Southside Johnny.com: The Band

Back to the Band

The Tree of Life
An Interview with Joey Stann
by Michelle Paponetti

Thursday, May 17th, 7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time. As most Americans go about their rituals of winding down after a day's work, I meet Joey Stann, long-time sax player for the Asbury Jukes, at the Metuchen train station in central New Jersey. Anxious to talk about his new record, we get into his car and he drives me back to his house in nearby Edison. If you step into Joey's living room, you're likely to find a very warm atmosphere, with spiritual references on the wall and a photograph of himself with Stevie Wonder sitting proudly on top of his mantle.

Joey Stann is no newcomer to the music scene and, in fact, is no stranger to sharing the stage with some of music's pioneers, explaining to me at one point in the interview what it was like working with Andrew Loog Oldham, notorious former manager and producer of the Rolling Stones.

Joey and I spent a few hours in his living room talking about everything from I Ching to Gary "U.S." Bonds to his new CD, "Family Tree," which, after a bit of encouragement from Southside Johnny, made it's debut on March 2nd, 2001 at a Jukestock weekend, a 3-day gathering of Jukes fans from around the world at the Holiday Inn in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

I had heard that Joey was into New Age and Spiritual development so I figured I would ask him a few questions about his faith and how it tied in with his work on the new CD and these are some of the things he had to say.

I hear that you are a spiritual person. Can you tell me about the new "Family Tree" and where some of the inspiration behind the music comes from?
The CD definitely has spiritual overtones. For instance, the song, "Adversity" deals with the I Ching (in it there's a hexagram called adversity). The I Ching is an oracle and basically, you ask questions and you get the answers from it. My understanding is, the premise behind all of that, whether you go to Shaman Journeying, read the I Ching or even Tarot Cards, is that the answers are all within us, all in the collective unconscious mind. And so what you do is you're actually finding a way to get those answers out. So any of these things is just a way of getting those answers from within. It's a way of opening your mind to the Knowledge of the Universe.

The words in "Adversity", for instance, are "When adversity comes your way, don't let it break you and lead you astray. Work on what you need to learn and you'll become stronger in return." So that whole premise with the I Ching is that adversity is only a bad thing if you let it break you. If you look at the lessons you can gain from it, you look at why you go through certain changes and it becomes a learning experience. That's a Chinese concept and a lot of concepts and knowledge like that come from the old Chinese history. So I took the I Ching and wrote "Adversity" to make the connection in hopes that it will raise people's interest there.

"Family Tree" basically means that we're all one family and we need to understand that and work together. That was the first song that I put together on the album. I wrote it in 1982. I started back then and the curious thing about that was, I was doing some studio work for a friend of mine, Steve Rossi, and we were recording all night long, we were shot. We were working in the basement with no windows so we didn't know what time it was. All of a sudden, I look around and I find out that it's like 5 in the morning. So I go upstairs to get some sleep and all of a sudden I heard what I thought was a radio playing. And it was the song "Family Tree." And I'm listening and I was just in that stage where I was falling asleep, and then I heard it. So I got up to turn the radio off and it wasn't on. So I went out in the hallway to see where it was coming from and then it finally dawned on me that it was in my head. So I got a pad and paper and wrote as fast as I could write. Then I woke Steve up and said, "Steve, we gotta go back downstairs!" (laughs) and within 5 minutes we had it on tape.

That's when I realized that true musical creativity comes from somewhere else. There's a source of musical creativity that we channel into. So we're not really the creator, in a sense we're the receptor, and we receive the creativity and it flows through us. That's when I realized that songs are somewhere else and you can access them. And that song, "Family Tree" inspired the album.

So, you've been working on this record for quite a while...
The start of this album really happened in the early 80s, and I wanted to try and market it then but I just didn't have the connections. I started writing "Family Tree" and a song called "Hard Times." I actually wrote "Hard Times" with words and then I decided to do it as an instrumental with a vocal chorus. All the rest of the songs I pulled together recently. And the swing songs I did last year.

I started recording the record, doing demos, in the early 90s in a recording studio. And that was taking forever. Finally, about a year ago, I built my own studio. Once I got that, I hired some of my favorite musicians. I got Bobby (Bandiera) on guitar, Dave Post, an upright bass player who works for a band called the Swing-a-delics, John Drymon on keyboards, Gary Weiss, who's the drummer in Gary "U.S" Bonds' band and Gary Bonds, who I had sing "Family Tree."

Did all of the songs come to you in a similar way as "Family Tree"?
Yea, they all start out in my head. And then at some point I say, "Hey, let me write this down."

Are you ever in a car or out somewhere and something comes to you and you don't have a pen around...
Sure, but usually I can retain it enough until I get home and then write it down. And then once I hear the melody and write it down, I've got it.

