Our band met in Oslo on Oct 1, 2007.

Band members:

John Platania – Gtr / vocals
Kendel Carson – fiddle/ vocals
Bryan Owings – drums
Ron Eoff – bass

For the next nine days we would travel up to Haldan, Norway for the Down On The farm Festival, then to Stockholm, Sweden for two shows at Akurat (the best single malt bar in the world) with great fiend Sten, then down to Varborg at Mayas on the sea with friend Ulf, ending up in Malmo at KB for a final show & a wrap party the day after with Hakan & family at their home.

For those nine days we ate, drank, played music and drove & TALKED & TALKED &TALKED.

In the eight seat van, Bryan & Ron were in the back, Kendel & John In the middle. Hakan, my great friend & our record distributor, was driving. I was riding shotgun. The conversation usually started with Bryan, who is a walking encyclopedia about most all stuff – with music at the top of the list. Then John would chime in.“Man, he was killer”, was an expression used by Bryan.. & soon, the rest of us, seemingly thousands of times in those nine days.

Ron, Kendel & Hakan & I joined in from time to time. The majority of the conversations revolved around musicians we knew & respected… some known .. many not so known. There were lots of “inside” stories – lots of heroic stuff. And we were all learning constantly as we traveled from one destination to the next.

Then the idea came to me. We were talking about this interesting stuff – these interesting musical characters constantly. Why not let all our fans & friends ride in that van with us.

With that in mind I wrote “ROCK & ROLL JOE”

Joe is every guitar player – who played it from his heart
Here’s to Joe
Joe is every funky/ sweaty drummer – who knew when to stop & start
Way to go, Joe

And we’ll all bow down to the ones who took us to it
The one’s that took us someplace where we wanted to go
And we’ll all bow down to the one’s that got us through it
Here’s to Rock & Roll Joe

Etc.

So that was the start of it. During the tour I wrote five or six more songs that I thought would loosely fit the concept. Then everybody started chipping in with names & thoughts about their heroes as well as musical ideas. After our London show at the Luminaire, we left our instruments on stage & returned the next day to demo the new songs with great soundman Matt at the controls.