/In even the moments that fall flat/Something is different even though it’s hard to mean that /I wasn’t listening.

The song, which he himself wrote, is Teddy Geiger, inside and out, he says.

It talks of a guy who knows the screaming fans (girls mostly), the autograph seekers and other trappings of fame are temporary. Ergo, he shouldn’t let them sweep him off his feet.

"I try not to have expectations with my career," Teddy points out. "One of the things I learned about all these is that things change kinda very quickly."

So rather than focus on all those giggling, dreamy-eyed girls who will give their right hand just to get close to him, Teddy instead focuses on his music.

It’s for this that this writer and other journalists from all over Asia trooped to this club on a cloudless Thursday night. It’s also for this that Teddy is being touted as another John Mayer, a comparison that flatters him no end.

But again, Teddy refuses to see himself as God’s gift to music.

"I take things one step at a time," he explains his cautious attitude.

Don’t take this New Yorker wrong, though. Teddy does appreciate the fans. It will be hard to make a living without them, he admits.

"But I’ll still be all right without the fans. I’ll still make music and find a way to be happy."

Happiness, for him, is not selling gold records or seeing girls follow his every move. In fact, given the choice between a big-selling album he hates recording and a modest-selling one he loves doing, Teddy would gladly pick the latter.

"Being happy at what I’m doing is more important to me. It’s more about the music, less about the money," he reveals.

Every inch of the guy is true-blue artist, all right.

Here’s one more proof. While others would scamper all over the place to audition for American Idol, Teddy just sat coolly by and stood his ground.

No, he’s not against the widely-popular talent search. In fact, he thinks "it’s a great way to get out there."

The first reason is his voice. It’s "traditional-sounding," Teddy observes.

Then there’s the ticklish matter of finances.

"There’s some contractual thing there. They (the organizers) will get some percentage if you write songs," says Teddy.

It’s not that he’s after the profit. Teddy proved this when he and his bandmates donated the $1,000 grand prize they got from the Battle of the Bands in New York for tsunami relief efforts.

Teddy proved it again when he did another concert in Buffalo where the proceeds went to victims of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a disease that affects a lot of children.

It’s just that Teddy the songwriter and total artist wants complete freedom over his work, thank you.

The melody comes to him in different forms. Sometimes, it’s like lightning – sudden, unbidden. At other times, a verse from a song, a chorus from another, make Teddy sit bolt upright and create a brand-new melody.

Whatever it is, Teddy spans the breadth and width of emotions in his songs. His self-titled album under Sony BMG sees Teddy running the whole gamut of emotions, from heartache (Seven Days Without You), to loving (Love is a Marathon), growing up (Underage Thinking) and others.

You can’t help asking yourself: Is Teddy an adult trapped in the body of a teenager? Is this handsome guy with the winsome smile 17 going on 40?

Maybe because, as the eldest in the family, Teddy is by nature, mature for his age. Or maybe, because he was a middle school nerd with his fair share of rejections from girls, Teddy learned to look within himself more deeply.

And then again, it could be his intense spiritual life. Teddy put God on top of the thank you list at the back of his album. His musically-inclined parents are next in line.

"Thanks for letting me follow my dream. Wherever it takes me, I know that letting go can be hard sometimes," he tells Mom and Dad.

They need not worry about their talented son packing his bags for heaven knows where once he turns 18 like most Americans of that age do.

"I’m not at home most of the time right now," he reasons out. So moving out of the family home in New York, Teddy figures, will not help things any. He’s better off going home to a place he’s familiar with, to loved ones he cares for more than anyone else in the world.

If his is such an itinerant lifestyle, it’s because music has made him live in a suitcase.

He traveled to Japan to promote his album. Next in his itinerary after Singapore is Australia, and then the US – from the West Coast all the way to the East Coast.

The hectic schedule has Teddy living in a suitcase for months. And he can’t help but miss his support group – family and friends – a lot.

But when he thinks of how he can strum his guitar and make music till kingdom come to a mixed audience in these places, Teddy forgets all the homesickness he has to grapple with.

Failing to squeeze in time to get a driving permit was another price. Teddy gladly paid in exchange for making music here, there and everywhere.

"Everytime I get a schedule for a driver’s test, a show or a performance comes up," he says without a trace of bitterness.

Why, Teddy would be the first to give up his driver’s permit in exchange for another permit – to play music for as long as he wants, and to as many people as possible.

It’s a charmed life, Teddy will tell you that with a wide, winsome smile. Tiring, but charmed, nonetheless. Teddy Geiger, his burning passion for music gripping him body and soul, day and night, won’t have it any other way.