inspiring to be around someone like that.
I think, with writing, you have to start and you have to write a lot. You have to be brave and perform songs and get experience and just get over all of these little things that get in the way of being great. Reading great books on songwriting has been very helpful. There’ s a book by Jimmy Webb called“ Tunesmith”, which is amazing. There’ s a few books by Pat Patterson, who is a teacher at the Berklee School of Music. He wrote books on lyric writing that are amazing.
I think the thing that I’ ve learned most recently is that a really great song has to be inspired by something that’ s meaningful. The way I wrote“ Adelaide” was that I was in Italy on tour, and I just wrote the little melodic lines. I often write the melody of a song before I write the lyric and the hook and that kind of stuff. I came up with all of these melodic things and I really liked the mood and I could tell it had a strong emotional connection to something. I was away, traveling, and missing people. And you can feel that in the mood that the song creates.
The James Taylor record helped me find some music that really inspired me and meant something to me and is brilliant. You need to find music like that and then study it, and then write your own stuff as much as you can. You have to get over all of the little things that get in the way, like nerves. Figure out how to get better at songwriting and try and tap into something that really means something to you. Those are the things that I would encourage someone who is just starting out to think about.
[ CG ] I read that before you went into the studio to track Let Me Introduce You, you rehearsed the band before going into the studio to track. You commented that you wanted to have the vibe of the songs to feel like they’ d been played by the band over time rather than just inventing the parts in the studio. Explain how working the songs up specifically benefitted this disc- that stuff is golden!
[ Joe ] I was really fortunate to work with great musicians – Keith Carloc on drums and Michael Rhodes on bass. It was a situation where the songs were not very easy. There were a lot of moving parts, and I did write out some bass parts for Michael. With Keith, there were some songs that had more of a fusion influence, so there were lots of parts. It just felt like the right thing to do, to spend a couple of days going through the songs. I had charts for everyone, and we all made notes, and we got some different groove ideas going. Then we went into the studio and cut it all, and it was really fun! If we had gone into the studio without having the songs fleshed out a bit already, I don’ t think it would have been as easy to just play and be creative and let the music feel itself out.
But I think there are times where the opposite is true. There are times where it’ s good to just go in there and have the musicians hear the song and then just play what they hear before really thinking about it. When you’ re working with really great players, everything they do sounds good, so it’ s kind of just a matter of getting what you really want from the sessions.
I’ ll probably do that again. I’ m getting ready to do another album. I’ m writing for it right now, and when we decide to go in and get it all done, then I’ ll probably get with my musicians in advance again before we go into the studio to cut it. I’ m more comfortable with doing it that way rather than just going into the studio and playing it and then just trying to fix it with Pro Tools. I think that the great albums of the past were made by painstakingly rehearsing the songs, painstakingly getting them down, and then getting“ the take”. You couldn’ t go back and punch stuff in easily, so it fueled a need to perform better and to be better prepared. I think that’ s kind of missing in a lot of music today. continued on page 38
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