Farina has earned a well-deserved reputation as a musical provocateur who prefers to inhabit his own unique niche within the Indie Rock realm rather than compromise his creative impulses in an effort to mimic prevailing trends. Farina shuttered Karate more than a decade ago due to tinnitus issues, but he’s kept busy in music. He maintains The Secret Stars, his longtime Folk/Pop duo with musician/visual artist Jodi Buonanno; the pair also founded the Grange Hall, a recording/art studio/living space in Boston. Since the end of Karate, Farina has continued his membership in Italian Folk/Punk band Ardecore, his presence in the more traditionally Folk-based Glorytellers and his erstwhile solo career, which has included a handful of full-lengths releases, including his most recent, 2012’s The Wishes of the Dead, and EPs, as well as a number of film scoring projects.
Since his relocation to Chicago, Farina, who holds a BA from the Berklee College of Music and an MA from the University of Massachusetts, is also a music history professor at DePaul University.
The year after his last solo album, Farina founded Exit Verse, his first actual Indie Rock band since the cessation of Karate, with former Chisel drummer John Dugan and Brokeback/Tight Phantomz bassist Pete Kroke. The trio, sounding like Wayne Kramer fronting Ted Leo’s Pharmacists, recorded and released its well-received debut album in 2013, following it up just a couple of weeks ago with the equally energized Grant No Glory, featuring ex-Chin Up Chin Up drummer Chris Dye behind the kit. Regardless of the musical situation he creates for himself, there is always cause for celebration when Geoff Farina hits the city limit. Exit Verse is merely the latest.
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