Singing the blues
Father-daughter duo write and perform together
As band, duo tackles heavy subjects while bonding over music in lighthearted way
Houston lawyer David Gerger and his 22-year-old daughter, Ria Gerger, have their own band, but they aren’t like other family ensembles.
In fact, the duo has yet to settle on a catchy band name.
“We just call ourselves Ria and David, but we need a better name,” confessed the elder Gerger.
What they do have is compelling subject matter.
David, a white-collar criminal defense attorney, and Ria, a senior economics major at Middlebury College, wax poetic about the death penalty, Enron and the loss of a child on their inaugural EP, “Give Me Mercy.”
“One of the songs is about when my little brother died,” Ria said of a track titled “Elliott.”
“My dad has taken our reallife moments and paid tribute to them through music,” she said. “You don’t often see a parent having so much fun and laughing. This hobby has really brought us closer together.”
The Gerger clan has always loved music. Ria and older brother Adam, who currently lives in London, begged their father to sing Peter Paul & Mary’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon” every night before bed when they were young. It was their favorite song, Ria said.
“The joke around our house is that because my wife, Heidi, is Austrian, the kids spent all of their summers near Salzburg, and we were very primitive when it came to things like stereos or CDs,” David Gerger said. “My wife found a video of ‘The Magic Flute’ and made the kids watch it.” “In Swedish,” Ria points out. She also notes how much her parents enjoy the theater, opera and musicals. Although her dad played in his high school band, Ria said, she can’t read music. Still, David Gerger says the songs his daughter sings are strongest. Two years ago, when Ria, an all-American tennis player, returned home from college to undergo ankle surgery, the “band” was born. Family friend Rock Roman, aka Dr. Rockit, hooked them up with a recording studio and four additional musicians. Most tunes have a blues-rock vibe.
“I just write songs about experiences, so some of them are silly and funny,” David Gerger said, “like ‘I’ll marry you when they finish (Interstate) 45.’ ”
Another track is about Enron. “Two songs are about men freed from death row,” he said. “These are both men I know.”
One is Anthony Charles Graves. In 1992, he was convicted of killing six people in Somerville, incarcerated for 18 years, then exonerated and finally released from prison in 2010. On the song, Graves sings: “Who’ll give you back 18 lost years? Who’ll give you back 10,000 tears? You are bitter, you do not hate, you learn to labor and wait.”
Ria recalls being awestruck during the five or so hours she spent with Graves.
“The song makes me smile. LOL,” Graves said via email. “But I think the world awaits 155 more songs like this because we are 156 exonerated from death row. The rest of those need their own songs as well.”
The proceeds from the album benefit the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama and Special Olympics Texas.
The father and daughter exchange email once a month about new material, though neither has plans to abandon their day jobs. Ria already has a health-care consulting gig lined up post-graduation. Gerger, a lawyer with Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, says his songwriting and guitar-playing give him an edge in the courtroom.
“I think that trial lawyers should always be a little creative,” he said. “Most trial lawyers have a kooky side to them; you have to be interesting to the judge and jury.”