There are certain circumstances in which I love doing yoga; early in the morning, looking out on an ocean, when I feel a bit ‘off’, when my body, ( mainly my back, after my spine-cracking car accident) hurts.. most however are not “time for yoga” times.
The same can apply to listening to singer/songwriter Joe Yoga. A self-proclaimed, “open-mic whore”, I can only guess where he gets his edgy-ness from; open mics in NYC can get gruesome at times. He can handle it, he’s from the streets of NYC, a little punk, and not your typical acoustic artist. On “Bad Hero” he reminds you that he is no hero, “he can’t save the day, and got so drunk the earth turned.”
I try to analyze some more of his slow tempo, acoustics by digging deeper into his lyrics; most don’t mean anything to me. Maybe I don’t get it, maybe I am stupid, maybe Joe is stupid. Then I come across “Gone”, an obvious, ( to me) story about an ex-lover, whom haunts him in his dreams, he escapes form the pain with the help of his guitar and some booze. It was a great time in his life, but lasted and ended too quickly for his liking, “I blinked for second and feel like I missed it all.”
He feels, he’s a real person, I like real people, I like Joe Yoga.
And like any good artist of this decade, he is an active user of all that is social media, updating “everybody” about his life and music on his blog, (http://joeyoga.blogspot.com/), where you can also check out his music.
His newest CD, “Life Out East,” the CD in which i just listened, it pretty good, it comes from Joe’s punk of a heart, the (sometimes) mean streets of NYC, and from a real person living real life.