Making the Record with Joel Plaskett

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Rosalyn: Hello and welcome to Refolkus. Our guest today is Joel Plaskett. For over three decades, Joel Plaskett has proven himself a spinning wheel of reinvention. The Nova Scotia songwriter's eclectic body of work reveals a restless and playful spirit, always transforming and expanding Coast to coast and the world round. Joel has rocked crowds at clubs, festivals, and grand old theaters with longtime emergency band mates, Dave Marsh and Chris Pinnell, as well as drawn audiences close with intimate acoustic shows, both solo and with his father, Bill. Then there are the special events that [00:01:00] have really allowed Joel to reach the rafters, like headlining Toronto's Massey Hall with everyone in tow, playing the NAC in Ottawa, backed by the National Orchestra and warming up huge stages for artists like The Tragically Hip and Paul McCartney. Joel and the Emergency have also been roundly celebrated within the music industry for their work, racking up awards and nominations from the Junos, the Polaris Music Prize, the East Coast Music Awards Music, Nova Scotia, and numerous others for his latest release in 2024. The four track project, One Real Reveal strips his songwriting down to its raw materials, allowing everything in all the human touches the tape could pick up. Joel, thank you so much for being here. How are you doing?

Joel: I'm doing pretty well.

Rosalyn: I got to see you from afar just recently at the Folk Alliance International Conference. How did that go for you?

Joel: It was good. I had a sort of one sort of main showcase and then a couple of the hotel room shenanigans that were part of it. and by and large I've found the focal lines since. And quite fruitful from an artistic [00:02:00] point of view. There's the business element, you know, people are going there trying to drum up. Business, which is nothing wrong with that, and some things may have come from it in that regard, but for me it was when I was there in 2000. Seven when I saw Anna Eggy sing And she was friends with Rose Cousins and I went to record a track, oh, a year later, 2008, when I went back, I met Anna, I think in 2007. And Rose and Anna were both down there in 2008. And I said, Hey, can you come sing on this? Song that I'm gonna go record at the studio. And the two of them came and sang backup vocals on this song called Wishful Thinking, which I love the sound of them singing so much. I asked 'em to sing on the whole record, which became the sort of my record three that featured their voices on it a lot.

And we tore it together and I. So from a kind of just artist connecting point of view, it was great because I found that really inspiring. And so, you know, you never really know what comes from conferences, right? It's sort of one of those things where you kind of go with the hopes of, you know, making connections. And that's sort of what it did for me back then. This was a little busier, this one, and I was also a little more exhausted 'cause I'd had a couple of shows [00:03:00] right leading up to it. And so I went and I played and there was one point where I had more shows that night and I had to go take a nap.

I woke up at about 10:00 PM after napping from like eight 30 to 10 so I could actually continue to keep playing. That's probably just an indication of like 15 years later of what my body can handle,.

Rosalyn: Yeah, I'm, I'm right there with you. I was hitting the nap zones pretty hard. And you were coming off of uh, 45 date tour, did you say?

Joel: Just about, I mean, the fall was, 42 shows or something between September and December. And then I had a couple that got postponed and I just made them up right before focal lines. There were two that were supposed to fall in the fall. But I got sick and I had to move about seven or eight shows around, So it was, By the time the dust settled, it was about 44, 45 shows.

Rosalyn: Oh, congratulations. Yeah.

Joel: It's good, it's great, great fun. And the tour was really well received and for the most part sold out, which is really

Rosalyn: Wow. And was it all across Canada or?

Joel: Yeah. It was a national tour. Well, that being said, I didn't get to Newfoundland yet, and I'm hoping so while it was a national tour, I feel like I haven't really done my job until I've taken the show to Newfoundland and ideally to like none [00:04:00] it. And, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, all of which didn't fall into this one.So we're getting there.

Rosalyn: And this was all in support of the new record.

I'm wondering if we can go into a little bit about the process of making the album. In some ways this is very folk. Can you explain to folks how you recorded it?

Joel: Yeah. The record's called One Real Reveal. It was made on a four track cassette machine, task camm 2 44 from the eighties, which was like the first machine that I borrowed from a friend as a teenager. And I started to demo things on, and you, you're limited to four tracks you plug in a mic, so I would record just like one performance at a time.

