PEL Presents NEM#257: Josh Joplin Doesn't Look Back… Until Now

0:00you're listening to nakedly examined music a podcast about songs and songwriters my name is mark lintenmayer my guest for episode 257 is josh joplin he has deep folk roots but for the most part his music falls into the category of rock singer songwriter including what you're hearing now camera one his big hit from the 2001 album useful music which just got a silver anniversary rework slash reissue so in fact the version you're hearing right now is the newly

0:35recorded version before this he had three albums in the 90s and after this he's released seven more albums so about 11 in total plus some eps and things we're discussing goodbye berlin from his last full album gap year 2025 history of i do from a figure drawing 2023 juniper from a boxing nostalgic from 1997 and we'll conclude by listening to high low and wide from the self-titled album by among the oak and ash in 2008 learn more at joshjoplingroup.com learn more about this podcast at

1:08nakedly examined music.com or support the effort making your experience ad free and getting my episode notes at patreon.com slash nakedly examined music i will play a little bit of camera one of course your big hits but this is the 25th anniversary complete re-recording right it's the silver anniversary master but it's not just a remastering it's it's silver anniversary master yeah complete re-recording and is that just because you don't own the originals and you want to be able

1:39to license it for commercials and get all the money is that that's the normal reason people re-record that is a part of all of this journey i have been lucky enough to get most of my recordings back which most musicians can't do but it's more about celebrating this summer the 25th anniversary so we just all figured let's do this and that's the majority of the reason we're doing it but the benefit is yeah i own this version so we want to get pretty quickly to well the latest full album besides this

2:12complete useful music silver anniversary sessions which is sort of what we're promoting here but the the last album complete new materials 2025s is it just pronounced gap year g-p-y-r okay yeah gap year goodbye berlin the single i'd pick from that do you want to see just a little bit about the journey from your hit in what this was 2001 am i doing the math right yes uh that i saw you recorded three albums in the 90s which are not really even on the streaming services i had to you know you have a you have a group uh a compilation from two of them not from the first it's basically just a compilation of the

2:46two records we did very early days we started basically as a group that i was going to pay everybody to just play music with me and then it just evolved into the group and at in that time span we were sort of recording music and putting out records and things had sort of evolved into where we really were a band and regretfully called josh joplin group or josh joplin band at that time you know because that insinuates that it wasn't a band it was just me paying people who were to play

3:21with me i mean as a long-term strategy of name recognition it seems like that was not a bad idea right well it's funny you know a lot of this these 25 years have been just looking back and and i'm not a huge person who sticks to nostalgia and to looking back very often so really the truth is is that useful music has been the first time i have really looked back at it we were going to release it as a

3:5420th anniversary and i wasn't doing any of these things for it uh it was going to be a celebration five years ago but because i had those five years i was thinking about all of the things that would be sort of fun to do with the group and also looking back on that time which for me is incredible because i had one foot in the old music industry and one foot in what was it going to be the industry that

4:25we probably know now which is you know consolidated radio home recording and napster at that time and you know which would lead to streaming and so much has changed and in those 25 years social media has come to mean something very different to what we mirror for one another on our cameras so yeah gave me some time to think as far as name recognition and things like that uh clearly i have not done the job that

4:59my band's name was benefiting me uh to to do obviously i very clearly recognized the song but i didn't know who it was by when yeah just to simplify life uh when people ask me what do i do and i say i'm a musician most people say what else do you do because most people haven't made a living i guess in music and i've been very very fortunate to have so i just say i'm a one-hit wonder which i know is very controversial for musicians who are people who had a really big song and i don't know a ton of people

5:34in this community that i'm a part of but i say one-hit wonder just because it allows me to move on from having to explain my life in some way and it seems like i never i hate that question what do you do i never ask people what they do i think it's kind of rude but people ask that especially you know americans love to know what you do because i think it's so much a part of our identity our work is our identity so people think oh what do you do it's just a part of getting to know

6:06somebody but i definitely respect people who had a really big song and don't want to be called a one-hit wonder and i also am fine being called a one-hit wonder answering that question you'll get very granular and mundane goodbye berlin you apparently get on planes a lot go play shows different places get on another plane stay in a hotel get another plane yes can you say a little bit about where you're at by gap year 2025 and this song before we hear it all of these songs were

6:40initially to be honest and this is crazy granular were all for a show that i had written and so it's a lot about my life at a time when i was much younger and coming up in the rave scene in baltimore which i wasn't a participant in per se but i was very close to because i had friends who were who were very much involved in that so goodbye berlin became a song for me that i wanted to use in this show that never

7:13came to pass because of the evil that was covid but i had been in berlin and i had taken all of my friends aspirations to their dance scene and their club scene did everything i could to bring back stories for them about what i saw and it just became so much a bigger trip for me because i i didn't want to leave berlin and it was such a beautiful experience for me being there the people there

7:47and i got on a plane feeling like i need to turn around and get off this plane and stay but i was too scared to do that you know obviously my life would have been completely different at the age of 18 or whatever i was to have done that but that to me was the the ultimate version of myself as a fly on the wall for all of these people who were much more braver than i ever was and so i came home and i got

8:23to tell my friends the story but i didn't stay there all of my friends would have stayed and gotten arrested and deported and all of those things and been happy for it that wasn't me all right so much more specific story this is not actually a touring song this is about way before then well let's hear it out of time out of bed out of order in my head suppose we drove as far as we could

