Joe, there are a number of references of Europe in your songs, has it always been a big attraction for you?
Yes, ever since I was young I was fascinated by it and have been lucky enough to get to visit it and love the culture.
Once or twice I have detected traces of punk guitar riffs on your albums?
That is more down to my guitar player, Shu Nakamura —he is an encyclopaedia of music and draws heavily on seventies stuff. As for myself, my influences are more the American songwriters, rock‘n’roll, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, and that sort of thing.
Shu Nakamura I take it plays a big part in shaping and creating your sound?
I give him lot of freedom to make my songs what they are, because he is really creative with the licks he comes up with.
While there is a wonderful feel of freedom in your music to ramble and roam it remains tight?
That is what I like in other bands, and it is what I always wanted to do myself and I think overtly it comes back to that I am a big fan of Jack Kerouac and of his style of writing. Of the first thought, best thought sort of spontaneous method of writing and I see a lot in musicians who have embraced that. Bob Dylan definitely was always very spontaneous on stage and on record —especially early in his career and also the Rolling Stones on their records. Like when you hear fluffed a note on one of their records and there were the older country guys who also had a lot of freedom.
You mentioned the older country guys and there is a song on The 47th Problem — ‘Find My Way Home’ that suggests a great deal of country influence?
The music that I really grew up with from a very young age would be listening to my dad’s record collection of country music. Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson plus the older stuff again. Hank Williams and Hank Snow —that stuff was in my blood before I picked up a guitar and, even after I seriously got into music the stuff I would often listen to those old country songs. The influence of which comes out in my music every now and again.
With Johnny Cash and his music he gives the listener the impression that he had lived the part and it was part of his life?
Johnny Cash is one of those guys who lived the blues. If he did not actually live it he captured it at some point in his life. One of the greatest things I feel real fortunate about is I got to see him live on his last tour. Man, seeing him up there it was like seeing a biblical prophet. He had seen it all. It was so cool seeing him up on stage that night.
What was the big attraction of Kerouac —was it the mystique that surrounded him?
I kind of read On the Road because everybody like me does so, eventually, and I picked up on the way he conveyed such a sense of excitement in his writing. He made me excited about just getting out there and being excited about America; he just captures that feel of the American spirit and I think that is how it was with a lot of people.
While John Steinbeck captured the feel of the working man, the struggles of the downtrodden and the time of America’s great depression Kerouac was different, he prompted people to go out and live their dreams and if they hadn’t any then go look for them?
I have been fortunately all of my life so have not known what it is to be poor, but Steinbeck showed me the down and out side first hand. Steinbeck is almost, though not necessarily, a warning sign that shows you the stuff you won’t want to feel yourself. As for Kerouac, hey man! He makes me want to go out and steal everything and, if there was a criticism of him it would be he doesn’t show a lot of compassion for the down trodden because he is so excited about his own stuff. At least not his earlier stuff, later he is kind of down trodden himself and you sense that. But, man the excitement he conveys I feel I want to do in whatever art I undertake.
When you find you have written a lyric yourself that excites you I suppose it gives you a hunger to write more?
Most definitely, because most of the stuff that I write that I end up liking at the time of writing I don’t necessarily know what it means. I may had not been planning a particular lyric but I may read something or hear someone in conversation say something that sounds poetic I will hold on to that line and write round it. A lot of times things come quickly, and if it intrigues me to try and figure out what is going on then it will hopefully, intrigue others to try fathom out the mystery.
How long have you been a full-time musician?
Six years, I started writing songs when I was 18 -19 and was playing for ten years ago but yes, about six years as a vocation.
Has that always been around Manhattan?
Most of my music has been based in and around the surround area although we do get out to do the occasionally tour but that is where the music started and has been nurtured.
Have you always lived in Manhattan?
No, I am originally from Colorado. Then ended up moving to New Jersey and that is where I spent my formative years and then when I turned 21 I had Manhattan pretty much focussed in mind to go and play there.
Colorado has a fine heritage when it comes to singer-songwriters and bluegrass music?