I'd sing the song with an acoustic guitar. I had a really nice microphone called a Cam 56 that I used for this record, which is an old vintage little tiny tube condenser mic. This is getting kind of nerdy, but I like to nerd out. But had a really unique sound. Very present sound and I would flip it into what's called omnidirectional.So it was picking up the whole room and I found that that was kind of the magic spot for this microphone because it allowed me to, like, move a little bit while I'd play. And [00:05:00] that proximity effect that you get when things are in cardio, where you get a base buildup if you move closer to the microphone, that kind of disappeared.

But it would capture the way I'd move and you could almost hear it in a, in relation to the spaces that I was in. I was recording it. So I found that it felt really like real, for lack of a. A better word, you know, I was like, well, it felt super present. And so I would do the, I would sing the song once, and then I would overdub other instruments to sing the harmonies or do a little bit of doubling of the vocals. And all I could work with was four tracks. So it had a real limitation. And that limitation became the sound of the record. so it has a sort of sparse and intimate. Presentation 'cause there's no drums on the record. There's no bass. It's just stringed instruments, a little bit of piano and a number of voices.

With me singing everything there's one other person who played on the record, which is Bill Stevenson, who's this amazing piano player, and he played some keys on the record, but rest of it is just me sort of, I. accompanying myself in a sort of solo project I, I tracked this song called High Summer First, and when I heard that sound of that, I thought I was just demoing it.

And I was like, I like this. I like the whole record like this. And I just started demoing [00:06:00] the other songs and I realized, oh, this is gonna be the sound of the record. It felt like the right move in the right direction. Then we mixed it down further from that. We took it off the four track cassette through the console, through quite a nice. Recording console in the studio where we've got some Hi-Fi equipment and we then mixed it to quarter inch tape, so to another reel to reel. So it, it went from tape back through a console and some EQ and then to tape again, and then we mastered off the tape. So it's a very analog record. And as a result, there's something kind of relational about it is the word that I think it's, I find analog technology, Works in relation in a way that digital doesn't. analog technology has a sort of slightly less precise and more interactive thing where it'll distort and every you've record on tape. Again, it doesn't capture it the same way because every time you run on tape, it changes a little bit. That chemistry changes. And so that, that sort of difference from attempt to attempt, it's never fixed in the way it is digitally, where you feel like you're being locked into kind of like a binary, tape has a little more surprise, I guess for me, I mean, I've used tape. Tape is sort of the medium that I [00:07:00] love, but the four track has this even more of a warble and the pitch is not perfect. It doesn't lock the way even a more high fidelity tape machine would, so it has this like shimmy to it.

So it sort of puts this kind of patina on everything and it maybe sends things. A little bit sonically because you're used to that sort of shimmy when you listen to recordings. Right?

Rosalyn: And you said that the demoing of it kind of inspired you to keep going, but in the, in the first place, do you, do you feel like there was any sort of almost like a rebellion against, where we're at right now with AI and.

Joel: Yeah. I mean, to some degree, yes. I mean, if, if anything it's like, I mean, I wasn't really thinking about ai, although that's on everyone, the tip of everyone's tongues and for good reason. You know, it's pretty wild what's going on with it. But for me it was more like what I'm finding is everything sounds so damn good It becomes a bit homogenous, like you don't know where things are recorded. Everything sounds right, everything's mixed properly. Everything's been compressed and queued and put in relation to each other and, even things that are sort of [00:08:00] weird. Suddenly don't feel that weird, you know, because everything is.

Controlled you can sound replace a snare drum. You can go like, let's, let's make this sound like, like Led Zeppelin by sampling Led Zeppelin snare and putting it in the mix. And so all of a sudden everything can be referenced all the time and you can make a recording that you did in your bedroom sound like anywhere.

Which to me, anywhere is also nowhere. They're kind of the opposites coincide, right? Like you, you, you think you're moving away linearly and they meet around the back and anywhere becomes nowhere. And so I'm more interested in somewhere. And the tape machine seemed to take me there and evoke the spaces that I was in. And this isn't to say that digital's not convenient and useful and can capture somewhere. Absolutely it can, but Tape is less exacting, less precise, and as a result it feels more real to me in the way that it feels more like memory, which is not real.

