Hello people of the internet! Anna here, with a beer! Posting some INFORMATION about playing music in the real world in various states, that we’ve lived in, some that we haven’t, and states of confusion. OKAY.
We are looking forward to playing in Philadelphia at Mothership on Friday August 30th, in Asbury Park, NJ at a House Show FESTIVAL hosted by The Foes of Fern on Saturday August 31st, and then in our first hometown, Hampden Baltimore on September 1st upstairs at Zissimo’s, with 3rd Grade Friends!
These shows will feature our STATES OF AMERICA set with Dan Gutstein on vocals, which we’ve been finishing up the recording for these past 2 months at the Princeton Studio. Yours truly has been playing engineer on this one, and it sounds amazing! Mat Leffler-Schulman of Mobtown Studios did a fantastic job mixing and even did a remix for us… more about that in a later post, but here is a lil fishy sneak preview!
On Three Red Crownsʼ second album, recorded at Mobtown Studios by Mat Leffler-Schulman (as was 3RC’s self-titled debut, rereleased by Procrastination Records earlier this year), the group added marimba, played by percussionist Shelly Purdy, to the already rich instrumentation of strings, saxes, bass, vocals and drums—all featured beautifully on the track “Rouge,” composed by 3RC co-founder and saxophonist Anna Meadors.
“Rouge” is part of the second of two suites on this album: Bloodworth. Bloodworth also features the introduction of electric and resonator guitars into the mix, creating a Southern Gothic vibe on the title track of the suite, this feeling heightened by Rajni Sharma’s lyrics (“I am a dying breed, in a dying world, in our pay, for our god, but under their cameras, burdens of perjury”) and dramatic vocal performance.
Andrew Histand joined the group for Bloodworth on second cello, played trough an octave pedal, to function more like a bass, alongside Domenica Romagni’s profound, precise, and beautiful first cello performance throughout the album. If There Was a New Way also celebrates Jim Hannah’s introduction to the group. Jim, a deeply loved and respected percussionist in the Baltimore scene, adds a snaky groove to the band (a bit different than the Bonham-stomp provided by master kit player Rob Parrish on the first 3RC album) and there’s a Rolling Stones vibe to some of the albums finale, “19 Crescent.”
The new energy of this version of the group comes together most profoundly on the transition between the tracks “Arrival” and “If .3 was 8 Billion.” The string rhythms on “Arrival,” a piece that is almost Baroque in sound, morph into percussion parts—stark at first—and the feeling of “If .3” is an adventure into uncharted and dangerous territory—like an early Werner Herzog film, or a remix of the Cascade remix by The Future Sound of London, as if played by (mostly) live musicians. On this track, which culminates in a Tibetan-like ritual, Jim plays a dozen or so percussion instruments that he brought to the studio in his percussion-bag-of-tricks, playing and improvising off the rhythmic cells that Anna and I composed. To further the composition, and expand on the loop-driven percussion-stacking aspect of it, distorted bass is layered playing the same two-note part (one note with the octave bent) at six different octaves. This sets the stage for the entrance of 1) soprano sax—played through a Roland Space Echo, the result sounding like an other-worldly harmonica 2) a scratch track guitar solo that Mat put through the same echo box, turning it into a keeper, and 3) the entrance of a BIG BEAT. Anna’s soloing throughout the album is remarkable, and she goes from wild wailing to more meditative playing from song to song. On “If .3” she does both, and it is a delight to hear it on soprano, an instrument that she does not play that often.
Thanks and love to the rest of the musicians who played on the album—Courtney Orlando (violin), Julia Reeves (violin), Evan Tucker (violin), Caleb Johnson (violin), Raili Haimila (viola)—and especially Ruby Fulton, a wonderful composer herself, who played both violin and viola, and came to the studio the last day of mixing the execute a wonderful violin solo on “19 Crescent.”
And, of course, thanks to Tommy Hambleton at Procrastination Records for releasing If There Was a New Way. You can listen to and buy it on various platforms, all included here.
