Just Call Me Joe

I had plenty of hair thirty years ago. How can someone with no hair still be a rocker after three decades have gone by? It ain't easy! Here we go with yet another blog article written in the first person. My venture into the music business began back in the summer of 1974 while listening to Long John Baldry and Nazareth albums. I was determined to learn how to play the drums so I began playing along with This Flight Tonight through a set of KOSS headphones in my Mom and Dad's basement (just about drove 'em crazy). What really changed my life and sent me on my way, however, was the very first rock concert I went to in October of 1974 at the Saskatoon Centennial Auditorium. We were lucky enough to get tickets to see our idols — Nazareth. I left the auditorium after the concert that night saying "I wanna be just like those guys." I was fourteen years old.

It took a lot of hard work, determination and a lot of practice but by 1979 (at the ripe young age of nineteen — view photo), I was already playing drums with some of the best musicians in the city. Playing the A-circuit bars and playing in towns and cities all across Saskatchewan and Alberta every weekend with God only knows how many different groups. In 1982, I got my first taste of a real 24-track (2-inch MCI) recording studio in Edmonton — a stint which lasted for 6 months and just sent me flying. Nothing could stop me after that experience. It was the exact same studio which ABBA had recorded at in 1979.

Click on the image above if you like it loud 'n proud

In 1984, one of the groups I was playing drums for came out here to Vancouver — we were the warm up act for none other than Long John Baldry. We did a tour of Western Canada with Baldry and what a treat it was. After listening to him (and idolizing him) for so many years, when I finally met him, he was actually taller than I had realized. With me at a mere five foot ten and him at six foot seven, I got a bit of a sore neck standing there talking to him every night! I still have his autograph on the back of a pink message slip — he wrote "It sure ain't easy! Warmest Regards, Long John Baldry 1984" (view autograph). Bless his soul.

And then in October of 1984, I was up on stage playing drums in the warm up act for — you guessed it — Nazareth. It was exactly 10 years ago to the date since I first saw Nazareth in concert back in Saskatoon. Was it just a coincidence or was it fate? There I was on the exact same stage as they were. It was hard to believe. A dream come true. We partied to beat sixty that evening and I still have Darrell Sweet's autograph (bless his soul) on an old duMaurier cigarette pack (I'll never forget how he reached over to take a sip of his Budweiser and suddenly turned green, hurling a major disturbance onto the table we were sitting at — he grabbed the wrong beer can which happened to be full of my cigarette butts). Darrell's autograph read "May your rocks always rock, Regards Darrell" (view autograph).

Drums just got a little too boring and I realized quite early in my musical career that it was impossible to write music on drums (duh) for all the lyrics I'd written over the years. So I bought a butterscotch blonde Fender Telecaster (view photo) in 1979 and by 1983, I was pretty much playing two instruments. Both drums and guitar. My dream guitar, a red Gibson Explorer (view photo) — about as "Southern Rock" as they come, considering the fact that Lynyrd Skynyrd was also one of my major musical influences, arrived in 1984 while I kept hammering away on my trusty old John Bonham-style, clear Ludwig Vistalites with not only one but two 28-inch "virgin" kick drums. I always played TAMA's up until 1981 (view photo). My Vistalite kit was custom-built at the Ludwig factory — it took them eight months to build it. Mine weren't blue, amber, green or tequila. They were perfectly clear. I've got photos of them somewhere in the archives — I'll keep searching (just found one and an old friend of mine was kind enough to send me one more!).

To make a real long story short, I kept on writing. And I kept on playing while many groups (and band members) came and went. By 1990, I'd pretty much had enough of the music business (now you know why I don't drink anymore — yep, Life's Been Good). The craziest part of it all is that my wife and soulmate never got a chance to see me on stage. It was too late. I hung up the sticks and picks by the time we met. And I sold my drums, my Telecaster and my red Explorer — aw, crap! But I did manage to find a white Explorer later on in the nineties which I've hung onto ever since (view photo). Countless Pearl's, TAMA's and Ayotte's have come and gone since then (almost forgot the white North kit I owned at one time, too). And volume eleven is still my favorite setting to this day. Look very closely at my amplifier heads and you'll see eleven's on every knob (I know — they all 'kinda look like Hiwatt's but I'd take an old, original Hiwatt over a Marshall any day).

Moving to North Vancouver in the late eighties led to some very interesting opportunities. Of course, one of those opportunities was web design and the other was our Macintosh computer sales and service business. Little did I know that my life was about to change dramatically once again with the discovery of the Macintosh — one thing just kept on leading to another. Thank God for Apple Logic Studio (I still remember the days when you were king of the neighborhood if you owned a TASCAM Portastudio). Gone are the days of magnetic tape and bouncing four tracks onto one, trying to squeak as much as you can into one noisy (as in tape hiss) song.

So fast forward to 2006 (when unfortunately, I happened to get really sick which slowed down my "comeback" into the music business after about a fifteen year hiatus). I've written hundreds and hundreds of songs over the years. Some of them did make it to vinyl. "Vinyl? man, are you ever old!" But few of them were actually finished. They were all done sans vocals. I can't sing my way out of a wet paper bag and finding a singer who can sing like Brad Delp from the rock group Boston (bless his soul), my number one favorite group of all time, was a rather difficult task.

