1000 Words on Joe Pug: a lot of them Joe’s

Joe Pug: Waterside Stage, Newport Folk Festival (photo by John Hames)

 Joe Pug is a 23 year old singer-songwriter from Chicago who’s been barnstorming the US since the release of his debut EP, Nation of Heat, midway through 2008. Other press favorably compares him to stolid American folk/troubadour types: Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle. Although I haven’t seen it, John Prine has likely been mentioned, maybe Springsteen because he’s usually thrown in for good measure, and surely Pug’s mouth organ rack and folk guitar strumming would place him in that atmosphere. He’s lanky, fresh-faced, a kid from the heartland who sings from the heart. You know the chorus, and don’t let it fool you. Joe P. is book learned, smart, and original: as he says in one of his songs, he’d “rather be nobody’s man than somebody’s child.”  His lyrics occasionally sound topical, Joe sings about distancing himself from flags and causes, stuff that sounds like protest music, but the images are dense and the  wordplay complex in ways that shaking can’t resist. There are no broadsheet ballads; no Joe Hills, Hattie Carrolls or Rubin Hurricane Carters populate his tunes. He’s not naming names or listing issues, but he’s not leaving much out either. Darn it if someone writing for -3Hive didn’t nail it when they said. “…Pug is a populist at heart, a singer who can’t help but talk about all of us when he sings about himself and can’t help but sing about himself when he’s talking about all of us.” 

On Sunday, August 1, Joe Pug played the Waterside Stage at the Newport Folk Festival, that filet of outdoor music carnivals, celebrating its half-century anniversary. Given Newport’s long-standing tradition of breaking new talent, it seemed appropriate when Pug acknowledged the act people were still buzzing about from the day before, the Low Anthem, and announced that he’d be doing some shows with them, before launching into everything from Nation of Heat and a batch of new tunes.  

Onstage, he sings earnestly into the mic, steps away to follow some train of thought while he strums or picks, or maybe ruminates on the harmonica. He looks at the crowd too, making eye contact, staying there a second longer than you thought he could, using silences to make louder points.  

Between songs, he makes fun of himself or tells tall tales and manages to do it without talking a lot.  

We’re not in the prediction business here at shaking, we simply hope there’s more new Joe Pug music soon and we’re thrilled he took the time to talk to us about his songwriting.  

shaking: In “Hymn 101,” the refrain in the verse “and I’ve come to…,” implies some kind of arrival, or at least showing up to get something done. But the trick of the narrative is that the singer sounds like he’s on a journey. Where has he been? And where is he going?  

 Joe Pug: The idea that you can get from one place to another has always seemed strange to me.  I’ve never arrived anywhere.  I’ve never been in a place that seemed unfamiliar.  Sometimes though, you can experience the illusion of movement.  And that can be a healthy illusion.  

 shaking: There’s a sense of allegory in such phrases as “the sheriff and his posse,”  “the legendary takers,” and “the servants and their surplus,” do these folks correspond to people in contemporary society, or is your intention to create something timeless and mythic?  

 Joe Pug: Myth is much more interesting to me.  To think that someone you buy coffee from every morning could be part of a myth that outlives you both, that’s exciting… Specificity in writing is damaging and overrated.  Meter is much more important.  

 shaking: And building on that question maybe?  You’re a singer from the heartland and the press so far has connected you to the folk tradition of Guthrie and Dylan with shades of Steve Earle. These guys made their names by sounding distinctly American and addressing current issues. Do you consider yourself a topical singer?  

 Joe Pug: I sing whichever songs choose to present themselves.  The more you impose yourself on a song, the less poetry.  So if listeners see those songs as topical, they might well be right.  But there is no master agenda.  

 shaking: Can you talk about wordplay in your songs?  

 Joe Pug:  If I could choose one quality to master in my lifetime it would be brevity.  And the “wordplay” that you describe is just a tool for me to express nuanced emotions and ideas with the least amount of words.  

 shaking: You use rich metaphors such as “When the party starts on Monday, and Christmas starts in June,” which are ways of saying that things are off-kilter, clever reversals, double-entendres and great imagery, such as in “Call it what you will:” “Bronze colored dirt,” “parking lot moon,” and “blue heaven crying.” Where does the inclination to poetry come from? Do you read poetry? Listen to a lot of other singer/songwriters?  

 Joe Pug: Much of my inspiration comes from novels.  Cormac McCarthy, Robert Pirsig, Ayn Rand, John Dos Passos.  The one poet that I read avidly during the Nation of Heat sessions was Rimbaud.  For me, the allure of poetry has been the ability to order a disorderly world.  

shaking: Finally, two rock biz-type questions:  

 1) What’s your philosophy about getting new music out to your audience?  

 Joe Pug: The more I give my music away, the more people buy it.   

 2) And how close is the portrait in “Hymn #35,” to who Joe Pug really is?  

 Joe Pug: Who says it’s not a landscape?  

Some of the terrain from “Hymn #35.”  

 …And I am once  

I am twice  

I am the whole  

I’m just a slice  

…I am right now  

I am back then  

I will return  

Don’t ask me when  

….I have done wrong  

I will do wrong   

There’s nothing wrong  

With doing wrong  

…And I am faith  

I am belief  

Except for when  

I’m not