We are excited to release our video for “Punk Jazz,” the final track on Hymn, our upcoming album (release date TBD) recorded at Mobtown Studios by Mat Leffler-Schulman, with additional engineering by Anna Meadors and Zach Herchen at Princeton University Studios. This is the second single off the upcoming album, as the opening track, “Hymn Part I,” was featured by Bob Boilen on NPR’s All Songs Considered in January.
The video was filmed and edited by Cody Nenninger, of Momentum Printing and Productions, and JoF would like to thank Cody for his time, patience, and creativity. We’d also like to thank Tommy Hambleton of Procrastination Records, and Joe and Rob of 3rd Grade Friends, for setting up the show at MilkBoy ArtHouse in College Park, MD, where the live portions of the video was filmed.
This music video celebrates the dance, movement, and music from cultures around the world that unite us in strength and joyful energy. If you haven’t yet today, dance!
The other day, I was making a list of the 30 albums (I’m already up to 43) that most influenced Joy on Fire, from my perspective, and Stop Making Sense by The Talking Heads made the list.
The first time I saw MTV was at Jeff Benjamin’s house. I was at his place all the time, raiding the fridge, infuriating his parents with bad table manners, etc. The Benjamins, besides better snacks, also had better TV than my family. It was a sunny day, I’m sure, and we should have been getting a little exercise by playing soccer in Jeff’s backyard—which meant intentionally kicking the ball over his fence into the neighbor’s yard so we could spy around back there—but, as per Cablevision, we were, instead of sport, clicking channels and munching Cheetos in Jeff’s shag-carpeted den.
“Let’s watch—”
“No,” I cut Jeff off—I had a habit of swaggering around the place as if I lived there and Jeff was the guest—“let’s watch The Playboy Channel.”
“My mom and dad had a big fight and now it’s cancelled. Let’s watch MTV.”
MTV, of course, was considered, by some at the time, dangerous. (It’s certainly dangerous now, but that’s another story.) Fragmented, non-narrative, lowbrow low-attention-span type stuff. It’ll fuk yer kids up, and so on. As noted by writer Craig Marks, “They”—conservative cable TV operators—“thought that MTV was a bunch of coked-up rock and roll fiends, and they were right.” Yet, like many who grew up at the time, I see early MTV, and its predecessors, as an art form. The best videos really make a statement. Not something like “Thriller,” which doesn’t do it for me, but “Rock the Casbah” by the Clash, “This Ain’t No Picnic” by the Minutemen, “Electric Avenue” by Eddie Grant, “Little by Little” by Robert Plant, “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie, “Back on the Chain Gang,” by The Pretenders, “Old Man Down the Road,” by John Fogerty, Yes’s “Leave It,” “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” by Public Enemy, and Jane’s Addiction’s “Mountain Song”—to name just a few from MTV’s first decade.
There was also late night MTV shows like Closet Classics, featuring wonderful music like Jimi Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic,” King Crimson’s “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic” Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” “ A Song for Jeffrey” by Jethro Tull, “My Generation” by The Who, The Doors “Wild Child,” “Walk Away” by James Gang, and the entire The Song Remains the Same film by Led Zeppelin.
120 Minutes and MTV AMP were two other great late night shows, featuring videos from the aforementioned Minutemen and Jane’s Addiction, as well as PJ Harvey (“Dress”), Soundgarden (“Loud Love), Sonic Youth (“Kool Thing”), Massive Attack (“Unfinished Sympathy”), Beck (“New Pollution”), Bjork (“Army of One”), Morphine (“Early to Bed”), Orbital (“Belfast”), Future Sound of London (“We Have Explosion”) and Swervedriver (“Rave Down”).
And later, when directors like Spike Jonze got into the form in the 90’s with “Cannonball” by The Breeders (co-directed with Kim Gordon), “Sabotage” by The Beastie Boys, “Drop” by The Pharcyde, and “Elektrobank” by The Chemical Brothers, to name a few, the form was revitalized with new creativity and cinematic flair.
Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, co-director of “Cannonball”
The first video I ever saw—enough to have me put the Cheetos down, and even wash my face after—was “Once in a Lifetime” by The Talking Heads. I was enthralled, and also weirded out. I didn’t quite get it. Both Jeff and I burst out laughing at David Byrne’s same as it ever was bit where he seems to repeatedly karate chop his own arm, as well as his geeky bow-tied attire in general, but I think I sensed there was more there than just laughter and a groovy bassline. Laughter was part of it, yes, but there’s something else there, too. I would later read, in fa fa fa fa fa fa by David Bowman and in Byrne’s own How Music Works, about Byrne’s collaborations with Brian Eno—sometimes to the rest of the band’s dismay—and the process of how Head’s songs like “Once in a Lifetime” were composed (jamming, finding a groove, Eno helping to create loops, building on a loop, singing nonsense vowel sounds over the still-in-production music until the lyrics finally came—in this case the word water being the breakthrough).
“Once in a Lifetime”
Every time I went to Jeff’s house hence, after demanding a snack and a drink, I demanded to see that video.
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Jeff.
He was smarter than me, but I paid no attention: “Just put it on!” I demanded my MTV. Then softened a bit. “Maybe it will come on.”
He clicked on MTV.
I was infuriated! Some other video was on!!
“Jeff, man—what the fuck!”
“I tried to explain—“ said Jeff, but I waved him off.
One video I remember coming on in lieu of my beloved “Once in a Lifetime” was The Art of Noise’s “Close (to the Edit).” Terrible video. Interesting in retrospect, still really not my thing, but at the time I was totally absolutely infuriated. “What’s that midget doing to that piano!?!”
“Helping the band to cut it up with a chainsaw,” said Jeff, dispassionately.
“I can see that! Why?!?”
“It’s a comment,” said Jeff, “on the nature of music in the early part of the latter half of the latter half of the 20th century, where electronics and technology are taking over traditional forms and sound palates, i.e., the piano. Yet, the paradox of the child—it’s not a midget—being the arbiter of destruction—”
He didn’t really say that, but more of a 10-year-old’s version of that.
“Don’t you mean e.g.,?” I said.
“What?”
“Jeff, it’s a chainsaw. How’s that technology?”
Jeff sighed, turned the television off, and we went into his backyard to kick the soccer ball around—some technology I could handle. After a couple of shots, I didn’t bother to kick the ball into his neighbor’s backyard—I just picked it up with one hand and hurled it onto their deck.
“Close (to the Edit)”
Anyway, of course, as per YouTube, I no longer have to go to Jeff Benjamin’s house to try and watch The Talking Heads. Jeff. Where is Jeff now? I think he’s a dentist, but I don’t really know, and I don’t really know where, as I’m not on Facebook and cannot track him down and yell at him about that stupid Art of Noise video. Toledo. Let’s put him in Toledo. A house in Ohio. McMansion. Is that Jeff’s beautiful car? His nitrous oxide addicted wife? (Are people real?) Anyway, I can watch “Once in a Lifetime” any time I want, as well as many other of their crazy videos (“Burning Down the House” is particularly hilarious—with its psychological-manifestations-as-monkeys-on-the-back motif—as well as being the Head’s best song, to my thoughts). And many of the other videos produced by inspiring bands, past, present, and future. Sleaford Mods, for one, are making great YouTube videos and have been for years, one favorite being “No One’s Bothered” which features singing sock puppets in perfect sync. And can anything top Anna Meredith’s “Nautilus,” with its joyful menace of animated geometric monsters morphing from shape to shape and color to color in rhythm with its adventurous and unrelenting brass ostinato?
Our cat Funz watching the latest Sleaford Mods video…
The future: JOY ON FIRE’S new video, “Punk Jazz,” directed by Cody Nenninger of Momentum Printing and Production, to be released next week, July 16th!
The best thing about travelling to play music is seeing old friends and meeting new ones, returning to favorite spots and finding new ones. Next week, we’re going on a trip to one of our favorite places to play, Radio Bean in Burlington, VT, for the Burlington Jazz Fest! And along the way, we’ll be playing at some new places, thanks for the absolutely amazing booking genius, Sean Padilla of Happy Nomad Booking. We’re so grateful to him for helping us for this week of shows, which starts a week from today in Brooklyn at El Cortez!
For this show, we will be joined by our good friend, poet, and stout connoisseur, Dan Gutstein! He is moving from CA back to the East Coast as we speak…er, as I type! This means we’ll get to finish up the E.P. we started last summer before he left, States of America, with recording dates booked for July. What’s love but a second-hand emoticon?? 😛
Our first time playing in Albany! I always forget how absolutely giant NY state is, because I was going to write some anecdote about John recording somewhere near there with his first band and then I realized that was nowhere near Albany. But we can’t wait to play at Pauly’s, “Albany’s Oldest Tavern.”
Saturday, June 8, two shows in VT! Bagito’s, Montpelier, 6-8pm and Radio Bean, Burlington, 11:30pm-1am
We love playing in Vermont because they have great food and great music. Our early evening show will be a slightly quieter set, at Bagito’s, which is a cafe on Main Street of Montpelier that boasts Bagels, Burritos, Authentic Indian Cuisine, and music from local and touring bands almost every night. We play there from 6 to 8pm, and then head over to Burlington, VT for the late night Jazz Fest set at Radio Bean. Dr. Sammy Love plays before us at 10pm, and we start at 11:30, and we can’t wait to share our take on “punk-jazz” with the Burlington Discover Jazz Fest again!
For the last day of this trip, we’ll be playing in Providence for the first time, on day four of their PVDFest! They have such a cool and eclectic lineup of performers, bands of all genres, dance from ballet to Bollywood, theremin players, mimes… we cannot wait to be a part of it! Music is from 12-6 on Sunday, and we play at 4pm on the 44 Washington stage!
Hey y’all! We were in the studio last weekend, starting to record the guitar tune “Another Adventure in Red” (with Anna engineering at the Princeton recording studios). We’ve also been planning our summer, including a New England tour the first week of June (stay tuned for details!). And we’re excited about Dan Gutstein, poet and vocalist, returning to the east coast so we can resume our recording of States of America with him.
We’re thrilled about these shows next month in DC and MD, hope to see you there!
JOY ON FIRE is proud to announce the rerelease of THREE RED CROWNS’ debut album on PROCRASTINATION RECORDS and would like to thank Tommy Hambleton of PROCRASTINATION for putting the album back out into the world.
Three Red Crowns is a group that Anna and I started in 2011.
The group began with a simple three-note riff. I tried to develop the part with an early (the second) incarnation of Joy on Fire, but it wasn’t taking flight as I’d imagined with JoF’s three-piece instrumentation. Thus, the idea of adding a string quartet to the trio was born, and so was a new group.
A rough go at first. I was naïve enough to think there was a string quartet ready and waiting for us at Peabody – the conservatory Anna was attending at the time – raring to go on this new material. And also naïve enough to think this imaginary quartet would be able to pick up the music by ear, sans sheet music.
So this was my introduction to the world of scored music, and it took some time and trial and error to find the right musicians for the group. When we did, we ended up with some very wonderful people, including Domenica Romagni, Ruby Fulton, Martha Morrison, Caleb Johnson, Rob Parrish and Rajni Sharma. When Three Red Crowns was ready to record, Ruby introduced us to Mat Leffler-Schulman at Mobtown Studios, and we have since worked with him on three other albums—two Joy on Fire albums, and the second Three Red Crowns album.
The first Three Red Crowns piece, “Cells and Gates,” was a collaboration between Anna and I, where, as she scored some of the structural ideas I had, she took the harmonic and melodic development much further than I had envisioned. I was enthralled! I learned a lot from seeing and hearing what she did with the development—a lesson that informs my writing, collaborations, and Joy on Fire’s music to this day.
Anna—as many of you reading know—is a composer studying Music Composition at Princeton. Two of her earliest pieces, composed while still at Peabody—“Third Crown” and “In the Right Light”—are on Three Red Crowns’ debut. She has grown as a composer since then, and has developed many new ideas and worked with many instrumentations since, but I still think these pieces are wonderful.