About the CD, are you selling it exclusively on Southside Johnny's website or will it be available other places as well?
I'm not really selling it any other places right now. What happened was, Southside recommended that I finish the CD in time for Jukestock. He was sitting here at the house a few weeks before we did Jukestock. And he says, "So, I hear you're working on some stuff. Let me hear it." So I played one song for him and he said, "Let me hear another one." He wound up listening to the whole thing and he said to me, "This stuff is really good, you should try to get this together for Jukestock and sell it." So I frantically got it together. I didn't even have the master ready yet. I just had it all in the studio. I had to pull it together real fast. My daughter put together the artwork and I got 100 copies out and sold them at Jukestock.

Then Southside had mentioned about the website. I called up Paul Ressler and I got together with Rockdreams and they were very helpful. Also, they're gonna sell them when we go on tour. Johnny gave me the push in the direction that I needed to get it all done. I wasn't gonna turn that down! I might have it put up on Gary Bonds' website as well, since he's on it.

Can you give me a background of your music career and how you wound up with the Jukes?
In the late 70s, I joined a band called the Werewolves and they were managed by a guy named Andrew Loog Oldham, manager/producer of the Rolling Stones. He got us a record deal on RCA and we put out two albums. And Andrew's idea was to make us the next Rolling Stones, but at the time, there were all kinds of problems with RCA and the vice-president was let go. So our whole deal went right out the window. But we toured all over the country and Andrew stayed on as my manager. One of the groups he got me in with included the drummer Mitch Mitchell, from Jimi Hendrix's band. I started meeting some really influential people at that point.

In 1975, I got asked to play on Aerosmith's album "Toys in the Attic." I played baritone sax. There was this guy who was a major studio baritone sax player in New York. And he ran into some problems and wasn't able to show up for a lot of his sessions. So at the time, I was playing the New York scene. People heard me and they started calling me. I was getting a lot of the top sessions at that point and Aerosmith was one of them. There were a lot of people on that album, probably over a hundred musicians, including an entire orchestra. And when I came in to do the horn parts, there were like 15 horn players there. I'm on about 6 to 8 songs. That was the biggest album I've ever played on.

Then Humble Pie decided to get another album together and Andrew Oldham was handling Humble Pie. That was their "Victory" album, which was done in '79. I was on that record and I was about to go on tour with them and the record wasn't taking off like they had expected. So I didn't get to go.

At that point I got the call from the Jukes. This was in 1980 and they were looking for another sax player. Stan Harrison left the band and I came in to take his place on the Sacrifice tour. What happened was, there was a horn section called The Uptown Horns. And the leader of The Uptown Horns was Crispen Cioe. I had done some studio work with him, and he recommended me to the Jukes. I came down and I auditioned in front of Eddie (Manion) and LaBamba and I got it. The next day I was called back to work with all the horns. They had a horn section rehearsal. I came in at the same time as Gene Boccia and Mike Spengler. They had already cut the "Love is a Sacrifice" album when we joined the band. As soon as we went on tour, they cut the double live album, "Reach Up and Touch the Sky." They recorded three or four shows, and it's funny because there are three different endings on that CD!

So I worked with the Jukes for a year, and then Johnny broke up the band for a few months to pursue some other interests. Then the Juke horns got called to do Gary Bonds' "Dedication" album. We went in and did the album, and Gary was looking for a sax player at that time. And I got asked to join the band.The manager, who managed a band I had together in the early 70s, knew me so I was in with him right off the bat. I stayed with Gary for four years and then Bill (Durborow) called me and asked me if I wanted to get back with the Jukes and I said, "Yea." And I've been with the band ever since.

So, now I'm with the Jukes and I've been playing with Gary again for the past few years, as well.

What about "Messin' With The Blues"? What was it like working on that record?
That was pretty easy. Johnny had stayed down in Nashville working in Garry's (Tallent) studio. They did the whole rhythm section. They were finally able to get the time in to work together because Garry was on tour with Bruce and they couldn't seem to match it up. So finally they did and they pieced it together. Then it came time to do the horns. Jon Bon Jovi said we could use his studio to do it up here. We went to Jon's studio for two days, and Johnny played the songs for us, and we came up with horn parts, put them together right there. We've been together long enough to be able to piece it together fast. Southside had the basic ideas of what he wanted. He sang us some of the lines and we just turned it into horns. And we tossed it back and forth until we came to what he really liked and just said, "Print it." And that's how we did all of the songs.

I think this is a great album. Everybody's been telling Johnny for years to do a blues record. This is the first album that's really HIM. Everything else was worked on by either Steven (Van Zandt) or Billy Rush or someone else, but this is all Johnny.This is what he really loves. This now is my favorite Southside thing because it's really closest to his heart. And it's a lot of fun to play.

What do you think Southside's going to do next?
He'll probably continue to tour and go back in the studio. He wants to do it, he wants to keep going. He has such a great following and is one of the most talented artists I know. *

For anyone interested in New Age and Spiritual journeying, Joey suggests the following:

"The Way of the Shaman" by Michael Harner
"There is a River - The Story of Edgar Cayce" by Thomas Sugrue
"Traditional Reiki for Our Times" by Amy Z. Roland
http://www.reiki.com
http://www.handsonhealing.com

Joey Stann Photos | Joey Stann Discography

Back to the Band

Jukes Interviews: