Slackjawed was Joe Ziemba, RJ Porter and Mike Downey. We existed as a band under this name around 1995-1997ish. We self-released 2 cassettes and then changed our name to Wolfie.

On April 24th, 2009 we got together and played a bunch of old songs. This is the only one we caught on video. I apologize for not grabbing more video and for not getting RJ in the shot. I was so caught up in the moment that setting up the camera barely crossed my mind. But this is better than nothing.

Thanks guys for a truly amazing night of doing what we love to do. It really meant a lot to me.

Joe Ziemba is Beaujolais. This is his debut album entitled Love At Thirty. I received this in the mail today but have been spending quality time with a cd-r of the album for a couple months now. I can’t tell you how well-crafted and meaningful this record is.

Joe and I go way back. We went to high school together. Before I even knew him personally I started by watching him play drums in a powerful punky band that was tighter and, well, just plain better than all of the other bands in our high school (and there were surprisingly a ton of them). I was jealous and I was inspired.

Joe and I got to know each other and became quick friends. He got a Tascam 4-track before anyone else I knew. Joe also played guitar, sang and wrote his own songs and would make side project cassettes and pass them around school. This was the first time I realized that you didn’t have to have a record label or be famous to put out an album. It pretty much changed the way I think, even to this day.

Before too long I was playing bass in a band with Joe. We started playing his solo songs live and eventually I started bringing in my own songs, which I sang. We recorded these songs on Joe’s 4 track and even though I had a 4 track of my own by then, he really taught me how the machine worked. I watched him twist knobs and bounce tracks together. He would give me tapes of his songs and I’d pass him a tape of my songs. There were many hours of discussions about these songs and many more hours of us rehearsing these songs and performing them in front of audiences.

We learned to be musicians together. We experienced the good and bad of it together. We always managed to let the good, no matter what the ratio was to bad, shine through and grow, never seeming to get discouraged.

We then started the band Wolfie together and released a bunch of stuff and toured around. To make a long story short, what I basically did for a good long while was make music with Joe. And more importantly, we grew up and experienced life with each other to lean on.

For some people making music is just something you do for a while, then move on to something else. For Joe it is how he documents his life and deals with it. It’s not a novelty and it’s not temporary. This album is a document of a dark and promising time. There are really shitty times in life and it’s up to an individual’s inner strength to move forward and somehow come out a better person in the end. Everyone deals with life in different ways. Love at Thirty is how my good friend Joe does it. And it’s quite an amazing thing to observe.

You can preview songs and purchase this album via Parasol.

Best Fwends: Alphabetically Arranged

Shortly after our first contact Best Fwends explained that their debut album was in the works and that they had a song called “Comforter” that they’d recorded sans vocals and needed a little extra input. I happily accepted their offer, wrote and recorded lyrics to the song and some other peripheral sounds and shot it back to them. All involved parties were happy with the outcome. And now the complete album is available to you, the public!

There’s a little song called “See Saw” included from 1995 that was, from my memory, the first time I ever put an electronic beat behind anything I’d recorded. I got my Casio Sk-1 sometime in the later ’80s as a Christmas present and finally got around to using it for real in ’95. It wasn’t the last time I plugged it in. It’s scattered throughout my recordings and now hangs on my wall here in my apartment. It’s a piece of electronic plastic I don’t mind looking at every day.

The other really old song is the original version of “V.F.W.” Wolfie went on to re-record the song a few times and it ended up appearing on our first 7″. This version is how that song sounded in the first place: a boy and his guitar, strumming away out in the suburbs, second story of a raised ranch.

Also close to my heart is the Mathlete mix podcast that I put together back in March. Mathlete was Dan Marsden and myself. Pretty much all of the programmed beats, synths and synthetic instrumentation that you hear happening in my songs these days got their start in my time with Mathlete. The podcast is my own personal greatest hits from Dan and my 2 full length CDs. The great thing about the Wolfie and Mathlete podcasts is that they aren’t limited to just my songwriting. There are some Joe (Wolfie) and Dan (Mathlete) songs there that are real gems in my honest opinion.

And of course, how this whole podcast thing got started, my collections of unreleased songs, The Unreleases, is on vol. 2, with a 3rd currently in the works and set to drop early in May.

Thanks to those of you who’ve been listening along. I’m trying not to think too far in advance on this project and take it a month at a time. The archive of old songs is still thriving of stuff that is worth releasing this way so expect a steady stream of it for the time being.

On Friday I’m planning on bringing the reminiscing to yet another level. I will be unveiling the first episode of my podcast series in which I’ll be unloading a good majority of my audio archives. See you back here on Friday.