Right? Memory is and isn't real. It's real to you, but it changes with you through time and it, and it's like highly relational and very, and it's [00:09:00] subjective and all those things, but it's also so embodied and real tape does this thing that to me. The haziness or the lack of clarity sometimes that it brings to proceedings.

It's quite musical. First of all, it's, it softens some aspects of the sound or adds a distortion that can actually be quite pleasant musically. But I just find how it's interesting that in the fact that it can't project things clearly, it somehow gives you more of an entry point and you don't feel like you're just in a white room, you know, like. You know, so anyway, I'm talking around it a little bit because I mean, I'm just thinking about it philosophically a little bit for you here. So,

Rosalyn: Oh, I love it. And let's keep going on that. Philosophical train there. was there anything that was revealed to you during the process about your own, playing or your own songwriting while you were going through this process that maybe wouldn't have come out if you were in you know, a slicker studio scenario?

Joel: I've seen this when I'm recording more HiFi or even with larger produced records for sure, where I've done more. Layering and more exacting and more precise. [00:10:00] But one of the things that really becomes apparent on Four Track when you're only dealing with four and, and essentially your main performance is just residing on one track. Like, I couldn't even control the volume of the guitar in relation to the voice because I would just sing it and I would move until I had that relationship, right. And then I would sing it and play another instrument. So there was never any separation between the instrument and the vocal on that single microphone for any given performance. So what you end up. Width is sort of going, okay, there's a mistake, or there's a lack of precision, or there's a string squeak or a slightly warbly note or a bad bit of timing. Do I let it be, did I capture the song? Did I sing it? Okay, you know what? It's fine. Let's move on. Let's see what happens when I add another overdub.

And then you add an overdub and you go, oh yeah, and there's some mistakes in that. And you can kind of now hear both of them, and you're like, okay, there's two layers of mistakes. But once you add that third one and maybe the fourth one and you got four, it is total. There's enough mistakes and shimmy in all of it for me, where I went, it all sort of gets a little more invisible It's like you notice one massive. Ding on the hardwood floor when you got a brand new hardwood floor and you got a scratch on it. That's all you see. [00:11:00] But once you've lived there and you got a bunch of scratches on it, it's a great hardwood floor. You know, same sort of thing with recording that way. So it you kind of suspend your critical desire to like sand things over and make it all perfect you know, obviously I'm, it's not like I'm trying to be entirely lazy about it, but there were these sort of surprises where I'd go, that's not very good, but I'll just finish it and then I go.

That's fine. I like it. and through that sort of like, loosening up, I guess, or just sort of letting it be you stumble upon different things and even the songs sort of take on a different feeling because they're not exacting, and maybe in a weird kind of way, the listener can find themselves in something easier because it's not. Completely locked. Down for them to feel or be presented a certain way may mean that, maybe that sounds a little abstract, but or, you know, in, I think it's in Japanese pottery when something breaks and they repair it with the gold, it becomes even more sort of beautiful because of the cracks in it. You know? I think there are some, I. relationships there simpatico kinda residences that, that happen with music in, in the same kind of way where you gotta leave some entry [00:12:00] points, some cracks in the music for people to sort of find themselves in it. I mean, I love a really well produced, perfectly recorded pop song. You know, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not where I'm at. It was not where I was, at least when I was making this record. That for sure.

Rosalyn: Other than having Bill in, on, on piano was the whole process solitary?

Joel: No, I have an engineer, Thomas, who runs the studio that we have in Dartmouth called FANG Recording. Thomas was there sometimes, like we mixed the record together. Thomas and there's a second engineer, Alex, who helped as well, but Thomas was sometimes operating the four track. There were times when I'd record myself and he would come in the next day and I go, okay, I tracked this last night. I just need to track one more thing. there's a kind of creakiness when you're trying to, like, you know, sometimes when you're doing everything yourself, it can get too messy for you, and your focus becomes split between engineering and recording. So I would say I probably tracked about. Half the record myself, and then Thomas tracked it with me. And then when we brought it onto the desk and we mixed it and we mixed it back down to tape, he's a great engineer and all the kind of patching and all the sort of technical things that come along with [00:13:00] that aren't my real forte.

I'm pretty good with analog like moving, turning knobs and going, this is how I want it to sound. But when anything. Involves more patching or computers and digital sort of transfers and things like that. I have very little patience for trying to do things with a computer lens. So I tend to wanna just operate analog and then if it moves into the digital sphere, that's where Thomas is really capable.

