Our most recent release on Procrastination Records, States of America, is #45 on the rock charts of the Roots Music Report, two weeks in a row: Top 50 Rock Album Chart for the Week of Jul 2, 2022 | Roots Music Report
Dates in support of States below!
July 9—Boston, MA: Cloud Club
July 15—Easton, MD: Blue Crab
July 22—Greensboro, NC: Oden Brewing Company
July 29—Louisville, KY: Flamingo Lounge
July 30—Paterson, NJ: Prototype 237
Aug 5—Baltimore, MD: Joe Squared
Aug 6—District of Columbia: Rhizome
Aug 19—Trenton, NJ: Mill Hill Basement
Aug 20—Brooklyn, NY: People’s Garden
Sept 10—Paterson, NJ: Prototype 237
Sept 23—New Hope, PA: John & Peter’s
Oct 8—Fair Lawn, NJ: Stosh’s
Oct 15—Boston, MA: Scorpio
Oct 28—Easton, MD: Easton
Thinking about the Vibe while thinking about touring this summer
The Vibe is still in my driveway. It no longer runs, doesn’t even have a battery, but the roof box is still attached to the roof rack, and it is in this car that Joy on Fire has done much of its (packed-to-the-gills) touring.
The drum set that Chris had during the pre-Covid times he called his “Russian Doll Kit”—each smaller drum fit into a bigger drum, every drum fitting into the bass drum.
So, we were able to fit two saxophones, a bass, a guitar, the drums, clothes, food, etc, all into my Pontiac and hit the road! (The mellotron we had to leave behind, but that’s a story for another day.)
We pull up in the Vibe to a gig in Winston-Salem, NC. And there’s the band we’re going to be touring with, Bag of Humans, leaping Leaping LEAPING out of the back of their van, the smoke—willowing billowing clouds of pot smoke—enveloping them as they jump out. Our friend Nick—who engineered and co-produced the first Joy on Fire album—and his partner in crime Jimmy: Bag of Humans!
“You came in the Vibe?” said Nick.
“Yeah, we came in the Vibe.”
“They came in the Vibe.”
“The Vibe, the vibe the Vibe, the vibe.”
(There is no mellotron. We have yet to use mellotron on our albums. But many of our influences—King Crimson, Miles Davis, Truly, Herbie Hancock—have used it. A monstrous instrument, it’s the size of the Vibe itself!)
What is “the vibe”? I’m no longer talking about my old car. It doesn’t run anyway. The vibe is what we created that night, at Test Pattern in Winton-Salem playing what our friend and the sound man there calls “cinema rock.” Bag of Humans also has the vibe; they do the scary vibe—I remember Nick slowly crawling, slithering really, across a pool table at a gig in Maryland, like he was clawing into the felt of the table. It took him two verses and a chorus to make it across—he was really digging in!
The Vibe broke down on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, after a gig at the Stoltz Listening Room at the Avalon Theater in Easton. It was February. It was 3am. There was no Uber to be found at the time. We huddled against the cold. There’s more to this misadventure, but the question: was it worth it? Well, it was a good show. The Stoltz often features Americana, but we brought something different, a different vibe. We ended up in Bear, Maryland, the next morning, eating breakfast at The Bear Café and renting a car to finish the tour, as the Vibe went up on a lift. Went down to Bear a few weeks later to retrieve the Vibe and pay the bill.
Joy on Fire will be touring in July and August—with local bookings into October and beyond—but, like I said, not with the Vibe. We will certainly bring the vibe to our dates in Boston and Easton and Greensboro and Louisville, as well as to all our “local” shows in New Hope and Paterson and Trenton and Princeton but the vibe won’t be in the Vibe. The Vibe, like I said, is still in my driveway, one call to the tow truck away from the graveyard.