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Joe Club
Biography
Joe Club
Their music, like their theology, revolves around that simple, rootsy blue-collar "what you see is what you get/just as I am' brand of Midwestern earthiness that tends to shun pretense and posturing in favor of sincerity and relativity. The early-thirty-something members of Joe Club have long kept between the ditches of naive idealism and despairing nihilism, almost, one might think, because they weren't even aware of those options. In a world of performers, showmen, and tortured artists, Joe Club has survived as four nice guys, comfortable enough with who they are to just be themselves. They'd be nice if they were pumping gas and cleaning your windshield at the corner stop n' go, and, though their debut album Leave It Up To You (Word Distribution) reveals them as a veteran rock n' roll band instead, they're no less nice for the revelation. The long and surprising history of Joe Club reads something like a fairy tale gone awry, a fairy tale in which the fairy godmother keeps turning the carriages back into pumpkins just before Cinderella can step into them.
Courted in the late eighties by several major record labels, Joe Club (then known as Right Mind) seemed to be perpetually on the verge of that legendary 'big break.' They were playing heavily in the club circuit and performing for audiences of thousands, opening for headlining bands such as Joan Jett, Honeymoon Suite, Vixen, and Cheap Trick.
Joe Club was in the right circles. They knew the right people. Robin Zander, the lead singer of Cheap Trick, at one point asked if he could produce an EP for them. The resulting four song release sold well in the midwest and netted a regional number one hit with the song "Hollywood."
All the ducks seemed to be lining up. ... but then a funny thing happened on the way to the record deal.
'It wasn't a lightning bolt process,' says Eddy Pow, Joe Club drummer and songwriter, 'it was a gradual evolution. We would be playing out of town, hanging out in our hotel rooms, and one of us would pull the old Gideon's Bible out of the nightstand. We'd read some of it out loud and talk about what it meant. As time went on, we began to come into contact with people who were Christians and we started asking them about their faith. Then we started going to church. Somewhere in that process of sorting through the claims of Christianity, each of us had come to believe in our own hearts that it was true. One night we were playing at a club in Chicago and we walked off the stage and Danny Deane, our singer and other songwriter, said 'You know what? This isn't working anymore. We need to become a Christian band.' That was 1990. He confirmed what we were all feeling. it was time to regroup and start thinking differently."
Taking a year's hiatus from their musical pursuits, the members of Joe Club buried themselves in Bible studies, church, and other avenues of discipleship. In time they all agreed to continue as a band together, but with a new focus and a new intent.'It's almost uncanny how God seems to have held us back from the road we thought we were going to travel down several years ago,' Pow says, 'but now we see the bigger picture. We see what He was preparing us for instead. When we decided to keep writing and playing together, we did so believing that the end result was in God's hands. And all of a sudden we got a record deal. The doors opened up and we met all the right people again, this time in the world of Christian music.'
Finding a sympathetic fit with producer Caesar Kalinowski, Joe Club began to hone their current sound, one they describe as 'Gin Blossoms meets Hootie & the Blowfish meets Cheap Trick.'
'We just want to do simple, melodic songs that people can walk out singing,' Pow explains. 'We're not a whiz-bang let's run around on stage and jump off the amps and set our hair on fire kind of band. Our music has gone through a lot of changes over the years, but it's never been like that. It's just catchy, singable, rootsy songs, with maybe an unexpected element thrown in here and there. I always figure if you can sing it and play it on an acoustic guitar and people seem to enjoy it that way, then you've probably got the roots of a good song. Anything you add on top of that is just spice.'
Lyrically, Joe Club tills the ground of faith and hope, penning messages of witness and encouragement that seem to be born out of the realities of their own spiritual journey.'When it comes down to it, we can't save anybody, and our songs certainly aren't going to save anybody either,' Pow comments. "It all comes down to Christ. That's what the title song Leave It Up To You is about. All we can do in our songs is testify about what he has done for us. That's our responsibility. The rest is up to Him.'
Many of the songs on Leave It Up To You, including the percussive 'Rags,' the sparsely melodic "Call Your Name,' and the John Cougar-ish "Miracle,' are straightforward testimonials. Others, such as the hook-driven "Message,' are written as reminders and motivators for the band themselves.'Some times we need to tell ourselves 'Hey, wake up!" Pow says. 'We need to be reminded every day the importance of living these things that we have come to believe.'Bassist Craig Lanquist and guitarist Bob Sheffield round out the Joe Club lineup.
After ten years of paying dues, writing, recording, praying, and playing together, the band members are finally seeing - with the release of Leave It Up To You - the rewards of all their hard work. After an arduous, meandering journey through the music world, or so the fairy tale goes, they finally get to ride in a carriage of the non-pumpkin variety.
And - one might add - it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.'We're just a bunch of average guys playing music, strum the ol' guitar on the porch type of stuff," says Pow, "Joe Club has a simple message. We hope to keep it that way.' |
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