Rosalyn: What about the song choices for the record? Had that all been predetermined before you went into the studio, or were there some surprises? I.

Joel: No, there were some surprises. I mean, there's a few songs I tracked that ended up on the cutting room floor, just 'cause they didn't quite work in that format. There was quite an upbeat song that did work Sonically, I liked the recording a lot and Thematically it almost fit. but it was a little too upbeat for the record.

First of all, it was a faster tempo. So I was trying to figure out where to put it in the running order. I could never find it. And it had a sort of edginess to the words that felt a little more directed and [00:14:00] pointed than I wanted. 'cause this record, I, I, I, I realized was pretty introspective and a little less outward.

It was more about trying to sort of like open a space where I guess the listener could Join me in my thoughts. Process as opposed to have me tell them what I was thinking or how I, it's not to say that I don't say how I feel on the songs or something, but I was trying to choose songs that were a little abstract's the wrong word, but, that weren't sort of explicitly trying to tell you what they were about, And I find a lot of music right now is pretty, a lot. Well, a lot of things in the world right now are pretty explicit. The cell phone is like just full of like, everything's explicit. Everything's sort of like. Opinion or just high definition this is the way it is, or this is how I feel about it.

And you know, like there's a time and a place for that. and there's aspects of that and what I do, but I was just looking for the, places that kind of went, here's the frame, here's where we are, here's how I see the landscape, Here's how I'm feeling, I guess, but not necessarily [00:15:00] going, and here's how you need to feel about it with me or something.

Rosalyn: Hmm. Yeah.

Joel: You know, some songs sort of ask something of you in that way or sometimes, you know, and, I want it to be a little more mindful of that. For some reason I was less interested in that. So it's a bit, I was trying to be something more implicit in its presentation.

Rosalyn: It almost feels like the audience is the second or third member of the band in that kind of way. You know, where there's like that room for interpretation and, there's like enough space sonically,

Joel: Absolutely. And I think, ultimately with any song, the people listening have their own interpretations. No one's ever gonna entirely read your mind. Nor should they. And like you want songs to mean something different to everybody. But some lay it out a little closer to what you're imagining than others. And I mean, I I, that's a really powerful thing too. there's some great songs that really tell you something, and ask something of you too. There's nothing wrong with that.

You know, I guess for me though, there's a kind of inner dialogue going on and a lot of it is about, recognizing sort of the. the two steps internally, like knowing there's a limit to something, but also [00:16:00] knowing you need to push it.

So you know, there's a line and let me go Joe, let me go make my mistakes. The pedal to the metal, just to know that it's the brake. or there's a line in high summer, you know, don't just sit there, be careful what you wish for.

You know, kinda, kinda like, Hey, take action, but be careful what you wish for. When are we gonna get there? Should we get off on this floor when you know words, they fail me, at least the ones I choose to use for you. So, recognizing the limits of language or recognizing the limits of, kind of, when you say something declarative and then, you empower, it's opposite.

And you can kind of get hung up in that space. And I've found myself sometimes getting hung up there. Like it's, it's sort of just recognizing that there's always a shadow being cast. And so once you're aware of that shadow sometimes I am, you know, then what do you do with that? Does it stop you from moving or saying anything?

No, but I'm trying to write things that sort of. Keep an awareness of that. maybe to remind myself that, so if I say something, somebody else is gonna see it through the opposite lens, or it's gonna, it might push a button when I'm meant to pull a [00:17:00] lever, you know, or whatever, right? And so that kind of dance is interesting to me and, and something that for some reason I felt compelled to wanna put into song this time around.

And so a lot of the songs, I think we're kind of moving into that. Space. I don't know if that's really that apparent to everybody, but that's where I kind of know where those hints are coming from. And so one real reveal, even the title kind of speaks to that a little bit, which is like, what, what is real? What is being revealed? Why is there only one? Like, it poses as many questions as it suggests some sort of answer, you know? So, I kind of like that dance a little bit and I feel like the record got there for me, you know, for the most part. and there's some things I'm not entirely sure where they came from. Like, a lot of the tunes were written on them. Full moons, which I put a little stock in, you know, might just be kind of a thing where I went, oh, I had a successful full moon. I should write Next Full Moon, and you just go, could have been any day of the month. But I actually don't feel that way. I do feel like there's a kind of energy that comes in the anticipation of a full moon. I can feel myself sort of wake [00:18:00] up. A little bit, with that on the other side of a full moon, I can feel myself get really tired.

