Artist description Joe began playing fingerstyle acoustic in 1998, after receiving a guitar as a birthday gift. He says of the instrument, "It beautifully expresses-not things that have no words, but things that are not words." Better known for his work in theatre, Joe has completed a collection of songs marked by a somber artistry. They reflect a man who has persistently engaged his artistic impulses on their own terms. After studying English literature and writing at Marist College and serving as a playwright apprentice at Vassar College Powerhouse Theatre with Jon Robin Baitz, Joe wrote, directed and acted with more than a dozen regional theatre companies. "I got the bug as a freshman in high school, when my friend Eddie pulled me into a drama class," Joe recalls. "Actually, I wanted no part of it, until Eddie pointed out the place was crammed with girls." In the early 90's, Joe formed his own company and directed regional stagings of new works by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights David Rabe and Frank D. Gilroy. He directed a production of Rabe's unpublished play Cosmologies starring Michael C. Williams (The Blair Witch Project). In 1997, Joe worked with Mr. Gilroy, directing a staged reading of his screenplay Running Wild for the Hudson Valley Film Festival. Joe also produced staged readings featuring Dan Lauria, Chris Noth, Joanna Kearns, Dennis Farina, Charles Durning and other noted actors. "I was involved in interesting projects, but I knew I should be writing more myself," Joes says. He came up with the idea of doing a live radio show with Golden-Age stylings and new millenium edge. The result was The Specter, an original radio series that has since been picked up by San Francisco's Shoestring Radio Theatre for broadcast on over 100 public radio stations across the country. Joe has also adapted several classic short stories, including a script of Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener featured on the Norton Publishers website, and produced other scripts and radio broadcasts featured at www.networkzero.com. So where does music fit in? "I played bass for awhile during college," Joe says. "But I remember always being a little frustrated trying to get band rehearsals together-which doesn't do much to explain my involvement in theatre." He notes that the old band had talent, including his friend Eddie's brother Danny McLoughlin, now of The Push Stars. "The truth is, I'm not a very prolific writer. And despite having directed and headed theatre companies and acted in scores of plays, I'm not much of a talker. I've always looked more in than out, and what's in has always seemed to me an endlessly reflecting and changing tune." As for the biographical pinnings of his songs, Joe is circumspect. "Life is always the playing out over time of strength and loss, spring and summer and fall and winter. But for thinking, feeling people, it's also something more than that cycle of nature. It's the process of creating, decision by decision, an arc of wisdom founded in an apprehension of the sacred spark of the soul, or a nadir of self-absorption. "How all that has specifically played out so far in my own life is something I leave for the moment to the lyrics of the songs themselves."

Music Style Modern Folk

Musical Influences The Beach Boys, Nick Drake, Big Star

Instruments Gibson EC-10 Acoustic Electric; Guild DV52 HG Acoustic

Albums This Wind Does Not Leave Anything

Location Rhinebeck, NY - USA

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