My new album ‘Sledgehammer Songs’ will be released to Bandcamp in full from midnight tonight.
I am so looking forward to this music finally being out there in the world.
After a very hectic pre-order day on February 1st I completely sold out of CDs and almost half the vinyl went too!
Thankfully, CDs are restocked now and tomorrow brings not just the music, but a stack of associated merch including t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, and a hoodie….
‘Sledgehammer Songs’ will follow on the other streaming platforms on Monday. You can find me on all of them, but none do anywhere near as much to support artists as Bandcamp, so I will always prioritise them ahead of the rest.
And the first leg of my tour supporting the album begins on March 30th and doesn’t really let up. You can find ticket info at linktr.ee/joesolomusic and it would be FANTASTIC to see you down the front.
So the headlines:
ALBUM TOMORROW- please buy red/black splatter vinyl or CD.
TOUR IMMINENT- please buy tickets and fill venues.
MERCH TOMORROW- please feel free to accessorise accordingly.
This week,’The Last Miner’ became the second Sledgehammer song released from the imminent new album.
It features The Hatfield Brigade and Rebekah Findlay, and you can watch the accompanying video here:
It was shot by Michael Lee Toas during the recording session at NUM HQ in Barnsley late last year, and it’s pretty poignant, so be warned.
‘Sledgehammer Songs’ goes live on Bandcamp on Friday 1st March and follows on the other streaming platforms Monday 4th.
Ahead of that, there’s an online ‘Listening Party’ on Wednesday 28th February 8pm, when the full album will be streamed on Bandcamp and I’ll be available to answer questions.
There will also be a third single before then.
‘Tie ‘Em To A Brick’ features the incredible pairing of Carol Hodge on piano and vocals, and Rebekah Findlay on violin.
The pre-order for my imminent new album ‘Sledgehammer Songs’ went live last Friday alongside the release of its first tune, ‘A Better Way’. By the end of the day, I’d had to re-order CDs after selling out, and to prepare for a trip to the local Post Office with a third of my vinyl.
It was an INCREDIBLE response, and I can’t thank you enough.
Your reaction to ‘A Better Way’ was everything I’d hoped for, and the video by Lodge Productions smashed through the glass ceiling of the Facebook algorithm and flew.
You can check that out here:
If you missed all this, you can catch up at joesolomusic.bandcamp.com and the second song ‘The Last Miner’ ft The Hatfield Brigade and Rebekah Findlay drops at 8pm on Thursday evening ahead of the full album on Friday March 1st.
That too has a video, as does the third pre-album song, ‘Tie ‘Em To A Brick’ ft Carol Hodge and Rebekah again, which will drop on Thursday February 22nd.
We have incoming merch too.
Please like, comment on, and share links if you see them, and a Bandcamp Listening Party ahead of the full album is scheduled for Wednesday 28th February if you’d like to hear the full thing ahead of release day.
Barrelling over the horizon is the small matter of May Day Festival Of Solidarity, the annual recharging of batteries through music, poetry, and speeches put together by Tony Peter Wright and myself to commemorate International Worker’s Day.
It takes place at Old School House in Barnsley on Sunday May 5th, and tickets are a mere tenner from:
For that you get: Interrobang‽ Jess Silk The Wakes (acoustic set) Lithium Joe Calum Baird Maddy Carty Lewis Burner Mackie
and our comperes Poetry on the Picket Line.
Plus the soundtrack supplied by Simon Ibbotson at the decks.
Speakers will be confirmed over the coming weeks as the political year unfolds.
Tony and myself are charged with the annual panic of filling the room with an audience, and it takes a big weight off our shoulders if you buy tix in advance. We know times are hard, but we have consistently kept the price down to make it affordable, and a number of pay what you can afford solidarity tix are available on the link.
‘A Better Way’ featuring Commoners Choir will be available to stream/download as part of that, and its accompanying video will be all over my socials.
We have a bunch of bundles including black and red splatter vinyl, CD, stickers, pin-badges, sew-on patches, mugs, tote bags, t-shirts and hoodies; but there are also 50 signed and numbered hand-made prints of the incredible sleeve art by my comrade-in-crayons Kevin Pearson, so it will be worth being quick.
I can’t wait for you to hear these songs, and get out there and fill some rooms with the choruses.
In 2024, I’ll be attempting to make it easier to follow what I’m up to, where I’m heading, and how to get tickets, etc. I struggle with the admin side of this because a full-time job, a family, and writing/rehearsing/recording soak up every shred of energy I have, but I want to do this better and this is just the start.