Rosalyn: At least just having the awareness of when there might be a greater conduit to activity and creativity or, or confluence of the two

Joel: Yeah, and it's, as much about knowing yourself or recognizing that maybe if you put something in a kind of. A rhythm. you can work with it. Because if you're working on the other side of a. Tide, you know, tide's coming in and you're trying to go out or whatever. You know, you're just, you're just kind of, end up fighting against yourself. And so part of it is just like, trying to develop a sort of relaxed enough awareness. And it's not to say that I can't sit down some days and just try to will something to be that can happen. Like a lot of songwriting is like, are you just gonna sit down and. Try to do the work and see if something shows up, because usually if I sit down and I put myself in a head space, something will show up. And, and that's usually, it's not always fruitful in an obvious way, but it, usually leads to something somewhere down the road, even if it's not something that is like immediately showing up for a new record or something. And [00:19:00] so, think it's partly a mix of like, you know, putting in the hours and having a bit of discipline.When it comes to just like hammering away at something, regardless of what time of the day or month it is. But then there is something else to just like, waiting a little bit and not rushing it and going, but I feel it right now. Let's see what happens. And so then, there's something to that. I felt like I recognized that more this time around.

Rosalyn: How long were you sitting with the material?

Joel: A couple of the tunes go back to the pandemic. Let me go. Joe was a kinda lockdown, like, Hey, I was about to hit the road. What happened? Who am I when I'm not gigging? Can I leave song? You know, woe is me. That one's probably the oldest. I think I wrote it in late 2020.

And then variations on a theme. It's probably a year or two later. A lot of 'em come with different guitars behind each song too. Certain instruments, like I, I certain and different tunings. High Summer was one of the more recent ones. I wrote that in the, the summer before recording it.

I, I guess summer [00:20:00] So, and then the album was recorded mostly late 2023, very early 2024. It was done in over a period of like three or four months for the most part, just kind of chipping away at it. there's even a couple of moments on it the song One Real Reveal. The beginnings of that come from a voice memo from about 2010.

Rosalyn: Oh wow.

Joel: Wait for me, the opening line, I'm not so sure they're gonna set us free, but if you're walking out the door, wait for me. I'm hot on your heels. I know how it feels. Waiting on one real reveal. And that phrase, one real reveal was showing up in different tunes, and that's sort of how it became the title for the album.

Rosalyn: I was wondering, I mean, you've had a decades long career. of songwriting. How often do you go back to your self for inspiration? Like, how often are you going through those notebooks From 1993 and.

Joel: Right. Yeah. I mean, quite a bit, I guess. not so much notebooks, voice memos. I've kind of got a big stockpile of like 960 unused [00:21:00] voice memos in my phone, and I'll review them on flights or something, or when I've got some downtime and see if there's any ideas there that have yet to be finished because lyrics sometimes show up a little later, or I get the beginning of something and I don't, I haven't figured how to finish it. Once I've kind of got the theme of a record or the feeling that I'm looking for. If I'm working on songs that aren't quite done, I start to look back at what's written for the record already or finished. And if there's something missing, I go, is it already there? and does it somehow relate to what I'm working on now? And so if I'm looking for a lyric, I'll sometimes see if there's a line that I can run off from another song that somehow I can rethread in sometimes it's a conscious effort. Sometimes it just sort of naturally happens by the fact that certain phrases just sort of like weave their way into things. But sometimes I'll go, yeah, like. There's something there that I could extrapolate and, and it ties it in. I like that thematically. Like I hear that in Bruce Springsteen's music where certain phrases and these kind of images come and show up. Chuck Berry had a degree of that as [00:22:00] well. Like he wrote about, you know, like, it's sort of like there was this thing, like he was like, he's into, he's into cars in high school. It's like shows up, you know, and there's a kind of theme that starts to run across things. And so I like that thread. And when there's things that become sort of self-referential, they refer across a record, but they also refer back to other records, like certain phrases from previous records show up across albums partly 'cause sometimes a song won't make the cut and might show up later and all of a sudden it's, it's kind of like connected across time too.