This album also marks our first collaboration with a singer and lyricist—Rajni Sharma—and the piece she sings on, “Second Crown,” which closes with the line “In this light, rebirth” sung in Punjabi (“ਇਸ ਹਲਕੇ ਪੁਨਰ ਜਨਮ ਵਿਚ”), remains one of my favorite collaborations with Anna (she has two very good solos on baritone sax in the piece, and improved the first violin part greatly) to this day.
Though Chris, Joy on Fire’s drummer, wasn’t in JoF at the time, he has played on two Three Red Crowns pieces: “World Systems,” which became a Joy on Fire song, appearing on 2018’s Fire with Fire (featuring Shelly Purdy on vibraphone); and “Spring Song,” as of yet unrecorded.
We’re thrilled to be returning to Harlem for two shows this weekend, at Shrine World Music Venue on Friday, March 22, 9pm, and Silvana on Saturday March 23, 9pm. We love playing at these places, and hope to see you there DANCING!
Photo by Indofunk Satish
The above photos are by Indofunk Satish, from January 2017 at Shrine; he is a freelance trumpet player and photographer, and developed these pictures himself, taken on an analog camera (I wish I could tell you what kind but I know nothing about this other than it is cool!). You can check out the rest of the photos from that night here!
We will be joined by Zach Herchen for these two nights as well, so we’re looking forward to some more double sax tunes!
Hey everyone! We had a productive January, working on recording #4 with Bill Hafener at Silo Studios, and planning shows and releases for the spring and summer!
We’ve got one show this month, February 22nd, at The Stoltz Listening Room in Easton, Maryland, a really cool space on the Eastern Shore; you can buy tickets and get more info here!
In March, we’ll be be back at Fox and Crow in Jersey City on the 2nd, Moose Lab in DUMBO on the 15th, and Shrine and Silvana in Harlem on the 22nd and 23rd.
We’ll be releasing a new music video for “Punk Jazz,” by Cody Nenninger of Momentum Printing & Production soon, stay tuned!
And, in case you missed it, we had a track played on NPR’s All Songs Considered last month, check out the episode here!
🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷
Feb 22 – The Stoltz Listening Room, Easton, MD
Mar 2 – Fox & Crow, Jersey City, NJ
Mar 15 – Moose Lab, Brooklyn, NY
Mar 22 – Shrine, Harlem, NY
Mar 23 – Silvana, Harlem, NY
2019 is off to an AMAZING start for Joy on Fire. Two weeks into the new year and we find ourselves honored with a spot on NPR’s All Songs Considered, hosted by Bob Boilen.
On this episode of the podcast, Bob features JoF’s latest single Hymn which will appear on the upcoming album of the same name. Of Joy on Fire, Bob says, “It’s a perfect name for the band, and they just blew me away—they are just so fantastic.” The Joy on Fire segment begins around the 14-minute mark, but check out the whole show. We’re in good company, as other segments include Lana Del Rey, Telekinesis, and The Wild Reeds.
Joy on Fire at the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, June 9, 2018. Photo by Brian Jenkins
Hymn, written by John Paul Carillo, is a hopeful and bittersweet celebration of the life of his mother, whose passing inspired him to capture her sense of humor and joyous spirit in song. You can listen to the song on our bandcamp page, where you’ll also find our first two releases, Fire with Fire, released November 1, 2017 on Procrastination Records, and The Complete Book of Bonsai, released independently on September 1, 2013.
Bob is an aficionado of vintage synthesizers and makes adventurous electronic music, which is how we first came to meet him. He sat in regularly with DC-based improvisational renegades Heterodyne during the band’s lifespan. Joy on Fire shared the stage with Heterodyne many times and has become friends and comrades with the group. Be sure to check out Heterodyne’s deep archive of expansive improvisations, as well as Bob’s absolutely beautiful ambient album, Take It To Bed: Music For Clouds.
Bob performing on the Arp Odyssey synthesizer with Heterodyne, led by Maria Shesiuk and Ted Zook. Photo by Aaron Mertes
So, thanks very much to Bob Boilen, All Songs Considered producer and co-host Robin Hilton, and the whole All Songs Considered crew for an auspicious start to the new year. We are grateful for your support and enthusiasm. Stay tuned for much more excitement in 2019.
