“My main influences are Steve Earle, Dylan and Elvis Costello. I once saw Rage Against the Machine in Glastonbury, England. I love that fucking band. Well, Johnny Cash came on after that and it was ‘Rage Who’?” – Jambands.com, the writer’s post-gig interview after Jerry Joseph’s first solo acoustic gig in Phoenix, Arizona, 4/21/05
Stockholm Syndrome returns with Apollo, their first album since 2004’s debut Holy Happy Hour, and a tour which begins next week in San Francisco on February 18. The quintet features Eric McFadden on guitars, vocal and mandolin, Wally Ingram on drums and percussion, Danny Louis on keyboards, Dave Schools on bass, keyboards, and backing vocals, and Jerry Joseph on lead vocals and guitar. It is the latter duo who created Stockholm after Schools, the Widespread Panic bassist, produced the 2002 Jerry Joseph & the Jackmormons album, Conscious Contact. The group would either fly on its own, or live on as a transitory side project for Schools and Joseph.
It is a testament to the talents of the two main figures and their impressive roster of musicians that the group effortlessly rises above that very ‘side project’ label. Indeed, one can hear that defining quality and spirit of longevity forged on the new 11-track Apollo, as the quintet soars through an eclectic group of songs that range from soul music to ambient rock to pop to a mixture of R&B and old school melodic rock which appears to encompass everything at all times. Better still, there isn’t a filler track on the album, and one can also hear the personalities of all five members on these tracks, playing these songs as one group, instead of a mixed bag of individuals.
Joseph wrote or co-wrote ten of the 11 tracks on the Schools-produced album, and one notices the friction at play in a very creative way when a seemingly strong-minded solo artist like Joseph plays within the collaborative setting which requires compromise. Joseph pulls it off, and then some, as witnessed in this Jambands.com feature as we catch up with the man on his journey en route to the studio to record a new album with his other band, the Jackmormons. The singer/songwriter/guitarist, who celebrates his 50th birthday in early May with a trio of special gigs in Playa Santana, Nicaragua, is humorously forthright and direct in a way which provokes much laughter as he is as seeringly honest with himself as is he about his music and those that play it with him.
RR: Are you in pre-Stockholm Syndrome tour mode?
JJ: Hi, Randy. I’m driving along in my friend’s highly fucking questionable pickup truck on the way to the studio. If I scream or something, it’s because we’re dying.
RR: (laughter) Duly noted. And where are you right now?
JJ: I’m in Portland where I live now. I moved here a couple of months ago from New York, and I’m making a record with my band, the Jackmormons.
RR: What is the Portland music scene like up there?
JJ: It’s always been pretty cool; it’s getting a little pretentious. (laughs) A lot of these musicians are getting successful, a lot of successful musicians are moving here, the Decemberists currently have the number one record on Billboard, and, so, everybody’s pleased with themselves. That’s for sure.
RR: If I had to think of one word, “passion” comes to mind after my first few spins of Apollo. Also, each piece stands on its own and, yet, maintains a unity. It is still that old school feel that I am searching for on a record, and this one has it.
JJ: Thank you. It’s funny how that works. We’re talking about that right now. I think we’ve got 12 or 13 songs started, and another six or seven, and we’re going, “Look, man, this is easily two records.” But the producer, and he’s produced a lot of big albums…and we’re going, “Stylistically, this jumps all over the map…”—that was everybody’s records when I was a kid; even the Velvet Underground or Santana on a cursory glance seems pretty zany when you start listening to it. You could hear all of these different influences. I think that was the norm. Now, I think often—and I wouldn’t say this all the time—I think a lot of bands, even bands that I love a lot say, “Here’s the thing that we do; here’s the vibe we do,” and it stays there.
With Stockholm Syndrome, you get a bunch of people that are older…hang on, one second. I wanted to make a shot in Portland by going to a Starbucks. Maybe. There might be some kind of jail term you have to do if you go to one of these. But, you have a bunch of musicians and they’re older and, hopefully, they’ve been listening to music the whole time. (laughs) So, there’s a variety of tastes and influences—not to mention in Stockholm’s case, that’s a pretty wide variety of people. I don’t know if there’s a lot of commonality. I don’t know if there’s a lot of that in musical tastes in a band like Stockholm. I don’t know if we have a lot of common reference points. Maybe, me and Dave, do. I think the references are supposed to be all over the map, stylistically.
It’s funny because people say that now: “Well, there are all these really different things going on,” and now that’s unique. I think that’s a weird thing because it seems to me that when I was younger, whatever band that I was listening to that was kind of the point—“We do this, and we do this, and we listen to all this kind of stuff.” So, at the end of the day, if there’s cohesiveness to it, I’m happy because it wasn’t by design. (laughs)
RR: Although the relationships may go back several years, this is only the second Stockholm Syndrome album. However, the identity of the band is fairly strong, and the musicians are able to pull in these diverse strands into one message.
JJ: I think, musically, I would have to hand that to Dave, John Keane and Terry Manning ( Apollo’s two engineers). Message-wise, I don’t know if when we set out if like…I mean…right now, we’re listening to these songs and my dad died a year ago, and, shit, man, there’s a lot of walking into the fuckin’ light on this record. (laughter) I wasn’t
intending to sit down and “I’m going to write this whole thing about death.” You just see it popping up in different places. Sometimes, I think if there’s a lyrical or a passion thread, it’s probably more to do with the time when the stuff was being written. For me, I think that’s what I think of. I rarely listen to my own records, but, when I do, it takes me back to that specific kind of head space—this is what was going on in my life, especially with Dave since we tend to be writing songs pretty quickly. It’s pretty free-flowing.
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