9:06never found our way if we could turn back around without regrets every day that waits forgets about me arrive by taxi check my bag watch the clock and feel the lag between now and the time we have rivals departures it doesn't matter whose heart hurts

9:39goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can out of luck out of mind out of reasons to stay behind suppose we float from where we stand across the world

10:15and not reach the world and not reach land will we swim until we can't or just return back home again put on clothes and pack your bags goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can

10:47goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can yeah out of place and out of fear and out of love that drew us here

11:19out of place and out of fear and out of love that drew us here but based on days of our good word as we came up for air in the cold of kreuzberg goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can

11:53goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can

12:23goodbye berlin i miss you every chance i can overall stylistically how are you putting together the band the the ensemble what the sounds are going to be you've got some interesting sort of melodica keyboard sounds in there say a little about what the band is at this point well the band is always the group and the group is usually people i've played with for a long long time so for gap year it's my friend lorenzo wolf who has gone on

12:56to produce lots of big records or pieces of big records and he and i sort of started out where he was playing bass for me when he was very young and and we made the record with the intention of creating something quickly because i don't love to sit around and think about recording and be in it for months and and i respect everybody's different choices that way too but we wanted to make the record in two days maybe that's typically how two three days that's that's how i like to work

13:30so we just got down to it one of my very first drummers ani cordero is she's singing on it emily holden who's a very close friend to both lorenzo and i she sings on it and uh kevin joaquin garcia who plays in another band altogether different kind of music called the steel wheels joined and that was a lot of fun too so it was just a very immediate what fits here and all i knew is i wanted to play guitar and mug pedals these pedals i got from a friend of mine years ago okay so you're doing the

14:05more 80s the fake delay whack whack whack rather than the chuck chuck chuck chuck guitar the other one yes it sounds very choreographed in terms of just you know it's not like you play the intro and then the whole band comes in it's that they keep coming in and going out coming in and going out if you do this in two days does that mean that you actually just did that in the mixing or did you have to choreograph that we talked it over a lot and how we recorded it was i sang live with my electric lorenzo sat in front of me playing bass in the control room while kevin

14:42played drums in another room we essentially did it that way but we talked about the arrangements and kevin actually came up with a beautiful arrangement on the the last tune called predator and prey which we hadn't thought of until we got into the studio but yeah it was for the most part we talked it over for maybe maybe as long as 15 minutes or 20 minutes maybe ran through some things but then we just sort of played it and then ani and emily and our friend sarah came in sarah plays keyboard

15:18much better than i do and so she was playing the piano and and the keyboard and ani and emily came in to sing the backup yeah let me jump to the sort of instrumental there's sort of a 80s keyboard and a 80s single note delay guitar on the left yeah so any thought about that choice of we're going to do a sort of riff oriented instrumental

15:54break instead of having a solo or something one i can't play solo guitar so that makes a lot of choices for us i think the biggest solo that we have on the record was actually played by my daughter who can tear up a guitar we kind of left that moment to her but yeah for the most part i don't really play solos so anything that i do that tends to be solo ask just usually is like me riffing on a

16:25chord that i'm playing with either my ring finger and my pinky finger or just trying to create the essence but i really wanted the rhythm of bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb to be that rave and old soft sell and and just joy division and all those bands from the 80s or 70s and 80s that that had those tremendous rhythmic guitar moments new order and all those characters so that was the

17:01idea to try to do these things as well as we could with as few people as we could at least to start out and then just skipping over the bridge here you've got another instrumental break that almost sounds like pinball wizard let me just play part of it even though the the power guitar is there it's actually much more restrained than one you know it's not the it's not true right right wizard tribute it's just that well it is a tribute oh

17:36yeah yeah no for me it's completely like we're playing rock music right and for me i didn't grow up knowing who music my best friend was a huge who fan and huge pete townsend fan so much of it is absolutely a tribute to that also it just felt like the right thing to do you know it's and i love those builds anyhow so yeah it was kind of like the who and you too they do those things beautifully

18:10and that was kind of in the world well i labeled your initial guitar as fake delay because it sort of yeah drop drop drop drop drop like as if you were using a delay pedal well clearly you're not because then it just sustains that you're not turning it on that you're just lots of downstroking lots of downstrokes yep that's actually one of the things that lorenzo talked we talked a lot about which is sometimes i get in my head about the fact that i play guitar in a way that you know my my guitar hero as a kid was richie havens so i tend to play all of the parts and lorenzo was really kind

18:50and and most of the time i have learned to try to stay out of the way of the drums and the bass and lorenzo was was very generous and said no we should you should be doing the things that you naturally do and that was really kind of fun for me because i really do play all of these downstrokes and and whatever i mean it's not brilliant playing or anything like that but it's just very much how i play yeah i saw that you sort of had a start in your bio playing with a fairly

19:25direct connection to sort of the old folk scene yeah but at the same time as a rock and roll kit you know or just so right my approach as a young person playing acoustic guitar was to kind of beat the shit out of a sort of violent fems uh yeah make it a rhythmic instrument yep um so that it is so it is getting in the drummer's way or at least you got to really lock in with the drummer that that becomes sort of the foundation of the band as you and the drummer it was definitely a thing for me to adjust

19:55to when i started to play with other people and i know that you know my first drummer like i had said it was ani cordero and i'm sure you know she was 16 and i was 19 and we had our first little foray into making a band together sure she was frustrated because it was like not only was i sometimes playing five measures when i should have been playing four because i had played solo for so long i was just in my head if i need another measure to figure out what i'm going to sing next

