JAREMA'S STORY
Songwriter, singer, producer, arranger, and artist Jarema is the mastermind behind the independent blues, rock, and country project The Reclamators.
Jarema is no newcomer in the music business. In the early 1960s, he regularly took a bus from Wayne, New Jersey to New York City, carrying his guitar and a tape of his songs. He would visit “Tin Pan Alley” on 28th Street between Broadway and 6th Avenue to knock on the doors of music publishers and record companies, just trying to get anyone to listen to his songs.
One day he got lucky and was able to catch the ear of one of the executives at Screen-Gems Music, which had a pool of songwriters that would crank out tunes in their “song factory”. Jarema was partnered to work with writer and singer Ron Dante, lead singer of The Archies. Together they came up with some demos, and in 1963, Ron helped him get his first song published and recorded. The song was called “Rumble in the Night”, performed by Mike Minor.
Some time later, Ron was instrumental in securing a recording contract for Jarema with Stan Shulman’s Dunes Records. This led to his first professional release in 1965 (on the Mala Records imprint) of the song “I’m Stickin' With You” under the pseudonym Ronnie Michaels. This song can still be heard with a quick search on YouTube!
Click here to hear "I'm Sticking' With You" by Ronnie Michaels
Concurrently, Jarema was attending a small college in Iowa and hoping for a hit record. After graduating, with the help of his personal manager and close friend Vic Piscatello, he was contracted in 1968 to Laurie Records (home to such artists as Dion and the Belmonts, The Chiffons and The Royal Guardsmen) with his new group The Yellow Brick Road. From 1968 until 1973, the band released fifteen 45rpm singles on Laurie Records. They had many regional hits, many of which exist in vinyl collections and are sought after all over the world.
