John: When we were mixing “Thunderdome,” we were listening to the guitar and drums only, to get a sense of balance. Dan said, “That alone sounds good!” and that’s when the idea for “God and Godlessness” was born. When Mat at Mobtown Studios heard it, he said he felt it sounded like the band Television. Dan’s comment while mixing made me realize that a song with more spaciousness would be good for the record, that it would be an interesting departure. As well as Dan’s lyrics topping off the climax of the song, Anna found the solution for the bass part after the “last day” of mixing, ha ha. So we had to go in and mix again, as in the previous version, the bass had been left out of the final section of the song.

J: The evil sounding thing that runs through several sections of the piece and closes the tune is a crotale sample from FreeSound.org, stretched and pitched a half step apart, hence the witchy sound and the Witchcraft Mix subtitle.

J: Anna and I produced the video, with Anna as the cinematographer. The idea for the projections came from a video she had done previously for a live Zoom performance. Having our cat Funz in the video was important to me, as she loves to sit on my amp (at her convenience of course), and I just thought it would be funny to have her in the video, essentially doing nothing but chilling. But, just before we started to film in earnest, we dropped her bag of treats on the carpet, she ate like 20 of them, and then we could no longer convince her to stay on the amp via treats. Anna and I were cracking up, blaming each other in jest. Some of the ridiculous things we had to do—it took six times longer to film then it should of—to get her to stay on top of the amp…well, Anna, impromptu animal trainer as well as cinematographer will say more….

Anna: We ended up having to piece together multiple takes into one shot, including cutting me out of the shot while I entertained her with a feather toy. I also had to shoot the saxophone sections without Funz, because, sadly, she hates the saxophone. But it was super fun getting all the footage, and figuring out how to edit it together. Funz also made a brief appearance at the end of our “Thunderdome” video, filmed and directed by Damien Davis. Damien also did the video for “Anger and Decency,” which is a reworking / radical remix of “Thunderdome,” that I wrote. The video is also a remix in that he uses some of the footage he shot from Thunderdome, but completely transformed it. The use of the wave footage, and how he overlaid the band footage with all of these wild effects is just magical, he really brought the music to life visually.

The full album, States of America, will be out this Friday, June 10th, on Procrastination Records. It is available for pre-order on our Bandcamp, here.

“Uh Huh” is a protest song, during a protest year, during a baffling era.

The lead instrumentation—John Paul Carillo’s bass and guitar; Chris Olsen’s drums and percussion—alternates between harrowing restraint and thumping outcry. Anna Meadors plays the song’s dirge on her alto saxophone; the song, then, absorbs the universal lamentations of people who’ve been deprived of other people. When all four of us participate at once, including the howling vocals, there is a variety of madness that we could call liberation, or honesty. Listeners will be rewarded again and again by the virtuosity of the musicians. The outro, in particular, estimates the emotional quandary of marching forward, despite a societal environment that cannot remediate its own destructiveness.

“Uh Huh” refers to brothers in the universal sense: close and distant family, comrades, colleagues. We are protesting an inexcusable societal blight like gun crimes, on the one hand, but many protests can be echo-located in “Uh Huh.” (What’s your protest?) In the lyrics, a gun is pointed at an unarmed person. This fundamental inequality can transfer from one situation to another. You’re powerless at a crucial moment, you fear for your life, you lack a basic resource. You struggle to envision a future, uh huh.

The artists who created the video—Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac—have stamped their narrative on the song. By turns eerie, disturbing, and deeply righteous, the video commences with the thermal imagery of headless bodies trudging toward a blank destination, at an orderly pace, their backs to the viewer. Without being told, we know that many of them are doomed. There is a gun-scope encircling a partial portrait, and an incongruous flag unfurling, and a litter of human shapes strewn upon a stained ecosystem that’s struggling, itself, to persevere.

“De voi depinde,” said the poet Paul Celan: “It’s up to you.” What he meant was: the individual really matters. By design, the band does not appear. Our faces don’t outweigh the importance of the protest. What will our brothers be singing? What will our, what will our brothers be singing? If we deaden ourselves to loss, we’ll never challenge the status quo.

Play this song loud. Expect punk-jazz. Topple the establishment.

***

A punk-jazz trio with roots in Baltimore and North Carolina, Joy on Fire has produced cutting-edge instrumental music for more than ten years. Recently, the group has added vocals as part of a limited-edition 180 gram EP, Thunderdome (2020), that features two singles and three remixes The album is available for sale via the Joy on Fire website.

Video by Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac (2020).

Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac are artists and multimedia storytellers who collaborate on intimate projects designed to bridge the gap between fine art and documentary practices. Their work includes still photography, video, writing and music focused on environmental crises, mass incarceration, diversity, memory, and borderlands. Their commitment to these issues is fed by a passion to engender meaningful changes in policy. Among their many projects are videos, portraits and album covers created for several bands and musicians. Their work has received numerous awards and has been exhibited and published in the United States and around the world. For more information, please visit bulisova-isaac.com. 

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!