20:31then i'll just do that drummer just has to watch you they just yeah exactly just follow me and my every little win exactly and if i want to repeat the chorus an extra time then you just have to pay attention exactly yeah 100 so that's that's how it went down saying that this is essentially a show tune for a show that didn't get made makes this song make more sense to me you know obviously you know it's a nice single but it also does what you were saying about that instrumental break and these dramatic moments what was the apparent destination of this show why did it happen at some later time

21:06now that we're past covid it was a show that started out as a little bit of this story that i had lived and wanted to tell but it's kind of auto fiction you know like it was about a group of friends who always seem to know and be aware of things well before i ever was so very close friend of mine was very very involved with the rave scene and was a very much a part of a community that she had all

21:43of these connections to and for me every part of that was culture shock and receiving it with some trepidation but at the same time wishing that i you know was brave enough to do all these things that these kids were doing i was an observer i've always been an observer that's who i am i wish i was quick and able to be responsive in a way i'm always the person that looks back and goes i should have done that i should have done this like i was saying about berlin i should have just stayed but i was always

22:18thinking about the consequences so the show is about us as friends rescuing our friend from i guess a youth facility in the middle of new england they were kidnapped essentially we didn't know what happened to them we had to figure out where they were and how to get them out and so it's kind of all about that that's was the show was a was about friends trying to jailbreak a very very close friend

22:49from a pretty horrible youth sobriety facility i get the theme but what was the actual destination like was there a theater in particular or yeah so we were only in table reads and we were only in pre-production at that time and originally some of the music that we were going to make was for cast you know that was kind of was the beginning of it all the destination would have just been anybody who would have had us but we had a little bit of money to at least get a director and lorenzo and

23:24myself enough to look at what it might look like so that's kind of where it ended we just started that process when covid took over pop quiz what's in your kids lunchbox at whole foods market they've already done the studying over 300 food ingredients are banned from their shelves no hydronated fats in the peanut butter and no high fructose corn syrup in the cookies and for sandwiches there are no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in any of their deli meat so you can pack lunch boxes with peace of mind

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25:402023 can you say a little about where you're at i guess this is still listed as officially an among the oak and ash album we haven't mentioned this you know you mentioned starting with maybe regrettably uh a band with your name but then what 2008 after you know sort of after your major label adventures you started this you know very different project which we'll hear something at the very end from the initial impetus of that but i guess so this is the third iteration of that band but it's but it's now back marketed as josh joplin group after that first album right so basically

26:14we'd put out records on verve for among the oak and ash and it was you know more or less supposed to be a project where i was teaming up for the first record it was garrison star who is just a beloved person in my life and we did that record and it just didn't sell you know and that's just that's just what happens we did another record called devil ship and it didn't sell and i knew that this project quote unquote among the oak and ash was going to be probably just three albums worth

26:46the first one was sort of an introduction to us the second one i rewrote all of these folk narratives from other people's perspectives and then uh the third one was going to be completely original music all original music and no references to folk music i guess at all meaning you know traditional folk music so yeah i had made the record it was sitting there garrison had moved on to do other things and this was going to be for whatever reason the final record but it just sort of sat there and by

27:21the time we were ready to put out gap year and all of those things a very smart man who happens to manage me said why are you doing all of this this is ridiculous just put it out because josh joplin group will just make it available at least and do that and then we'll put out a gap year and that was smart and now everything is consolidated and i'm actually really truly attempting to get the first among the oak and ash record from verve to also be a josh joplin group featuring garrison star record because

27:56you don't find it otherwise unless you you know either one of us so uh that's that's kind of the attempt i'm at now after having spent nearly a decade trying to get the publishing stuff squared away well unless people have heard this podcast and they will know to separately look up among the oak ampersand ash okay uh all right so history of i do uh do you want to say a few words about that song in particular before we hear it i wrote it with a friend and i don't typically co-write but i wrote

28:28that with a friend uh west langwa and i wrote the lyrics and he wrote the music and i it was just so much fun to do that he's just such a tremendous songwriter that it was kind of an honor to be able to do it with him all right i will link folks to a version i just noted on the internet with just the two of you oh cool singing that together as an opening thing in a concert that you were doing and i didn't realize that he'd written that but it certainly sounded like the same harmony that we're hearing on this recording let's hear it loaded down with adjectives for love we couldn't use burdened by remembrance of a thing we didn't choose

29:19so we splintered like a box and so we remained holding on to every object it contained and i think about you now like i've never done before and i guess i miss you less a whole lot and i guess i miss you less a whole lot

29:52i thought i heard a deer in the woods in despair like a scout with hiding senses it was searching the air and i think about you now like i've never done before and i guess i miss you less a whole lot more

30:38and i guess i miss you less a whole lot more and i guess i miss you less a whole lot more Road, road, rendered me incomplete

31:11Blue lines everywhere Two places meet Take over, where maps just disappear The only home I've known I couldn't find it in you And I think about you now like I've never done before And I guess I miss you less or a whole lot more

31:46And I think about you now like I've never done before And I guess I miss you less or a whole lot more And I guess I miss you less or a whole lot more

32:09And I guess I miss you less or a whole lot more Load it down with adjectives Or love we couldn't use All right, so I won't ask you too much about the music