Click on the image above for a larger view

So some of the stuff I've done over the years is just about ready to go. I play all of the guitars, bass, drums (view photo) and keyboards (view photo) on it. It's called Distant Early Warning — named after the DEW Line because of my fascination with (and fear of) nuclear weapons. It's got nothing to do with the Rush song. Much of it is still pretty rough and yes — some of it just plain old sucks. But it's me. My wife gets up and leaves the room everytime I crank it up. I'm committed to working on this stuff over the next while, especially now that my much sought-after 88-key, fully-weighted hammer action Korg Triton Studio is here (thanks, Mom!). Nothing can beat the sound of these machines, especially the grand piano samples. And my very latest additions? Check this one out and have a peek at this one (lots more photos coming — watch for a full gallery in the weeks ahead).

I'll be posting samples right here on this page so keep checking back. The first finished song I'll be posting is called Hurricane Joan (see update below). It's a satirical song about an old "acquaintance", not the real hurricane which actually hit the Caribbean just around the exact same time that Joan decided to hit me when she dumped me for her old boyfriend of whom she married shortly afterward. Poor guy — not me, him. I only served as her revenge goat for six months (ahh, the price you sometimes pay for being a second-class citizen — a musician). And my 21st Century, metal rendition of Ride Captain Ride, the Blues Image hit from 1970, is half way to being finished after seven years of work. Just play 'em as loud as you can on a decent sound system when you see the new samples appear in the player below.

In the meantime, here's a short little 1:38 sample of a tune which has been in the works for quite some time — it's called Gimme The News (view lyrics). No vocals yet and a very rough mix but I think you'll be able to catch a bit of my Boston influence in certain parts (view photo). Also, a re-worked and rough 2:13 sample of Tranquil Eyes (still awaiting vocals — the words to this song carry a very special meaning, especially for those of you who have been to hell and back). And a third song called It's A Conspiracy — be sure to read the lyrics while you listen to this one (this one is really dark and heavy). Once again, play 'em real loud on volume eleven. When complete, the vocal tracks will sound quite reminiscent of Brad Delp (à la pliers if you know what I mean). By the way, here's a photo of a great way to get feedback using an old Hafler DH-500 power amp (not hard to tell I've been having "fun" experimenting with all sorts of feedback and sound effects in the second and third track below).

The stories I could tell you would take up a book. It was so much fun being in the music business for so many years (and it's equally exciting getting back into it). I'll never forget our guitar player spoon-feeding me a liquid nerve tonic at the very first gig I ever played somewhere in southern Saskatchewan (forgot the name of the place) because I was so anxious. And the thrill of sitting in a recording studio control room listening to your kick drum and snare thundering out at you through a huge pair of ceiling-mounted UREI Time-Aligned Studio Monitors for the very first time just can't be explained in words alone.

Then there was the time when I heard the first song I ever co-wrote being played on FM Radio while I sat there reading my lyrics which were printed on the inner sleeve of the album. What a rush. And who could possibly forget the time I dumped two full pounds of gunpowder into the flashpots sitting on either side of the stage at an outdoor gig we were playing? It was the beginning of the second set and I stood up to whack my Paiste Gong about thirty seconds into Tie Your Mother Down by Queen and the entire stage blew to pieces (ten-thousand dollars worth of damage — back in 1979, that was a lot of bucks). There was "shrapnel" inside of my kick drums and every one of my Sennheiser 421's had blown diaphragms. First and last gig that particular group ever played. Fun times.

I guess we all eventually do "mellow out" (view photo) — it seems pretty much inevitable. You finally learn the meaning of "turn it down, will 'ya?" when you get to middle age. My heart's still into heavy metal and melodic rock (especially when it comes to writing) but I find myself listening to more and more new age music if you can believe that. And just recently, I finally got the entire Steely Dan collection on CD. It's amazing how much influence Steely Dan really had on me when I listen to Aja — they were my source of inspiration when it came to writing lyrics. Were Donald Fagen and Walter Becker the best or what? Musical and lyrical geniuses. I guess I do have a ligher side after all.

I'd just love to Skype with any of the people I met along the way during this exciting, 37-year history which all began back in 1974. Old friends, band members, girlfriends (yikes — did I really say that?), sound and light technicians and whomever. Feel free to drop me a line so we can set up a time to chat.

So what's my real name? Never mind. Just call me Joe*...

[Updated 08.30.11] We're getting closer. The lyrics for Hurricane Joan have been finalized. Albeit, 23 years later — almost to the date (that's a long, long time). And after a great deal of searching, this little baby is really helping to put the finishing touches on. No amp modelling software in the world can duplicate the unmistakable sound of these things.

* Crazy as I was when I was on the road back in the eighties, Joe was my nickname, named after Joe Walsh (hey — got any gum?). Another one of my all-time favorites. Ask me about the time I took the band's bus out for a ride in Kamloops in the middle of the winter time in search of a sandwich at 3 AM and ended up back at the wrong hotel, sticking my key into all the wrong doors on two different floors. There's lots more to the story (and no — Kamloops isn't the name of a cereal)...

All music, lyrics and photos ©2012 Distant Early Warning
Critical Mass Publishing, North Vancouver BC