Biography

Too bad there’s no more Lone Star Café because the alt.country sound of New York keeps getting sharper and sharper. Cassady and his pals continue to merge the best of various fringe and underground sounds into a special Americana gumbo that you label that way because there’s no other way to make the uninitiated understand. Would it be so weird for Townes Van Zandt to hang out with Lou Reed? Perhaps not as the journey through the mirror these two would take together would be really off the hook. A solid date, the crew’s third, that needs attention from all the cool kids on the block.

Chris Spector - Midwest Record Review (Jan 27, 2009)
www.midwestrecord.com

Never one for the easily-categorized mainstream, Joe Cassady has always championed his own unique sound, utilizing clever Dylanesque-Subterannean-Homesick-Blues captures of lyrical turns, backed by a simple garage-rockin' band on his previous Avenue A release, "What's Your Sign?".

This time around however, on "The 47th Problem", this band's flood lights have been cranked up all the way to high beam...... and People, ---- this ain't yer mama's art-rock any more!

In fact, Cassady is no longer the cool pen-as-a-sword poet at all here. Instead, he is a bold painter of musical imagery: lyrics all softly defined brush strokes, supplemented by the pallette of Robert Bonhomme's thundering drums, Aaron Gardner's slinky bass, and Anthony Bax's crystalline percussion hurling dramatic handfuls of color and depth. The artistic signature to seal the deal belongs to Shu Nakamura, mando-guitar / dobro / keyboard artiste extraordinaire, who convinces us that he can take a guitar to places where man has never gone before!

The resulting piece: think Jackson Pollock in Ryan Adams' "walkin' on a razor blade" persona (Ryan --- pay Joe for this line).

An avalanche of drums, guitars, and bass punctuates the album's title cut, where Cassady's breathy vocals (so close, you'll get razor burn) lure the listener into its hands-in-pockets philosophizing of love's inconsistencies before showering them in the snowfall. Get up, dust yourself off, catch your breath, and enjoy being knocked off your feet again and again.

A perfect set up for Track 2, "Thin Ice" (no pun intended), one of the album's lower-key numbers, highlighted by Nakamura's haunting keyboards.

The can't-miss on this album is the sheerly addictive "G3 Blues" (damn!). Cassady's writing is at his finest, and gets kicked up to full-blown, melt-down boogie. "Joshua" tells the tale of the prodigal son via a Sunday School lesson from the Church of Steve Earle, circa 1990 A.D. "9th Floor" is the musical equivalent of dancing in the edge of the ocean surf, and then being washed to your knees by a crashing breaker, and you'll want to experience it over and over again.

Even the understated "The Only Thing" refuses to come off as pretentious, with its "only you that holds you back" message, tempered through soft, jazzy soul.

As for "Big Wave" --- I have the perfect slot for this wonderful piece: it deserves to serve as a theme song on a really great episode of TV drama (I'm thinking a well-scripted episode of "House MD"?).

Hats off to definitive backing vocals from Melissa Masser, and, as on "What's Your Sign?", Justin Masi's brilliantly delectable artwork is a treat.

With "The 47th Problem", Joe Cassady has finally found his Sound.

Torchy Blaine--DJ, Host of "Guitar Town" WDVR FM