32:42If you didn't write the music, right? You said Wes wrote? Yeah, Wes writes the music. I wrote the lyric, yeah. I guess still the overall sound of the band, right? This is much more Neil Young than... Oh, that's kind. You know, I forgot to mention with the first one, I know you've mentioned even in a song like, Oh, people say I sound like Michael Stipe. Yeah. But the first thing that struck me was Psychedelic Furs, which I really love from the tone of your... There's a certain forever now in Goodbye Berlin. That's so nice of you because to be honest,

33:14I didn't listen to REM and I did listen to Psychedelic Furs. So I always thought I was going to be more Richard Butler for me than anything. But honestly, it doesn't happen very much anymore. Maybe it's because REM is, you know, not as prevalent. But most people who hear like camera one for the first time, I think they think it's Michael Stipe potentially. But I have now, and I think this has a lot to do with what's going on on Sirius XM

33:45and all that stuff with First Wave. I've heard more about sounding a little bit more Psychedelic Furs than I have ever heard in my whole life. There was one person who said I sounded like Cat Stevens, and I thought that's insane. In that you're a baritone? I mean, that's... Yeah, I have no idea. I was like, what are you talking about? I mean, I guess it's a compliment, you know, about... Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's totally a compliment, I guess. But that was...

34:16And then sometimes I feel like I get... And this is completely possible that... I mean, I have huge... Elvis Costello is a huge influence on me, but I think sometimes I get compared to him because I wear glasses. Okay. I mean... Yeah. It's a Neo Dillon, just like Elvis Costello is a Neo Dillon. It's a category of singer-songwriter. People want to make sense of things. Right. I guess, yes. There you go. So when you say he wrote the music, did he write the melody? Or did you do the melody and lyrics?

34:49He wrote the melody and the chord. Yeah, the music and all of that. So I just gave him lyrics and we just tried this out. It was a blast. Just if you had noticed... And I didn't really notice it until you reprise at the end, the first line. But... That's the opening line of Mercy Street. I'm a huge fan. So maybe that says the... It certainly wouldn't have been Wes's...

35:20Yeah, that didn't come out of my... Yeah. Although I can appreciate that's definitely not Wes's... I think Wes said one time, he said, People ask me, Beatles or Rolling Stones? I just tell them Buck Owens. Oh, all right. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Yeah. Pretty country through and through. I think his favorite band is Bread. These are quite good lyrics. Thank you. Right. Loaded down with adjectives for a love we couldn't use. Burdened by remembrance of a fate we didn't choose. And so we splintered like a box.

35:51And so we remained holding on to every object it contained. Do you have a big notebook of lyrics that you just were ready to pull this out? Or... I do write lyrics down and things like that that I think might be lyrics. But that just kind of was one of those things. I couldn't find the right melody for it. And I had written a melody to it. But I was like, you know who I should try this out with is Wes. Because we'd always threatened to work with each other that way as songwriters. And he turned it around.

36:23And there is a version of that that rocks super heavy. Very, very Neil Young. Neil Young is a big influence on Wes, especially. When we first played it, it was heavy, heavy. And then for the record, I kind of made a different choice about it. I wanted it to be a lot more about sorrow. Yes, it's kind of a mournful song. If you really, you know, not that you can't really rock a mournful song. There's a certain power to that.

36:54Yeah, this chorus. And I love triple negatives. I think about you now like I've never done before. And I guess I miss you less a whole lot more. I'm trying to even just untwist that. Yes. Is this a nostalgic song? Or is this a you're still in a relationship song? It was not totally clear to me. I think it's kind of that point where you're sometimes in a relationship with somebody. And you're not sure that you're ready to let go.

37:25But you know, you need to. That kind of thing. So increasingly, I do not miss you when we are not together. There I have. Yeah. I've removed the semantic ambiguity. Yeah. And you know, that is how it is, isn't it? You know, you kind of like if you're in love with somebody and they go away for whatever reason, you know, and it's just the cliche, you know, it's the time you need time. And that's a little bit of it. But sometimes you're thinking about that time, even when you're in the relationship and they're,

37:55you know, it's dissipating. Well, and then you bring in a metaphor. I thought I heard a deer in the woods in despair. There's despair. You say it right there. Like a scout with heightened senses. It was searching the air and I only saw it when it ran and left me to live. Never had so much as when I had nothing to give. Yes, we can pile metaphor on top of metaphor, but we just have a little diversion here before we're back to repeating the chorus. Any thought about the structure here? If you even think about such things. For me, at least, I think sometimes there's surprises and there's nothing more surprising

38:27than a woodland animal coming out from the bush and you're, you might be walking in the woods and suddenly you see their eyes or you get this glimpse. And I think there's some correlation between that spark of acknowledgement of love and hate and disappointment and surprise. Those are all things that kind of come to me, at least in those relationships that don't work out.

