Every now and then I draw. Now Iβve got somewhere to keep them.
John Thursday – Strange and Beautiful
I wrote this song in Nashville in the unfinished upstairs apartment of a friends house. There was no kitchen but we had a bathroom and a blow-up bed. The bus stopped one street over and I would take it to Broadway where I had a gig at Dixieland Delights – an ice cream shop across the street from Gruhns Guitars. There was a plastic Elvis out front on the corner and I would play 4-5 hour slots of covers and originals for tips. Sounds like fun, but it was work. One time a family came in and their daughters took one look at me and then each other and feigned to shoot themselves in the head with their finger guns. It was worth every hungover minute of those Sunday 8am-12pm gigs just to say I had a regular gig on Broadway.
John Thursday – Polaroids
It may seem a tad much for me to refer to a part of my own body of work as “The Canon”and it just may be, but the alternative, like “The Classics,” would sound just as silly, no? So, “The Canon” it is. And what is “The Canon” exactly? Well, in this sense, it refers to the songs I have written over the past 25+ years that have remained in my set from their birth. Songs come and songs go but some stick around for awhile. I’ve decided to record myself playing the songs I’ve written that have stuck around in my live set longer than the others; for posterity. I hope you enjoy discovering them as much as I did writing them.
I’m starting off the series with the first song I wrote specifically to start my first band, Cafeteria (the first one where I was the song-writer, I had played instruments in other bands). I wrote this in an apartment my roommate and I called “The Sweet Pad” cause we thought it was super sweet. “The Cafeteria Tape” (see “music.thejoinerhouse.com“) has the original recording. The backing vocals were done in the shower for the reverb (in the original) as I recorded it on a Tascam 4 track cassette recorder with very few reverb options back in 1997. Anyway, I digress….without further ado…Polaroids.
The Joiners are streaming on all of your favorite streaming services.
Rachel and I had a band in Nashville with some wonderful musician friends. Calling ourselves The Joiners, we made two albums and a single that are now streaming on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, and all of your other favorite places to discover music. Go check it out and listen to our Nashville selves.
Copy of the live stream from May 9th
Thank you to everyone who joined us for Saturday night’s live stream! It was a roaring success and we really enjoyed everyone’s participation in the discussion section during the show. We will definitely be doing something again soon, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, here is a streamlined copy of the set with the silence edited out of the beginning. Don’t forget to subscribe to the John Thursday YouTube channel while you are there, and thank you for watching!