Wolf Tracks

Former J. Geils Band lead singer Peter Wolf chronicles

BY MIKE COTE

The Woofa Goofa has written a memoir, and it flows like the fasttalking rap of a late-night DJ.

In “Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses,” the solo artist and former J. Geils Band singer recalls encounters with marquee artists throughout his career, including fellow musicians Van Morrison, Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin and John Lennon and Hollywood icons Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Peter Sellers and Faye Dunaway, to whom he was married for five years in the 1970s.

Wolf visits the Portsmouth Music Hall on March 18 to talk about the memoir as part of the “Writers on a New England Stage” series in partnership with New Hampshire Public Radio. (The appearance is advertised as a discussion only, but we hear there’s a chance he might sit in with the house band.)

While Wolf devotes a few chapters to his upbringing in New York, the book is organized primarily as a series of episodes with other artists who influenced his career, including blues legends Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, whom Wolf got to know when they performed in Boston. Wolf tells these tales from the perspective of a fan, which underscores his deep love for the blues, soul and R&B that would anchor the sound of the J. Geils Band in its early years.

Wolf parted ways with the J. Geils Band more than 40 years ago, but the Bronx-born singer will forever be associated with the group, who as recently as 2014 reunited to open for Bob Seger at TD Garden. He got his start in Boston hosting an overnight show for WBCN, where he adopted the Woofa Goofa moniker most famously used in the live version of the J. Geils Top 20 hit, “Musta Got Lost.”

Despite various reunion shows with his former bandmates over the years, Wolf devotes just a single chapter to them. After years of playing college gyms and hockey arenas, the J. Geils Band finally hit the big time in the late 1970s, culminating with the chart-topping 1981 album “Freeze Frame,” featuring the No. 1 single “Centerfold.”

Just as the band was finally flush with cash and success, a battle for creative control between Wolf and his songwriting partner and keyboard player, Seth Justman, ended in a standoff, with Wolf leaving the band for a solo career. Wolf says he was kicked out after the group refused to record material he had written with outside musicians. The result led to Wolf’s successful “Lights Out” album and a final J. Geils disc without Wolf that flopped.

“For the Geils Band, success took its bite with razor-sharp teeth, causing a divide between me and my bandmates,” Wolf writes. “They chose to change course and follow a captain whose blind compass would soon have them smashed hard against the rocks.”

Wolf writes with more affection for Dunaway, who introduced him to the wild world of Hollywood parties, including one with Jack Nicholson (who starred with Faye in “Chinatown”) that would cause serious damage to their relationship.

“I was conflicted and hurt but still in love with Dorothy Faye and contemplating whether our relationship was worth fighting for,” Wolf writes.

Wolf ends “Waiting on the Moon” on a high note with a story about chasing down country legend Merle Haggard to record a duet with him on “It’s Too Late for Me,” which appeared on Wolf’s 2010 album “Midnight Souvenirs.”

“In seeking him out, I fulfilled a dream. His voice connects me to a long line that wind its way through music history, like a river running through time.”

Spoken like a true fan, if not a late-night DJ. NH

Peter Wolf appears March 18 at 7 p.m. at the Portsmouth Music Hall for “Writers on a New England Stage.” Tickets, which include a copy of “Waiting on the Moon,” are $54.50 and available at themusichall.org.