38:58That could be the foundation of a song. No, it's just one of the verses that we've got here. And the road rendered me incomplete. Blue lines everywhere. Two places meet. Take over where maps just disappear. The only home I'd known I couldn't find here. We're continuing sort of on the nature or geography, at least, metaphors, but we've moved on from the deer. Yeah. Any thought about exactly how many times, right? Because we started loaded down with adjectives for a love we couldn't use, which is a really cool concept, not a metaphor, nothing to do with the outdoor and deers and things like

39:33that. Sometimes I kick myself because it's been such a huge influence in my life. And I talk about this in bio after bio, I'm sure. I left school when I was 16 in the 10th grade, and I lived in a van like Jewel for a good couple of years, just kind of roaming. And the biggest influence in my life was William Lee Seat Moon's Lost Highways. And I have to say, and I need to stop doing it, but I go back to some of the loneliest moments

40:06of my life were me in my little camper van. But there was such a freedom to my experience. So it would always outweigh the desperation. So for me, I think the road can be really, really hard. And I am really lucky. My life was two or three years of ridiculous touring. And I had been kind of prepared for it because I spent two years sort of doing it already,

40:39not as a touring musician, but just as a traveling kid trying to figure out my life. But I do have many friends that are on the road 200 days a year. It's hard to even be friends with a musician because they're gone so often. And I really feel for them. I feel for their families. I know what a toll that can take. But same toll that maybe being a trucker or a pilot or... Well, lots of opportunities to miss people, yes, out there.

41:09Just one more question about the music before we get the third one out there. So the nice, mournful steel guitar, was that Wes's thing? Was that just part of the band you were working with at the time? How was you said that? No, actually, that's Fats Kaplan. He's a very, very well-known steel player. And Fats is really... Well, first of all, he's just a wonderful, wonderful person. But he's so talented. And then he can play everything. He's a wonderful mandolin player, violin, fiddle, pedal steel.

41:41He's known for being able also to create these kind of soundscapes, which he does all over the figure drawing. But you think, oh, this person has... Their talent has no bounds. And then he can do close-up magic. It's like no one's business. And he has a Hawaiian ukulele band that plays authentic ukulele music and also music from the 1920s.

42:11And just so many things and so many values, I guess, that I align with his curiosity and his love of music. He played with Roy Bookbinder as a kid and then plays with Jack White. And he's... Mitski, I think, is who he's playing with now. And he's a very, very wonderful contributor to the Nashville, but also the American music scene. And anybody who wants to hear him even more, those are good places to start.

42:42Well, I'm going to take this as a segue to our third tune, going all the way back to 1997, to Boxing Nostalgic. The song I picked was Juniper, because this is another sort of somewhat mournful, but, you know, at least it's a travel song. Actually, I wrote a tune in, like, 91 that was initially called Just Running at Night, because I wrote it while jogging at night. And this has that feeling, you know, we're at night, it's an urban thing, in a car, or walking around, it's unclear.

43:12But anyway, yeah, can you say a little about where you're at back then and this song before we hear it? So there's a street in Atlanta called Juniper. That would probably be the place to begin. And there was a club in Atlanta called Back Streets. And so it's kind of just a dedication to a really beautiful space for people to be themselves. And at night, getting to see, as they say, the freaks come out. I got to see all that because I lived there and I lived on Juniper, or at least nearby, in Midtown.

43:48It's a little bit about kind of like how a city, when it shuts down, there's a whole other city. We all know that, you know, so that's a little bit of what it is. All right. To warm people, a little bit of a longer tune, but it's still under six minutes compared to some of the prog rockers that I have on here with their 15-minute songs. It'll breeze by. But yeah, I really like the feel of this one. Let's hear it.

44:27Skyline Searchlight Weightless Weightless Weight-dying

45:00Patterns Are breathing Pavement High-rise Taxis Taxis Drive-by The boys Only dreaming

45:31Blue lights Sirens Sirens Dark screams Dark screams In silence While Jennifer Is sleeping While Jennifer Is sleeping

46:06A boys A boys in drag Walking Walking To the club Lonely Souls Rejections For new love Leaving Leaving Leaving Faceless

46:40Faceless forms of people On love wasting more And freezing

47:13Midnight Unveiled Sorrow Of church bells And the boys Only dreaming Laughter

47:46Still stirs And the all-night diner While children Are sleeping While children Are sleeping And the boys

48:17In drive Walking to the club Like lonely souls And anxious for you alone And the all-night Leaving While juniper Is sleeping

48:49While juniper You're sleeping While juniper And the all-night diner While juniper Is sleeping All right.

49:45So we have a lot of verses here with kind of a little tag at the end. I'd call a mini chorus. And yeah, how did you think of this? This is mostly just like we're going to run with the same rhythm more or less. Yeah. But you're going to vary up the guitar subtly here and there and you're going to have piano come in and out. And yeah, it seems like this could go on. Was there a little Velvet Underground sort of influence here? Yeah, I definitely say it was supposed to be meditative, right? Because nighttime for me, I guess I always love that feeling of you're floating inside

50:18and outside of something. Yeah. So it's supposed to have this kind of meditative thing. And it was a poem originally, which is pretty corny for a musician to say. But that is how it started. And then I put it to music. I didn't create lots of different parts to it. It really is just a tagline. You know that feeling. Too many updates. Too many meetings. Too many things falling through the cracks. Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform designed from the ground up for people and agents to work side by side

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52:15For something meditative, the drums are quite spastic and loud. You know, it's not just a little quiet, the river flows into the sea meditative. So this is Jason Buecher, is that? Yeah, Jason Buecher. Okay. So Jason's a brilliant drummer. And I think he really always learned how to, maybe not learn, but he always understood how to play around my playing.

52:46And that was really, I really always have appreciated that. He could kind of do anything. So when we were talking about it, I wish I could remember if I gave a reference to it. But for the most part, my guitar is, you know, just these sort of electric soundscapey things. And then I'm just hitting an A note and over and over and over and over and over again with sort of this, it's not a hammer on, but it's almost like the opposite of a hammer off, I guess, if that's a term.

