Out now on Procrastination Records! Available on our Bandcamp, as well as Spotify, Apple Music and more, links here.
The songs on Hymn were written at a strange time in the band’s history. Anna and I were living in North Carolina, as Anna was attending UNCG as a music composition major, and this is when Chris, who lived and still lives in Fort Lee, NJ, joined the band. The basic method of the band’s functioning during this time was to meet in the middle, in Baltimore (where the band was originally formed with a different lineup), for rehearsals, many of our gigs, and recording.
Hymn, like Fire with Fire, Joy on Fire’s first release on Procrastination Records, was recorded at Mobtown Studios by Mat Leffler-Schulman, and mastered by Bill Hafener at Silo Recordings in Shirley, NY. A single from the record was released earlier this year by Procrastination, and it features the opening title track from the album, which was debuted by Bob Boilen on NPR’s All Songs Considered in 2019, as well as “Punk Jazz,” a video for which was produced by Cody Nenninger at Momentum Productions.
Though these songs certainly have a place in our hearts, the heart of the album, to my thoughts, is in the more epic material between these two tunes. The second track, “Hymn part 2,” features Pascal Le Boeuf on piano, and was written collaboratively by Anna, Chris, and myself at a rehearsal probably at Baltimore’s Fifth Dimension artist collective. The third track, “Rhopareptilia,” also features piano, but this time performed by Rachel Aubuchon, recorded by Anna in NC. Anna wrote “Rhopareptilia,” and originally performed it at UNCG with herself on baritone sax, Xin Gao on alto sax, and Rachel on piano. By the time this track was being produced as a Joy on Fire song, Anna and I had moved to New Jersey, with Anna attending Princeton, and the baritone sax part had been changed to cello, played on the record by Domenica Romagni. I also arranged a drum and bass part, no more than two-minute’s worth, that enters and exits the nine-minute epic three times—the third, along with the swelling reverberation produced by Anna via pitch shifting and time stretching sax trills, gives the peak of the composition the feeling of hard earned triumph and spectacular loss.
“The Complete Book of Bonsai part 2” (part 1 is on our self-titled debut album, rereleased by Procrastination in 2018) I wrote in the first house Anna and I lived at in NC, a large rented shack with a huge dirt back yard. (We had a party back there once where Domenica serenaded a one-winged seagull with bird sounds on her cello, and Anna playfully chased Bill the Seagull around the yard on her bicycle, but this is a story for another time.) This house was good to us, as it was literally dirt cheap and we both got a lot of writing done there. Though the fourth section of “Bonsai 2” was written collaboratively at Mobtown, I wrote the first three sections at our rehearsal room at 1029 on what’s now called South Josephine Boyd Street. The house has since been torn down and is currently a used car lot.
Joy on Fire would like to thank those involved with Hymn not mentioned above, including: saxophonist Zach Herchen who, along with Anna, did additional engineering for the record at Princeton Studio B; NC drummer Mike Carney, who rehearsed and performed early versions of several of the songs on Hymn; composer Ruby Fulton for her kindness at the Fifth Dimension; Joe Martin of 3rd Grade Friends simply for being the man; Paul Joyce of F for shredding all these years; eloquent guitarist Mike Quoma of Dog Adrift and the Mooselab Space in Dumbo; Ted Zook of the always enlightening and surprising Fanoplane; Dan Gutstein, JoF’s newest member, on the pen & mic; Gareth Thompson of All About Jazz for his inspiring words; and especially Tommy Hambleton of Penny Pistelero and Procrastination Records—and who is featured on lapsteel guitar on our upcoming EP Another Adventure in Red.