I had the good fortune of meeting Joe New back in April of 2005. Joe, along with co-writer Jeff Silbar, and I share songs on The Del McCoury Band’s release “The Company We Keep” and met in Nashville at a photo-shoot for the CD. Joe graciously agreed to contribute to my site. His article tells of himself and the viewpoints of a successful writer and performer.

Porch Lights

By Joe New


There are many paths to the top of the mountain even if it proves to be a mole hill in retrospect. My success in the business of song writing is always a rather relative thing and hard to articulate. Certainly, I have been blessed in having a number of musicians that I have deep respect for cover my tunes although I don't know that I have achieved enough status to pontificate as to my method or technique in accomplishing this. It all seems a case of luck, mainly, although I have spent a lot of time throwing myself in front of the train, so to speak. As a performer, I have written for myself and numerous bands I was in and had a brief sojourn as a staff writer in Nashville. I was given a good education in old school terminology by some of the best in the short time I was there and I like to think I pulled my head out of my ass long enough to benefit by the experience. Then again, the business has gone through a few changes, as have we all, since then, so......

I could give my personal story- my "credits", the names I might try to drop although, most are not stars but rather porch lights on the road at night. My career has been like that road- pretty foggy some times so one must depend on these porch lights to illuminate and guide your way. They are your friends, pals, partners and buds. Some are boys and some are girls. You have a love of music in common and that helps get you around all of the issues musicians seem to come up against. Competition, obsession, addiction and a whole bunch of other -tions that make it rough or, at least, challenging.

Maybe the only way to talk about what I do without tripping over a bunch of metaphoric verbiage is to say that I like to mess around with notes and lyrics and think I'm good enough to inflict the results on others. I also look around and see that there are many who share this particular illusion with me and that the marketplace seems to be the only thing that sorts us out. Rough handling and hurt feelings are too frequently the coin of this realm and a good stiff drink is only one of many dubious remedies. A good sense of humor provides some relief at the small price of not taking yourself too seriously- but if you don't take yourself somewhat seriously - no one else will.

The great Mike Duke says songwriters are "bozo poets". This bozo, Joe New speaking at you now, was born in Stockton, California a few years after WWII. My Dad and Moms' families were both part of the mass exodus to the West coast in the Great Depression; from Texas and Montana, respectively. My dad was a guitar player and my earliest influences were Hank, Lefty, Wills, the Maddox Bros. and Rose with The Collins kids and Eddie Cochran waiting in the wings. We lived in the watershed of the Tuolumne in the Stanislaus National Forest about 45 miles out of Groveland where my father was a surveyor then civil engineer involved in a number of construction projects. The boomers in the camps brought their music from all over the country and were not shy on the weekends about letting the beast out of the cage. I heard rockabilly and watched mountain girls do the dirty bop. At home we got TV and I saw the hit parade. My maternal grampa, Bill Bice, sang old cowboy ballads while rolling a shuck with one hand from his wheel chair. He was full of tales from the old Powder River country but it was a long time before I realized he'd seen more wild horses then Roy, Gene, Johnny Mack Brown, Tex Ritter and Hoot Gibson put together. It was the fifties.

In the early sixties we moved to the suburbs of San Francisco. An old Missouri school teacher had given me fiddle lessons but I didn't want to totally expose myself as a hick (fat chance!) so I switched to Banjo, then guitar. The Big Folk Scare was in full swing. As a picker I was then mowed down by the British invasion while remaining an undercover agent for what I had always had -country roots. I liked Jimmie Reed more than James Brown or DooWop because he, to me, was more rural sounding. Up to this point, the only black people I had ever seen were in Tarzan movies. I hope the following story will elucidate:

I participated in a talent show as part of a pick up "folk" combo. We played before a mainly black audience, mostly parents, at another high school and I'm sure we were both ridiculous AND oblivious. Our big, hot number was "Jump Down, Turn Around, Pick a Bale of Cotton". Jaws were dropping all over the room as the silly white boys hopped and gyrated in what we thought was a proper "get down" manner. Big finish- utter silence. Then they laughed and gave us a big hand. I'll never forget how cool they were about the whole thing. I grew up a little that night.

Garage bands, frat parties, dances at the Armory, the Grange Hall, military bases, battle of the bands and a Sunday afternoon at a new place called the Fillmore Auditorium. I had found teenage heaven. I was getting "known" as a decent front man for bands such as the Electric Sandwich and Johann and the Wolfgang. I hadn't written anything, officially, but my audience didn't require much beyond the latest cover. Soon all hell was to break loose. It seems that young people all over the U.S. decided en masse that their parents were a bunch of hopeless dorks and that if they bought some love beads and pachoulie oil and got to SF they would be accepted and loved for the beautiful spirits they were inside. You may remember the drill. I had always respected the beats but this was some kind of Time magazine nightmare. We Shall Overrun. I flipped out and became a reactionary nativist. Merle, rather then Jerry, was my benchmark. I had been introduced to Bluegrass in high school and had found something of my own background in the lyrics even though a couple of thousand miles separated me from its birthplace. I knew what life without plumbing was like and that the population of the granite-ribbed Sierra had quite a lot in common with that of the old school Southern mountains. Most of the country music I liked came out of Bakersfield but anything was better then the half-baked hippiedom anthems of the time. I was young and opinionated.

I dropped out of music, married, divorced, worked construction, went to college a little. I did everything. I did nothing.

When I started writing songs, I was starting a relationship with the woman I am still with and, simply, the time had come. They came pouring out with an astonishing velocity and veered off in every direction. Soon I had hooked up with a band, the Rockabilly Rhythem Boys, whose eclectic taste was a good fit to what I was feeling and turned out to be a prime example of early Alt. Country. We considered bands like The Lost Planet Airmen and Asleep at the Wheel our peers (our more successful peers) but, in retrospect, we had our own bag and were more original in our material. Those few years knocking around the Bay, broke and clueless, are a fondly remembered dead end.

So, the road led to Nashville a bit later and then back to the West Coast to Marin Co where I now live surrounded by the icons of the Haight. I got over my aversion to the Dead and all that negativity I once expressed is embarrassing. I am closer to Jimmy Martin than to Jimi Hendricks but your jam band or your hip hop is just all right with me. I like Celtic folk almost as much as Mid West Rock and I keep thinking that Country music will come around and they'll out-grow this current Wal Mart phase. I am happiest when a new tune is on the boil. My songs have been recorded or performed by Kiki Dee, Levon Helm, Johnny Rivers, John Mellencamp, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, Nick Lowe, Paul Carrick, Squeeze, Joe Louis Walker, Bill Kirchen and Too Much Fun, The Moonlighters, Con Hunley and the Del McCoury Band among many others so I'm a happy guy.

I hope I didn't get too carried away with the obscure origins of my so-called career. I was just trying to convey a sense of how I got started on that old road to musical success. I'll let you know if it ends up somewhere interesting. I sure could use a few more porch lights.