53:19And it's just over and over and over and over. And Alan putting in his kind of Alan Wakeman moment, speaking of prog rock, you know, kind of like, yeah, there's just like a lot of different ideas to try to create nighttime without it becoming sleepy. Yeah, let me play. I wrote piano descending adds chordal complexity, right? Because you want to just drone on this thing. But if you just throw in a few jazz notes. Boys in drag.

53:49Walking too. Yeah, just any thought about how you're navigating the different energy levels here? Alan, he's playing the piano and still plays with me and is part of the group, as we talked about. I think he very much influenced by jazz and I love jazz as well. I like bebop and early jazz. I also like big band and Jason liked, you know, Miles Davis and Bitches Brew and that kind of fusion jazz.

54:26Well, it's the mood of that. Yeah. Because there was actually a point in around 2000 where I was trying to start a new band and like, I really was inspired by that, that mellowness, that sound of kind of blue. Yeah, there's just something so delicate about that, which I see a little bit of feeling around that here. And Alan is a student much more so than I am of jazz. I remember Alan introducing me to Oscar Brown Jr. And he was spot on because that's exactly the kind of stuff I loved.

54:56I was a big Moe's Allison fan and huge Bud Powell fan. I'm still a big Bud Powell fan and Moe's Allison fan, but he spanned everything. So I think when we're hitting those things, it's like trying to eke out all of these elements from a song that's essentially one chord. It is a raga, if you will. You know, it's like there's just, it does not really change. How do we do all of this? I really am grateful. Thank you for hearing all of those things. We haven't really talked about your philosophy of harmony vocals, right?

55:30You have so many verses here, and yet you're going to keep the harmonies for only is, only dreaming, you know, the tag that's at the end of every verse here, which I would not be able to resist, you know, by verse four, verse five, verse six, start layering a little bit, put an extra vocal on there. But it was this sort of a dedication to the maximizing its raga potential, but that we're not going to orchestrate it in a linear way. It's not going to grow as it goes necessarily.

56:00It's just going to have these, these are the characters that come in and out. What's your thought about not harmonizing more in general? The song is rather narrative and there's a kind of a character. There's a whole being there kind of thing by that. I just mean like Chauncey Gardner, you know, like you're just there. And so probably the idea was, let's make this singular. This is as a sort of a witness to it, because if you brought other people into it, you know, potentially then it sounds like there's a crowd.

56:36That song isn't really about a crowd. It's about being a part of other people's visibility at night when they come out. All of these different people that are going to the club or that are working and people who are walking home, taxi cab drivers who are picking those people up. It's all about sort of witnessing life in a city on a quiet but active place if you know where to look. Well, I suppose in general, the more full of imagery the lyrics have, the more that you're generally coming from a Bob Dylan folky kind of place, which does not lend itself to heaps of harmonies.

57:16Right. The Dylan to birds transition is we no longer know what we're singing about because we didn't write these things, but we'll have nice harmonies over them. Yeah, totally. Which, you know, Neil Young navigates around that nicely between delivering things in his solo, you know, especially in that little high voice that, yeah, you were kind of using that more on History of I Do, that you were in a different vocal range that, you know, nobody's going to say, you sound like Michael Stipe on that one. Well, I couldn't sing as high as I can sing now, so I'm having a very interesting evolution.

57:53My range is far better now than it was when I was younger, and I probably just didn't test it out nearly as much when I was younger, but the singing thing has really been kind of fascinating. I also took a lot of time off of touring, not necessarily writing or playing music, and I did write the show and things like that, too, but to be a stay-at-home dad, and I think maybe that helped. I don't know. Well, I also noticed on Goodbye Berlin, it didn't sound like there was any auto-tune on it.

58:23No. Okay. I mean, that seems, well, what you were describing with you singing in the room with your bass player in front, like, I wasn't sure if things were isolated enough that that would even make sense, especially if you were playing while. Well, yes, the recent thing I recorded recently was do the whole album playing acoustic while singing, so you can't fix the tuning. It's got to be good enough. Yeah. Well, so my general rule on it, and maybe this brings us full circle, you know, Useful Music started out with a producer, Rob Gow, who's a very close friend and still plays with me, and we're quite tight.

58:5825 years ago, we started that record out with Rob Gow. Then Sean Mullins, who is also a very good friend of mine, said, hey, I want to produce a record, and we saw that as a really generous opportunity for us as a band to have Sean and his expertise kind of bringing out. Rob started with rock and demos and all of these things that also brought on a lot of the elements of samples and drum loops and things like that. Then Sean kept a lot of those samples and brought in Anthony A.J. Resta, who was amazing, and he came in and did a bunch more of those things.

59:38And then Artemis Records sent us to Peter Collins to do a version of I've Changed, and then Jerry Harrison took a—I guess what I'm trying to say is when I said I had one foot in the old industry and one foot in the new industry, the old industry would be, hey, let's send you to a bunch of producers and try to get these songs as big and as radio-ready as they could possibly be. And there's no limit to my gratitude for having had that experience.

1:00:11But I will say this, I would never, ever in a million years do that again. And so from the time we recorded, the future that was through every single thing I've ever recorded since 2001, I do everything I can to make things live because I just never want to relive, although that sounds very trauma-oriented. I just would never want to record a record like we recorded useful music. And I'm proud of useful music, but it also speaks to the times, and that's the part that fascinates me most about it, is all of the things that useful music represents is a chapter in time, the chapter of the late 90s and the early 2000s.

