Don’t let the name fool you, Joe Kaplow’s latest track, ‘Rock and Roll’, is pure laid-back California chill. Pulled from his latest full-length LP ‘Posh, Poodle, Krystal and Toe’, the song highlights Kaplow’s band members (The album title is a tribute to each of their nicknames.) Recorded in a quick five day stretch performing live at the OK Theater in Enterprise Oregon with engineer Bart Christopher, Kaplow aimed at capturing their experiences on the road.
Joe describes the inspiration for ‘Rock and Roll’: “We had a bad show. Overall, it wasn’t a very good tour. After playing a show to three people in the back corner of some bar in San Diego that was decorated more appropriately for a football game than a concert, our drummer had a breakdown. On the sidewalk outside the venue he began to cry. Then his despair turned to rage, screaming at me how foolish I was for booking this show and booking the tour, how he had to take time off work and lost money, how he spent 2 weeks away from his girlfriend who was now questioning dating a musician, and how he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since tour began. I thought to myself, “I know, isn’t it great?” Rock and Roll is a song about how it feels to be a touring musician before you get the tour bus. It’s hard. The late Robbie Robertson of The Band said, ‘Its a goddamn impossible way of life’ .”
‘Posh, Poodle, Krystal and Toe’ is available now from Fluff and Gravy Records.
Bright indie tones belie darker shaded lyrics. The intriguing title to Kaplow's latest album derives from a pandemic-driven necessity to e-mail raw audio files, AKA Stems, to his recording studio for mixing after he had finished recording his songs from home. As each song was sent to the studio for…
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Ed Donnelly is a multi-instrumentalist, recording engineer and record producer from Los Angeles. He has worked with Willie Nelson, Crowded House, Marc Cohn, Jools Holland, Matchbox Twenty, The Cult, BoyHaunt, Gladys Knight, Trent Summar and The West Coast Mob, Smashing Pumpkins, Del McCoury, OK Go, Exodus, Molly Leach, Tom Morello, O.A.R., Madness, The Crystal Method, DrunkHungry, Deadmau5, Zac Brown, CrysP Tyger, Bighead Todd and the Monsters, Jake Shimabukuro, Barenaked Ladies, Tsar, Killola and more. Donnelly regularly performs with Nathan Jacques as well as Little Silver Hearts and records with GhostsDream. Little known fact: He previously held Top Secret Security Clearance with the U.S. Department of State and Q Clearance from the Department of Energy.
He currently runs The Barber’s Basement Recording Studio in Highland Park and is a partner in The Atmos at Lemontree Studio.