Previous work or something like that, so you can get it carried away with that. But I do kind of like it for people who really know my catalog. There's a sort of deep dive element that sort of weaves the whole thing together that I like to think holds across time a little more and makes me feel a little more, connected to what I did in the past, even if I would change a lot of the way I say things, even if I went back five years, I'd be like, I don't see the world quite the same way. So therefore I wouldn't say that in the same way. And there's certain things I'd probably leave on the cutting room floor. But I like the fact that there is some [00:23:00] sort of like connective themes and phrases that span the catalog.

Rosalyn: Well, we have some listener questions. Okay. So, The first one that I'm gonna ask here is how do you approach producing another artist versus writing and recording your own material?

Joel: That's a good question and I, I guess, when I'm producing other artists I use some of the techniques that I've learned recording myself and I say, oh, what if we tried this? Or, you know, and it's sometimes a sonic or like, I guess aesthetic production choice.

Like what happens if we record the bass this way, or we don't have any symbols and we just use the drums like this or whatever. Sometimes you put a limitation or an approach that I've seen successful. or sometimes there's a songwriting thing that I've kind of stumbled upon and I go, Hey, have you ever thought of like, a key change right here, or what happens if you were to drop that course and not and do it. You know, sometimes it's kind of like an editing decision that way. But the thing is, then I'm working with other people and sometimes those suggestions just simply don't work. But you're still trying to figure something [00:24:00] out and then figuring something out.

That the artist suggests, or that we get in collaboration. I've learned a new trick from my own records, right? I can take that technique back, you know, oh, we mo recorded the snad drum that way, that time, and it worked really well. So now I've got a new tool in my kit, or, you know, oh, I'm, I'm observing the way somebody else writes songs.

So therefore, like that kind of has an effect on me. And I even, and maybe I go, now I'm ripping off McKinney, you know? So there's, there's, there's a kind of reciprocation there that happens. But then I guess when I'm recording other people, and this is a little harder to do when I'm self-producing I try to bring the same thing.

I, I do try to edit when I'm doing but one of the things that I, the approaches that I take. With other artists, particularly younger artists, maybe when they're just trying to find their sound and are kind of coming to me to help shape it or present it is a lot of what it is is about hiding one's weaknesses or the things that we're not good at.

So much of it's an editing process saying, Hey. Don't sing in that register. It doesn't sound great. Or, you know, what happens if we just drop that little bit of awkward phrasing? 'cause it doesn't bounce the [00:25:00] same way the rest of your lyrics do. And so, you know, I I'll oftentimes, it's just a matter of removing the things that I see as being one thing that just doesn't. Totally connect with me and my, my sensibility. And sometimes I'll challenge something and it'll, and I'll, then I'll realize like, oh no, that's cool. Okay, let me sit with it. And then I get it and it stays. But sometimes I'll make a suggestion. I'll go, yeah, that's not unnecessary. It disappears. And all of a sudden what's strong about the song starts to come forward. Right? And so much of what you're doing is trying to remove the things that get in the way from that direct impact. Particularly, I'm often looking for things that hit me emotionally. So if there's something in the way that's getting in the way of that, I'll challenge it and go like, why is that there?

Because of that, I feel that, but when you get there, I don't feel it as much anymore. Is there a different way to say that? Or can it just disappear? You know? So it's questions like that that sometimes I'll put into the fray. And, and it's a little harder to do that to yourself because you're kind of, you know, I don't know if this is quite the same perspective, but I do try to edit my own music and go back pretty ruthlessly to words sometimes and go, [00:26:00] does this have one too many? Words in this sentence that I'm not singing it well because so much of what I think is quite important about music is meter as well. So the way the lyrics sing, it's not just the words and the melody that you choose, it's what the words are and how they bounce across the rhythm of the song, regardless of whether there's drums or not.

And so if you can find that meter, that's what often makes things catchy as much as melody than words. So I try to tune into those things.

Rosalyn: Okay. Second question. This is referencing the previous album for a big project like 44. How do you include enough variety while keeping it consistent sounding?

Joel: Well, I don't know. I mean, I, I guess part of it is to make it consistent sounding. There's often, I tend to try to mix a record in one place, so regardless of where I've recorded it, and sometimes with different people, I. I mean, I like to think a, my voice brings a consistency, right? and my words and the approach.