1:00:58But it's also, the money that was spent was extraordinary. I bet Peter Collins alone was $40,000, you know, just to record in Nashville at Ocean Way. All of those things fascinate me, and I'm really, really intrigued. And I've always wanted to write a book with a friend of mine who was the promoter of Camera One from both sides of the world. I don't think he's as interested in doing it as I am, but what was it like to be a musician in 1999, 2000, 2001?

1:01:33It was a kind of a really, really weird, strange time to be making music. Like, you know, as a band, we were doing these radio shows, and we did them with Fuel and Smash Mouth, and we did them with Pink and Boy Bands. So it's just an odd, strange concoction of wild music going on because there was no alternative to the gatekeepers. That was just about to happen. Napster would introduce that, and of course, the music industry would react to that.

1:02:07I've been looking through the Useful Music wiki page and, you know, which producer was on which track. I've changed from that has actually been the song that has been just not leaving my head since I started prepping for this. It seems like with the momentum, it could have been a two-hit wonder, you know, at least. What was the second single off this? So I was on a record label called Artemis Records, and it was headed up by two of the titans of the industry. And that's another insight that I love that I have. You know, it was Danny Goldberg, who was a very famous manager, and he started out as a very famous publicist, and Daniel Glass, who he's been on radio.

1:02:47He's responsible for so many hit records and has another chapter in his life now where he's responsible for Phoenix and Mumford & Sons and all these other things. I had such a unique and wonderful experience because Daniel, who signed me, they were two sides of the coin for me. Daniel was just so responsive to what he imagined Josh Joplin Group could be.

1:03:18And Danny was very responsive to Josh Joplin, the guy who liked Phil Oaks. And he was much more responsive to just my background. His father and I were pals, you know, Victor. And his father hung out in the office. So I'm saying all that because they both agreed, I think, and this is me, I'm just projecting this, but I think it's true. They both agreed that they loved I've Changed.

1:03:49And they thought that would be the second single. But again, 2001 or 2000 or whenever we were recording, how are we going to make this the single? We can't use that version that we know. Let's send Josh and the gang to Nashville to make a new version with Peter Collins. And then that version was going to be the single. And I will say that I was the fly in the ointment for that. And I don't know if it could have been a single.

1:04:22Well, I want to state steadfastly, I really love working with Peter Collins and really thought the whole thing was very, very special in many ways. But when it was all said and done, I just couldn't bear that version of the song. And so I think I probably took the wind out of Danny and Daniel's sails when it came to making that the second single. To their credit, they put it as the additional track on the record when they had every right to just put it on the record.

1:04:56We had no rights as a band to do anything. Again, 2001, that's how it was. All right. Well, I will link folks to that alternate version, the version that went on the album. Plus, you have a version on Projector Head on the 1996 album. So this is a song that had some legs and made it from your pre-label days to the big break. I credit Daniel for that, too. He really looked at all of the songs that we had recorded. And he just loved that song. He brought it, I believe, to Danny.

1:05:26And that's where it all kind of started. It'll also be on the Useful Music Silver Anniversary, streaming July 10th. The Future That Was came out pretty quickly after Useful Music. Then Jay Walker. I think both Future That Was and Jay Walker are just really excellent albums. Thank you. Was it Jay Walker was when the label support ended, when sort of that trip of that iteration of band ended? No, it was just a different label. Okay. We made The Future That Was with Rob Gow, who I mentioned earlier.

1:05:58We were going to make that record with Adam Schlesinger, who I was doing a bunch of pre-production with. And he couldn't do it. And he was working on Crank Yankers at the time. He was doing the music, I think, for that. Okay. So that took over and my record kind of got pushed aside. Although we did record in his studio, which was also James Ehaw's studio. And Rob Gow, who I mentioned earlier, was the producer on that one. For Artemis Records. I don't know when Artemis really shuttered.

1:06:31But I know that after that record, there was very little going on at Artemis. I think it continued a little bit longer. I think they had a few other folks. But, you know, this is a record label that had all kinds of artists from Steve Earle and Warren Zevon to Kitty and Pretenders and Jay Mascus. So it was a very interesting label. But I would imagine its biggest hit was Baja Men's Who Let the Dogs Out.

1:07:01You know, Camera One, I think, may have been the second. Maybe there's another hit. Maybe Steve Earle had some sort of hit. I don't know. But at that time, to sell bunches of records. And I remember my records at Disappointment because it only sold like 500,000. That's a disappointment in that time. Boy bands were selling, you know, 500,000 records an hour.

1:07:25Well, all this was just to, I was trying to get at the buildup that there was some sort of label activity. And then you have this, maybe a pause. Maybe this is when you had your kids. But then we had eventually this album under the other name, The Oak and the Ash. Right. So, yeah, we did Artemis and then Yep Rock and then Verve. So, I was always on labels. So, I'm very, you know, lucky, I guess. You know, I don't mean to say I guess as if it's a throwaway. But just meaning like I was always on labels.

1:07:57So, I didn't have a very long experience doing the DIY thing. I came out of Among the Oak and Ash having made two records. And then the third record, which we talked about, which was figure drawing, I was going to, I was really trying to shop a label that I thought might pick up where we left off. But that was not to happen. And that really became the impetus for me to took time off to be a stay-at-home dad to my daughter. And then I came back to music wanting to do the last Among the Oak and Ash record.

