Member Since: 01/12/2006
Band Members: Joe Nelson - guitars, bass, keyboards and anything else I can get my hands on!
Influences: What to say? Grew up in the mid-Hudson valley region of New York in the 70's, living on a steady diet of what was then Musicradio WABC augmented by mom leaving a (battery operated) radio in the kitchen tuned to country WHN in New York City literally 24 hours a day. Played the obligitory stint on regional rock and roll bands, went solo first as a contemporary Christian artist, followd by a more secular rock sound and still later a more country approach.Names? Never anything simple with me... safe to say country was my first love, and Webb Pierce was my favorite singer long before I knew who Elvis or the Beatles even were. Spent early teen years enthralled by the likes of Deep Purple, ELO and the Moody Blues. Started playing guitar and writing songs seriously when I was 15, lotta early country stuff being played here while I was picking up a lot of ideas about songwriting from old Who records (pre-Tommy). Born-again in college, played pretty much Christian music exclusively: solo coffehouse gigs and church musician (bass, honed style here as something of a Christian version of John Entwistle among as group of musicians that comprised several folk/country players, a handful of classically trained people and me - had to learn to plug holes in the sound with the bass while holding down the bottom at the same time.) Somewhere in 1987 during a depressive bout turned on a local Christian station and heard a song by the Rap-Shures that suggested (to me at least) that we should give thanks and rejoice in everything no matter how down we get: swore never to play Christian music again and refocused energies into something more secular in scope. Decided about four years later that marriage and fatherhood were causing me to write about things that didn't translate to credible rock songs and countrified the sound.Guitar: Struggled to emulate flashy lead styles to various levels of incompetence for most of early life. Heard "What You Need" by Inxs in early 1986 and realized that was the sound I was looking for. Gravitated toward people whose focus was on their support playing (the best soloist is in the limelight at best 20% of the time, and I decided that what you do the remaining 80+% decides how good you really are): James Honeyman-Scott (Pretenders), Jerry Chamberlain (Daniel Amos, also was involved with the Rap-Shures - sorry, Jerry) and Kevin Scott MacMichael (Cutting Crew, Robert Plant) made particular impressions. Solo acoustic work and small group worship (where I was frequently the sole acompanist) kept the likes of John Michael Talbot in mind for complexity.
Sounds Like: All of the above and a bit of everything else.
Record Label: Unsigned