In recent years, several people have asked me if I know what ever happened to Paul Roller and his restaurants, Roller’s Express-O and Flying Fish, both of which were in Chestnut Hill for many years but have now been shuttered for almost a decade. I have wondered the same thing myself.

Anyone who wants an answer should show up Friday, May 29, 8 p.m., at the Mermaid Inn, where Roller will be playing guitar with one of the area’s most popular bands, Ten of Hearts featuring Andy Maher.

Roller, 73, a lifelong Chestnut Hill resident, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as an English major in 1974, after which he began working for Frog, an innovative restaurant on 16th Street near Locust, owned by then-Chestnut Hill resident Steve Poses. Roller later worked for The Commissary, another Poses restaurant at 1710 Sansom St.

In 1982, Roller left Poses and opened his first restaurant, Roller’s, a BYOB, across from the state store at the top of the Hill. In 2006, he and his then-wife, Becky, moved Roller’s restaurant into the seafood restaurant he had opened in 1984, Flying Fish, at 8142 Germantown Ave., formerly home to George’s, a macrobiotic restaurant. Roller also operated a more casual spot, Roller’s Express-O (which he had opened as Noodles+ in 1986), at 8341 Germantown Ave., at the corner with Gravers Lane.

When he was 40, however, Roller began having severe knee pain. He later had a knee replacement, but over the years he also had three strokes and triple-bypass open-heart surgery, so in 2017 he simply could not keep putting in the hours and energy required of a restaurant’s chef/owner.

“So I had a choice to make,” Roller said last week during an interview inside the empty Roller’s Express-O, with lifelong friend and fellow bandmate Jack Leaming standing nearby. “Would I rather be cleaning grease traps at 2 a.m. or playing music? It was an easy decision. I’ve helped other chefs, so I considered being a consultant, but chefs have such big egos, they will not listen to consultants.

“I am still very much into food. I can still do a walk-on in a kitchen if they don’t mind my walking slowly, but it’s definitely a young person’s game,” Roller said. “You can’t make a living [playing music], but it is great fun, and it’s therapeutic. And you get to meet so many people. My son said, ‘I don’t worry anymore about you now that I’ve heard you play.’ We have a musical community in Northwest Philly. We take care of each other.”

Roller’s music journey actually began at Our Mother of Consolation Elementary School. The class of 1966 included Roller; vocalist Leaming; singer Mary MacAvoy, who today has a band, 2nd Story Walk-Up; Andy Maher; Pat Gallagher, area real estate maven; and Joe Magarity, of Magarity Ford, formerly located at what is now the One West complex on Germantown Avenue.

“You could say our first gig was 54 years ago,” Leaming said. “We did three songs for 400 people in a talent show at Springside [School]. We were called the Quarrymen (the original name of the Beatles) along with Jim Dooley and Danny Bendix. We sang ‘Help,’ ‘Volunteers’ of America, and ‘Tuesday Afternoon.’ I could hit those high notes then, and today I can almost hit them. Then we performed at a wedding on Chestnut Hill Avenue with Liz Webb, a terrific singer/guitarist who is now deceased.”

Former classmates Roller, Leaming and Maher got together almost 10 years ago when Roller retired from his pots and pans. Their first performance at the Mermaid Inn was the Thursday before Labor Day weekend in 2017.

Roller recalls, “We told Joanne [the owner], ‘Give us the lousiest night of the summer, and we will make you money.’ It was our maiden voyage with the Mermaid, you might say. We set sail at the Mermaid. There were 130 in the audience, quite a few from our OMC class.”

After that initial success, Ten of Hearts has performed regularly at the Mermaid Inn. They have also played at the Commodore John Barry Arts and Cultural Center in West Mt. Airy.

“We rehearse three times before each gig and jam a lot,” Leaming said, “and Andy has had a jam every Tuesday night for 35 years. Some of the songs the band does are Andy’s originals,which are very good. Not really rock and roll, pop, et cetera. We do Beatles, Motown and country music, but we really don’t fit into any particular lane.”

Roller, who interestingly has never had a computer, is somewhat of an honorary member of Ten of Hearts and 2nd Story Walk-Up, thanks to his support of the local music scene by letting so many bands practice and jam at the Flying Fish.

“At the Mermaid we pass around a basket,” he said.”You are not going to get rich that way. Nobody has put food stamps into the basket yet, but someone did put in PTC [Philadelphia Transportation Company] tokens [from the 1950s]. We are no good at monetizing. One guy opened up his wallet and flipped through lots of $20 bills and and then left a dollar bill in the basket. But people come from Fort Washington, Ardmore and Jenkintown to hear us, with about half of the audience from Chestnut Hill. We keep doing it because it’s a labor of love.”

For more information, visit themermaidinn.net. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.