collect all five
i hope you had a good thanksgiving! i did. i ate everything even the cranberry sauce. yes.

eric d. stewart and i spent a couple days last week in new york city, shooting the last few scenes of our music video. this is definitely one of the greatest things i’ve been a part of. eric made the final edits to it just last night. to celebrate eric’s masterwork, we’re arranging a screening party at Clique Lounge in Covington, KY. i’m still working this out with the venue but i think it’s gonna be Friday December 29th. we’ll be showing the video as well as a behind the scenes look at the shooting. and i’ll play a short acoustic set including the song from the video. we’ll try and make it a classy event, because that’s how the words “screening” and “premier” make me feel.
here are some photos from our trip:

i love new york. i would probably live there if a. i could afford it and b. i was not married to my bandmates. i really would. in the midwest, i get a lot of strange looks i think for the way i dress and my interests. maybe it’s me being paranoid but i really feel like people take me more seriously and more openly in new york. with that said, they don’t have buckeyes and sometimes it stinks like vomit and ketchup.
monday morning i did that interview for Q102. thanks again for voting! i figure the least i can do is let you hear the interview, so here it is. you can thank my mom for taping it. i’m not very good with audio interviews. i’m just a stuttering voice. at least with TV i have a bit of presence. but jeff and jenn were super nice and i did my best for 6:30 in the morning. i think they aired it at 7:30 or so?
in new york we spent a lot of time with the lovely Mia Monasterios, who casted and co-directed the times square and subway scenes. i met Mia back in the day when we were on the you saw it first tour with Kill Hannah. since then she’s shot a lot of documentary stuff for MTV including Made, Truth, Sweet Sixteen, I Want a Famous Face, et cetera. Eric has also worked on some stuff for MTV most recently the Ohio episode of Made. I have found that if you’re going to do a music video, it really helps to have friends who work for MTV. Mia is extremely talented. i watched a short film she did and it almost made me cry. she works a lot with the theme of inner beauty, saying she was strongly affected by having to sit in silence pointing a camera at these kids who just want to be cut up to look like tom cruise. i’m paraphrasing. but it was very interesting talking with her and her friends.
here i am with mia and irena, a songwriter originally from the ukraine who was our volunteer actress for the scene.
afterwards irena drove us uptown and i borrowed her feather boa. i don’t know why i feel compelled to post this.
ha! look at the size of the hat. it was funny at the time, prompting eric to say “being in new york is like being high”. is there such thing as being too comfortable with your sexuality? nah.
here’s eric shooting our new friend Eliano, an amazing violinist from brazil, my favorite country i’ve never been too. please fly there with me. we’ll have tropical drinks and listen to gilberto gil and bossa nova records. awesome. i told Eliano “i really like brazillian music”. and he just said “me too.” i’m not sure exactly what i was expecting him to say.
on thursday i had an acoustic show in columbus with dan and met yet another talented artist, Mike Reed a painter from columbus. i am happy to align myself with people who are good at what they do, people who have this desire to communicate something meaningful to the world.
the columbus show was fun. we played mostly jfk classics (if i can say that) by request from the guys in the brave younsters. those guys are really brave. their guitarist even got on stage to join us and play the solo for “just right”! crazy. they are a great band and very nice guys. turns out, dan is an excellent background vocalist. T couldn’t make it cuz of the holidays, so Dan sang all his parts. i was so impressed i’m going to make dan sing all the time. now there’s no excuse for not including any of the three part harmonies on the record live. we need the max amount of sound that a few guys can make. maybe we will even play things with our feet and elbows.
i am doing a series of postcards, one every month or two. this is the first one:
they are influenced by lyrics from songs on the new album and echo the album art. come to 1 show every month and collect all five! show dates on the back. i really enjoy designing postcards. they’re small enough to be easy but big enough to be interesting.
i had a suggestion that i should start doing video journals. i don’t know. do you guys have broadband? do you watch youtube? would you prefer a video journal? maybe just sometimes… i’m seriously considering it. it actually might be just as easy as spending the time getting all the pohtos together and typing and linking. i’ll give blumpy his camera back and steal dan’s. this is where i would use an emoticon if i used emoticons in the journal. is it time?
maybe just one to feel it out. ![]()
peace
joe









