After years in the making, James Joel is dropping his first single on Valentine’s Day. It’s appropriately titled “My Love.” You can get it on all the streaming platforms. You can watch videos of his songs on his Facebook page “James Joel,” and his Instagram, “James Joel Music.” He’ll be dropping singles every few weeks and hopes to release his first full album this summer, which he’ll have available at his shows. That will be titled “All My Life.”
I’ve known Joel since 2009 when he and Ryan Fuller had the Fuller ‘n’ The Hole duo. Joel has come a long way and I’m very proud of him on his progress. He sent me three tracks to preview: “My Love,” his next release, “Remedy,” and “Hold On.” All three tracks are great and I can’t wait for the full CD.
“Remedy” is my favorite of the bunch. It’s a cool track that showcases the many instruments Joel plays. “My Love” is a slow, mellow song with sweet harmonica licks. Joel has kind of a Tom Waite story-teller vibe to me. “Hold On” has some cool harmonies which Joel is doing with himself and I really like the guitar and mandolin in this one.
What’s unique about these songs is Joel did everything there is to do with them. He sings all the parts, plays all the music and produced it, meaning he mixed it and recorded it.
He said: “’My Love’ was an easy song to produce, it didn’t have a lot of parts, these things kind of become monsters. You take a song like ‘Remedy’ which is full band, even though it’s all me, the recording of things and subsequently the mixing of things is still an art but most people would have an engineer and go into a studio whereas I have a studio in my basement. I wanted to release ‘Remedy’ first but it was too much and wasn’t ready.”
Joel is a jack-of-all-trades. He has a full-time job with Royal Glass, plays music at various clubs and stays up all night in the studio. He also knows his way around a car, having fixed mine once. That’s when I got to check out the studio, which is quite impressive. Besides the mixing board, he has an array of instruments down there. What’s more impressive is besides his main instrument, the acoustic guitar, he taught himself everything else like mandolin, piano, harmonica, clarinet, violin and even flute (but he hasn’t figured that one out yet). He also has a vibraslap, which you can find on every Cake song.
"I have some songs that have 25,000 views but I get
that one comment that the song helped someone
through a difficult time, that’s special. These songs
become my babies. It’s a vulnerability because
I’m putting my heart and soul out to the world," said Joel.
On top of all that, he had to teach himself how to mix and master. Joel said, “Bass and guitar are easy to me. I’ve also played drums my entire life. I’m fortunate that I can play just about anything.”
He’ll write a song, play it on guitar and if he felt it needed an instrument accompaniment, he’d search craiglist or Facebook Marketplace for one. The violin he picked up at a tag sale and added it to “Remedy.” He added, “These songs spoke to me. The songs told me I needed some additional instruments.”
He has many musician friends in and out of the area that could’ve played on it, like Brian Hobbs from Be Music who volunteered to play harmonica but Joel knew the scheduling would’ve been tricky. They wouldn’t be able to meet Joel’s demands to do it instantly. Brian is a monster on harmonica but his tutelage was valuable, too.
Joel said, “He’s great and would’ve been down here in a heartbeat.”
Joel has added his percussion array from Be Music, and then some. Jared Johnson has also helped him.
Joel started writing these songs in 2019 and these are the first songs he’s ever written. He said, “They just came out of the blue. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I didn’t have a desire.”
The process is Joel will mix it once, review it, mix it again and listen to it again. Joel said, “Basically I’ll listen to them over and over. I’ll find what I need to fix, make a revision, sometimes I’ll make four or five in a night and sometimes I won’t touch it for a week or two. I have the advantage of having the studio in my basement. These ideas come and go so fast. If you don’t get them down, they’re gone.”
Joel has two musician friends from home, Chris Smith and Joey DiMartino, who both have done this before and are helping him with this, but they both live in Connecticut, so the help is via the internet. All three have played together back in the day. Joel said, “I’ll send the tracks to them, wait for them to listen to it, they might make some suggestions. I’ll think the song is great but Chris will say I have to change this or that. Every suggestion he makes, I just dive deeper down the rabbit hole. This has been one giant Alice in Wonderland type of thing.”
Chris and Joey offer different opinions to Joel, kind of like the Angel and the Devil on Joel’s shoulders. Joel said, “Joey is like put it out and Chris says I can’t put it out yet. I know if I need to feed my ego, I send it to Joey but if I’m ready for criticism, Chris gets it. This is as close to a production staff as you could have. I sometimes send it to non-musician friends so I can get a real candid answer, strictly from a listener’s standpoint. You get kind of pigeon holed when it’s just you without a producer but Joey and Chris have both been pivotal in my process.”
Joel said, “This is something that’s been inside of me that I can create, without constraints or boundaries. Whatever I need, I go out and get. When you create these songs, it’s an indescribable feeling you get when you share it with someone and they tell you the song spoke to them. I have some songs that have 25,000 views but I get that one comment that the song helped someone through a difficult time, that’s special. These songs become my babies. It’s a vulnerability because I’m putting my heart and soul out to the world. It’s very fulfilling to know your voice and something you created touched someone across the globe. It’s a very cool thing.”
As you can tell, Joel is a go-getter. He’s been very determined to get this music out to the world. The process has been long, and sometimes tedious, but it will be rewarding to him, and to you. Please check out his music, go see him at a show and buy his music when available. You won’t be disappointed.