So sometimes it's bringing phrases in. Even if there's an aesthetic difference going on between the songs in terms of like a folky or a rockier song, or things that are weird or more [00:27:00] experimental. There's a lyricism that I try to bring to the whole thing that threads it together across this thematic or lyrical angle.

My voice I think brings a degree of consistency. Sometimes other people's voices are making appearances. Sometimes I'll even use those voices to kind of return or connect themes, you know. So on 44 for example, I had Rose and Anna sing on some songs they sang on three. And I was trying to kind of evoke the spirit of three across time with their voices 'cause they were really familiar to that record.

But then there was also Renie Mahalia and Micah Smith singing on it. And their voices bring a different kind of. thing. And so there's a variety there. But then we mix the whole record at my studio and through a console and through to various, you know, using a lot of the same equipment. So regardless of whether it was recorded in different ways and with different people, there's a sonic timur that comes when you corral the whole thing in one place for better or for worse. So there's a couple of different ways in which one can bring consistency to like a long project.

Rosalyn: Right. Okay. Third question. This comes from Rob McLaren [00:28:00] of Union Duke and Proud Boys Fame. Other than Jimmy Page, who is someone with your same initials whom you admire?

Joel: oh, geez. Um, Yeah, so Jimmy Page, that's an obvious one. I really love his guitar playing for sure. And then I guess there's John Paul Jones, the bass player. So I can get a JP in there if I want. You know, big Zep fan. I went as far as to imagining three sets of initials and LED Zep.

When I also went to John Bon took the J and then Robert Plant took the p So there's three J Ps in Led Zeppelin. If I really shimmy it around

Rosalyn: I'm wondering just before we wrap up here if we can just look a little bit ahead and, and, you know, do you have anything on the horizon and projects coming up? Are you, are you taking some, some downtime now that you're off the road?

Joel: Yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot of shows until we get closer to the summer and then they gear up for some emergency band gigs and some solo stuff. Doing a couple of more, I. runs on my own to uh, with some solo shows, but there's some good band shows in the summer. I'm kind of chipping away on another record in the [00:29:00] background, but it'll probably be a year away.

I've, I've got some stuff done and kind of experimenting, trying to figure out. It'll probably be a bit of a semi left turn from what I just did. I kind of like it when they ping pong around. I mean, I love the four track and I'm, I'm sure I'll kind of keep returning to that as like a, the simplicity of it is just, is one of the great things about it.

But I also love like mucking about with different approaches in the studio and been sort of recording some stuff with these old drum machines that are kind of neat to give it a kind of plucky, sort of weird JJ Kale. Dr. John thing or whatever. I don't know, I'm just sort of mucking around a little bit.

having fun with that. You know, there's always a kind of pressure that builds up. Me when, if I'm sitting kind of idle for too long, which is I guess good creatively, it's partly an instinct for just trying to survive financially too, which is like, all right, you gotta hop to it.

You know, you gotta make something so that you can get out and make a living. I feel really fortunate to have. Some version of that happening that there's an audience that shows up. So I want to keep making good on that. [00:30:00] and it that necessity can sort of, you don't necessarily want it to infiltrate your creative process, but it doesn't hurt to sort of, as a reminder that when I do get into that rhythm that.

there's an audience there for it. Right. So, and that to some degree, I, I've been very luckily kind of rewarded with that attention and livelihood that comes with making music that people seem to care about. So I don't wanna take that for granted. And when, when it does light a little bit of a fire, like, all right, time to hit the roads, pay the bills, it's like.

Yeah, that's, that's all right. And then it means maybe, oh, I gotta finish that song. I gotta make a record. You know? So, it kind of pushes it along. Sometimes, you know, sometimes I want to just put the brakes on all that and read for a year and see what happens. But there's a season to all of, so yeah,

Rosalyn: Yeah. Everything has its moon.
Rosalyn: Well, Joel, thank you so much for joining us in this conversation today. It's been so great to get to chat with you

Joel: Really, really great. Thanks so much, Rosalyn. Yeah,

Rosalyn: And folks can find Joel online. We'll, we'll put all the links and stuff about [00:31:00] the new album and go follow him, go buy some tickets to shows.

Joel: Great. Thanks again for taking the time to talk to us.

Rosalyn: Yeah. Thanks Joel.