In other news, ‘Sledgehammer Songs’ will be released on 4th March on vinyl, CD, and download with ‘A Better Way’ featuring Commoners Choir released as a single with accompanying video, on 2nd February. The album launch is Saturday 30th March at The Station in Ashton-under-Lyne, and I’ll be on the road for three months playing you these songs.
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:
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.
So there we have it. Another year has fizzed by in a whirlwind of mischief and mayhem, hard work, and heartache; and it’s time to gather my thoughts before the onslaught begins again.
It was a year of picket lines….
…..and protests…..
…..The Road took me from Scarborough to Ashton-under-Lyne, Sheffield, Newcastle, Stourbridge, Hartlepool, Bradford, Hull, Bolton, Leeds, Harrogate, Barnsley, Wroot, Wakefield, London, Ulverston, Walton, Hebden Bridge, Grimsby, Doncaster, Stockton-on-Tees, Manchester, Glasgow, Whitby, Queensbury, Nottingham, Middlesbrough, Chesterfield, and Malgrat-de-Mar via Barcelona….and that was a quiet year!
I got to share stages with much-loved musical friends and comrades….
I ran into a load more…..
I got to play Barrowlands….
I got to release new music with Lithium Joe….
…..and jump up and down on stages again, kicking up a racket…..
…..Comrade-in-crayons Kevin Pearson and meself launched another book through Unison, this time to mark Trans Awareness Week…
I did speeches, lectures, book signings, radio sessions, fundraising dinners….
I got to be on left-hand pole duty for the Hatfield Brigade at the Orgreave Rally and Durham….
Then record them for a new single at NUM HQ in Barnsley…..
…..there was launching the video for ‘These Are My People’….
…..the annual Three Shall Overcome hike with Kev and Steve….
….a stack of incredible nights raising funds for We Shall Overcome especially memorable were the ones for Pauline Town over at WSO Central, The Station…..
If I had to distill it down to a handful of images, it would be these; from singing ‘No Pasaran’ in the face of fascists in Victoria Square, through Catalunya with Joe Gibbins, to the insane joy of Black Country Folk Festival…..
As always, no year can be remembered without the memory-making images shot by the like of Neil Terry, Mark Whyatt, Paul and Lindsay Rutland, Ian Jones, Pete Yen, Eric Barnes, and a hundred others; and none of this would be remotely possible without the love, support and friendship of everyone who keeps my show on the road. THANK YOU FOR BEING THERE!!
The recording work which began at The Cellar in Milnsbridge with Gaz, Liss and Bar back in August ended in T’Shed four months later, and thanks to Rebekah Findlay and Lee Huck, Carol Hodge, Jess Silk, Daniel Lucas, Commoners Choir, the Hatfield Brigade and the People’s Chorus, ‘Sledgehammer Songs’ is at the pressing plant and I’m waiting on delivery of CDs and black and red splatter vinyl ahead on the March 4th release. The other news is the ‘Twenty From Twenty’ compilation marking two decades of this madness, is also en route from the factory and will land on your doormats in January.
So I will be back in the new year with two new albums, a ‘No Pasaran’ children’s book, an insane amount of gigs, and as much mischief and mayhem as I can squeeze out of another 12 months.
So all the very best to you for the new year, and here’s hoping it brings us a change for the better. One thing you can depend on, is that it won’t be for lack of trying x
November was a mad month of racing up and down motorways for We Shall Overcome, and alternating priorities as I switched between solo gigs and Lithium Joe.
In the end though, we did good.
We launched the CD of ‘Answer Machine/See You When I Get There’, the first actual format Lithium Joe have released since 2001….
The brand new children’s book by meself and comrade-in-crayons Kevin Pearson was launched by Unison to mark Trans Awareness Week….
We launched a new t-shirt ahead of the arrival of the forthcoming album ‘Sledgehammer Songs’…..
And we launched the #WSO2024 range with the fantastic new logo by Nevz….
I played Bradford, Nottingham, Sheffield, Middlesbrough and Chesterfield for WSO, raising thousands for the frontline ahead of another tough winter, and shared stages with some of my favourite friends and comrades for the cause…..
It was the afternoon gig at DeJa Vu in Chesterfield organised by the fantastic Gabrielle Moran which summed up the lot.
And the month came to its crescendo with two Lithium Joe gigs at The Station and The Adelphi, raising well over a £1000 for Hull Unity Shop, Hull Help For Refugees, and Pauline Town. We loved every second, and can’t wait to get out there again.
The Twenty From Twenty compilation CD marking two decades of Joe Solo is available to pre-order now, and copies will ship late January. And soon after, my brand new album ‘Sledgehammer Songs’ will be dropping, and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
Joe Solo 