Yes, it most surely does. I think that is in my blood to some extent. Not that I ever experienced anything of it, but I kind of still feel a kin to that in many ways.
Was guitar your first instrument?
I played trumpet in high school and was in the school band but we will dismiss that, he laughs. I picked up guitar in high school at 17 and though I wasn’t very good at it I stuck it out.
Was it mainly the singer-songwriter stuff that you did back then?
It was, and I didn’t have a band till I was 24 -25. West End Sound is my first real band and the first incarnation. Before then it was all singer-songwriter. I had always heard things in my head that I could not do myself and had these various sounds and atmosphere I wanted to create, and since I am not a super musician who can do everything myself I went about putting a band together.
Who have been the greatest providers of inspiration on this musical adventure, has it been a member of your family or is there a particular musician who you struck an affinity with?
There is a guy who is a friend of mine and who I have known for ten years and is really into enmity and was in a band that nearly made it. They were signed to Columbia and recorded most of the record and it did not work out. He is an amazing songwriter, guitar player and singer and he sort of came across me and my friend Brain Momar about the same time and took us both under his wing, and taught us a lot of stuff. The kind of stuff that is not learned anywhere else. His vision definitely had an impact on me and got me through a lot of phases —that I would probably not have, otherwise.
So has this guy a name?
He wouldn’t like me to put his name in print so we will just call him RB for now.
It is a wonderful thing to have for you to have two really strong albums of material so early in one’s career?
I don’t write a song everyday, but they come fairly frequently and I have been doing it long enough now that I have got a lot of material waiting to be used. We are working on a new record now. Seventy percent I have written in the last year or two and 30 percent that I can go back to that has not been used.
You must rely on the input of the members of band quite a bit —since you and the band produced the both albums. It will have no doubt have proved a great learning curve?
It was like a trial by fire the first record we did, there had been some solo stuff with a guitar player and that had been all I had done till the record What’s your sign? I went in to the studio with the rhythm section and then brought Shu in and learnt as we went and it was certainly a great experience. That is what I am going to do tonight sit down with the band to do some new ones with them.
Selecting and putting together a set of songs that fit together well as an album isn’t an easy thing to do?
The acoustic thing I love it, but you sort to have to come to acoustic music like I play or like Townes Van Zandt or Kris Kristofferson plays you still have to come to it wanting to hear it enjoy it. Playing rock‘n’roll is totally different. You have got to make a sound and make a bunch of songs work together if you want to make a great record. I count myself very lucky to be working with the guys in the band because they are very musical, much more so than I am.
What inspired the title track 47th Problem of your current album?
A couple of things, the chorus that is basically ‘we all kill everything we love’ comes from an Oscar Wilde poem The Ballad Of Reading Goal and I latched onto that idea. Where people sabotage things that they care about in their life, it is generally due to a lack of confidence and is about how people spend a lot of their life looking back.
The song Big Wave mentions the Normandy landings?
It is mind-boggling for someone of my generation and people younger than me, with our experiences of the Gulf War. It is not to say war is a horrible thing but there you are talking about the thousands that were killed in the one-day. It is something our generation has not had to look at and it is rather intimidating. I have a neighbour who went in on Omaha beach and that first verse of the song is true. I just have that train of thought in my head, today we have all this media coverage that is good, but even though we see more it sort of desensitise it. I don’t think today’s generation can comprehend the magnitude of WW2 but we have to comprehend war to stop war.
Apart from the amazing artwork I am pleased the lyrics are also included. I feel that like when you go see someone live it helps give an added insight into the music of the artist?
I realised a while ago the songs I like are those that I can step into and get lost in —like by Bob Dylan. He is the king of that and you never quite find your way out you have to say I am going to take a break now and will come back later. I have found by putting the lyrics in there and the artwork connected, it allows the listener to get lost in there if they want to. For me that is what art is all about!
Joe Cassady & The West End Sound’s What’s Your Sign and The 47th Problem are available from Avenue Records. More info at Joecassady.com