1:08:30That not necessarily getting off the ground. Writing the show was always happening. I was always busy, I guess. And then Gap Year happened. And that's kind of really, truly the reintroduction of I'm going to go touring again. And my daughter has graduated college and she's on her life's journey and I can do all of these things. And I'm in a very happy and good place. So, this is what I do. And so, but in between all of that, I made little indie movies.

1:09:04I did do things other than just be strictly a parent. But that was my job, just to be a stay-at-home dad. My life traveled and worked quite a bit. So, I wanted to have that experience. But I also wanted our daughter to have the experience where her parents were in her life. Well, let's wrap up here by just introducing. We're going to leave folks with one of the original tunes from that first Among the Oak and Ash albums. It's 2008.

1:09:34And it's the self-titled album. High, Low, and Wide was one of the two originals on theirs. There's a lot of nice traditional tunes, cool version of All the Pretty Little Horses. I wasn't expecting that out of you. Shady Grove, other stuff. The Housewives Lament, I especially like. But this one, yeah. High, Low, and Wide. Can you, I guess, yes, to say goodbye. Tell us a little about this project, this choice. My father had died. And I don't know, I just, I was trying to put that through my process, I guess, of grief and that song.

1:10:09That's where it came from. And I had a bridge that I was doing. And Garrison was like, you know, maybe we should do this. And boy, was she right. It was really nice because we didn't write together, Garrison and I. You know, maybe we did a little bit, but not really. She came up with a way to complete the song and did it brilliantly. And she's a wonderful person, but also a really fabulous musician and songwriter and guitarist and producer.

1:10:40I really appreciated that because it didn't work the way I was doing it. And she made it work. We did it with our friends, you know, like among the Okanashes, a bunch of people who play with other people. So Brian Owens plays with Emilio Harris, and he's always played with us. And, you know, Fats is another example of among the Okanash kinds of characters. All these people from the other side of Nashville that I'm drawn to. And my very, very good friend, Brian Harrison, who has since passed away, brought us all sort of into this place where we were comfortable enough to let our emotions run amok on that record.

1:11:17And I really appreciate that, too. All right. Thanks for chatting. Here's high, low and wide. I am but a shadow cast upon the road And we are all but strangers bearing a heavy load And all these worldly things you won't need anymore You'll only take your place

1:11:47You'll only take your place Standing on that shore How low and wide That's just how big this ocean gets That's just how big this ocean gets This ocean gets stronger than the tide That's just how hard this journey is

1:12:21It's sunny, yes, you've got to cross it You've got to cross it You've got to cross it You've got to cross it alone You've got to cross it alone To get back home The efforts of the sun

1:12:52Are wasted on the rain There's nothing in this world To take away your pain Hollow and wide That's just how big This ocean gets Stronger than the tide

1:13:26That's just how hard This journey is You've got to cross it alone You've got to cross it alone You've got to cross it alone To get back home

1:13:57görev . . . . . . . . . If you cross it alone

1:14:30Free then you shall be From the troubles that you've known We're just sailing to get back home And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone

1:15:05And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone

1:15:39And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone

1:16:15And you've got to cross it alone And you've got to cross it alone Thanks so much to Josh. It's always great to see beneath a one-hit wonder, whose one hit, though very catchy, is easily confused with other songs from that time. So it's always great to see that the person behind that is a real, very strong songwriter with a body of work.

1:16:47You can learn more about his music at joshjoplingroup.com. If you happen to have just stumbled across this recording and are not subscribed to Nakedly Examined Music, you may want to do that. Nakedlyexaminedmusic.com has all of your links and also a little widget to leave a nice five-star, say, review of the show if you feel so inclined. The other place you may want to check out is patreon.com slash nakedlyexaminedmusic, which will make your experience of this show ad-free henceforth. And so from those Patreons, I link you to the Google Doc

1:17:20that has the detailed notes on the songs that I use to prep. But even the blog posts, whether at Patreon or nakedlyexaminedmusic.com or partiallyexaminedlife.com, I always collect some links to YouTube resources so you could see the artists playing live. In this case, Camera One being Josh's big hit, we've got the original video from back in the day, 2001. We've got the silver anniversary new recording video. There's also a video for a so-called solo version,

1:17:51but also a live version, actually solo, just him and a guitar in a cafe. And from back in the day, playing it live on Letterman. So even just getting a snapshot chronology of the various things he's done with that tune, I think is fascinating. And you can see him live with Garrison Starr as Okanash, with Wes as a duo, playing History of I Do, that song we discussed they wrote together, and lots of other stuff. The episodes I've recorded since talking to Josh include one with Dan Montgomery,

1:18:22a great rootsy singer-songwriter, and then most recently, Glenn Morrow, who is best known as a label guy, who is long-time an executive at Bar None Records, helped the careers of a lot of wonderful bands. But of course, he was a band leader back in the late 70s, early 80s, and has re-emerged with a new band, Glenn Morrow's Cry for Help, that has released three albums now. Very good stuff. Hope you come back to join me for that. Finally, if you did not get the word, I am teaching another online philosophy class this fall, this one on philosophy of mind.

1:18:54You can look at partiallyexaminedlife.com slash class for details of that, or if you're listening to this way later, whatever class might be coming up. Hope your summer is continuing to go well. Until next time, keep on musicin'. This is Mark Lenton-Meyer, signing off. You know what's wild?

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