I have just released ‘Twenty From Twenty’, a compilation marking two decades of yours truly 2004-2024.

I wanted to mark that particular milestone because there are so many Joe Solo albums and EPs that I often get asked, ‘Where do I start?’ or ‘Which is your best?’ and I figured a catch-up compilation was a good idea before we set off for pastures new all over again.

Choosing the tracks was always going to be tricky, but I asked for your favourites on social media, then followed the path of the most played on streaming services until I had twenty…..after that, the hard part was swapping tracks until they fitted on a single CD.

It got me thinking about how far we’ve come:

“When I first started writing solo songs in 2002 I had no idea what I was doing.

None at all.

I’d written hundreds of songs, but always for the band, so I had drum beats and basslines, lead guitar riffs and backing vocals filling my imagination, and them not being there anymore was devastating.

I spent years trying to put them back, with percussion where the drums were, harmonica for lead guitar, and the right hand thumping against the guitar body for the bass.

All that sprang from insecurity. I simply wasn’t a good enough guitarist or singer to be a singing guitarist.

It took me YEARS to realise that didn’t matter, that I was a f***ing good lyricist, and that if I wrote short-note melodies to hide the weakness of my voice, and made space for the words front and centre by backing the guitar off, my songs could hold up to anybody’s.

If I could play and sing, my songs would have been different. They would have been about my playing and singing. Because I can’t, they became about the stories, the characters, the cause.

My weakness became my strength.

F*** anyone who puts you down.

There is always a way.”

It also got me looking back over 37 years of writing and performing. When you have no backers, no managers, no agent, it is often a bumpy and perilous journey trying to find your way in music:

“2024 is my 37th year as a musician. Before 2004 was Lithium Joe, and before Lithium Joe was years of busking on street corners, and bash-em-out bands. None of it came easy because I had zero natural talent. Everything was hard work. Everything was the result of pushing past being useless until I wasn’t.

I say that because there are tens of thousands of aspiring musicians and songwriters out there who live in the shadow of the supposed greatness of those whose record sales and repackaged legacies provide music with its iconography, and it is all complete bollocks.

There are no rulebooks in music any more, so beat your own path, do your own thing, work at it until it’s good, then work at it some more until it’s great, and never stop.

I started writing songs when I was 14.

I didn’t write one I loved until I was 37.

It was called ‘November The 12th’.

It’s on here.

It took 23 years to get past not being ‘gifted’, to step out from the shadow of my heroes, to understand that being ignored by the music industry and all those whose record collections are derived solely from the artists its systems allow into their ears, said more about them than it did me; 23 years to get past the idea that I wasn’t worthy, and to find the confidence to stand tall on whatever sized stage and demand to be heard.

So these are some songs from my songbook.

They represent the triumph of hard graft over good fortune and opportunity.

They are Working Class songs.

And I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

‘Twenty From Twenty’ is available on limited edition CD and to stream/download from my Bandcamp at:

https://joesolomusic.bandcamp.com/album/twenty-from-twenty

New music will follow soon after. ‘A Better Way’, the first single from the forthcoming album ‘Sledgehammer Songs’ will be released on February 1st, with the main event following on March 4th.

Going to be a fun year….