Newport Folk Festival’s RI Star Joe Fletcher Talks To GoLocal

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Rob Duguay, GoLocalProv Music Critic

 

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Photo: Jesse Golding

If you're like me and you're a humongous fan of what has been going on in the Rhode Island music scene the past 5 years or so, the sounds courtesy of Joe Fletcher & The Wrong Reasons are a true jewel amongst the diversely impeccable musical cornucopia coming out of The Creative Capital. Combining the juke-joint rock & roll style that resonates the names of Johnny Cash and Buddy Holly, the dark tones similar to Nick Cave and lyrics that only Joe himself can write, Fletcher and his band have become an Ocean State music institution since their start back in 2005. I haven't met anyone on any given night who hasn't become an instant fan after seeing Joe & The Wrong Reasons play and I'm sure they'll be plenty more fans as time goes on. Joe is putting on an event called "Nashville to Newport" at The Newport Folk Festival this coming weekend at Fort Adams, he has a new album coming out this fall and he keeps on doing bigger and better things. A few days ago Joe and I had a talk over the phone and here's how it went:

Rob Duguay: At The Newport Folk Festival you have something going on called "Nashville to Newport" which features you, Deer Tick's John McCauley, Joshua Black Wilkins and Patrick Sweany just to name a few. What made you want to start this up?

Joe Fletcher: The Newport Folk Festival came to me with an opportunity to come up with the context to curate my own event and I sat down and made a list of people who I'd like to bring with me to The Folk Festival and who I thought belonged there. I noticed a common thread right away that a lot of them lived in Nashville, a place which is big news these days, and I reached out to a lot of these people and they were very interested in coming up to do it. I went back to Newport with my idea and they really liked it to the point where they extended it to nearly 50% from 2 hours to 3/12 hours, I was able to invite even more people and everybody's pretty excited about it.

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R.D.: That sounds very awesome Joe and I'm very much looking forward to it. There's a little rumor going around in Providence that you actually might be moving down to Nashville. Is there any truth to that?

J.F.: That's absolutely true, I'm moving there in October.

R.D.: What do you figure to be your main goal when you move to Nashville? Do you plan on playing with the musicians you've contacted for "Nashville To Newport"? Do you plan on getting involved with a lot of record labels down there?

J.F.: I don't really have a particular goal in moving down there other than shaking things up a little bit and a change of pace. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, I really like it there. I go there several times a year and I always find it to be the hardest place to leave, I just really feel at home there and I have a lot of friends there. I love Rhode Island and it will always be a very important place to me. I may move back here someday, my parents will be here and I'll still play shows here probably just as often as I do now. I'll be gone from Nashville as often as I'm gone from Warren, RI and I feel artistically it'll be good for me to put myself in a new environment where I'll have to work a little harder than I do here. Things here are getting pretty easy for me right now, I'm looking to just shake things up and look at the world from a different place.

R.D.: Of all the people I know around Providence and Rhode Island in general that deserves to be in a place like Nashville it's definitely you Joe. Speaking of the Rhode Island and Providence music scenes, it's seems like nowadays on any given night you can find an awesome local band playing around Providence or somewhere in Rhode Island at a music venue or even on a street corner sometimes. People view you Joe & The Wrong Reasons as a staple in the burgeoning music scene in The Creative Capital since you guys started out in the mid-2000's and you're well on your way to becoming a household name around here. What's your opinion on the whole state of the music scene in Rhode Island as a guy who's been around it for a while and is getting very popular with people embracing a lot of the local bands?

J.F.: Well, I've been playing in bands in Providence since about 1996 and I've been with The Wrong Reasons since 2005 when we played our first show. There's definitely been a lot of ebb and flow over those years and from the older guys I know there's always been an ebb and flow with there being a lot of clubs, a bunch of clubs shutting down, a lot of great bands and not a lot of great bands (laughs). I think right now is one of those high times where there's a lot of great stuff happening and there's a lot of great places to play. When I sit down to find a Rhode Island show it's a tough decision of where to do it whether it be The Met which is one of my favorites, The Columbus Theatre is great too and I like playing at Nick-A-Nees. I love doing all sorts of different stuff, they're just vastly different venues just in those three and each one is a completely different experience. You can never decide who you want to play with either because there are so many great bands. One of my favorites these days are Smith & Weeden and of course there's Vudu Sister, The Silks and Roz Raskin. There are lots of up and coming people who are exceptionally creative and they push a guy like me to work a lot harder, even though they're a lot younger or a lot newer on the scene but there's always someone coming up who makes you work a little harder.

R.D.: It really is the golden age of Providence music when you really think about it, just how many awesome bands constantly in different types of genres are coming through and just rocking joints.

J.F.: They're beginning to attract more national bands. When the last version of The Met, which was attached to Lupo's on Westminister Street, closed down it was a big loss to the music scene around here because people started skipping Providence on tour who used to always stop here. For several years there was no Met and obviously the new version of The Met is probably three times the size of the old one so it's not like that filled the void but I think there are a lot of places that do. The Columbus Theatre is one of them with a 200 seat venue and you need rooms that size to attract bands on tour who aren't packing a 500 seat place to stop and play. For a long time there were bands who I used to see in Providence all the time that started skipping Providence which was really heartbreaking but there just wasn't a venue for it. It's good to see people realizing that need and are attracting a lot of interesting stuff to Rhode Island again and I'd say The Columbus Theatre is a big part of that.

R.D.: I totally agree. People sometimes refer to you Joe as a folk musician, an old-school style country musician and sometimes a rock & roll musician. What do you classify yourself when it comes to the way your play your music? Where do you feel you fit in when you think about a certain style? Or do you even think about a particular style?

J.F.: I do not think about it (laughs), I really don't. When you listen to White Lighter I think you could listen to one song on it and if you're the kind of person who needs to pigeonhole a person you could definitely pigeonhole me three or four or six different ways just on any given song on that record but I feel lucky in the sense that there's a cohesion. I think that "Flat Tire" is me trying to write an early Rolling Stones single and "Drunk & Single" is me trying to write a straight up old-time honky tonk song. Something about the way we do it doesn't make it jarring in the sense that you don't think "Oh, they're trying to do this now, they're trying to do this". It's just me somehow reflecting on the music that I love, I feel that were lucky that there's a cohesion in it but it works. I never think about it, I never think about it at all, the only time I think about it is when people ask me (laughs) and that's when I realize how little I think about it. It's all coming from mainly American roots music of some sort whether it would be Woody Guthrie, Mississippi Fred McDowell, George Jones, Hank Williams or The Rolling Stones who are putting their spin on American music. It's all just a reflection of the records on my record player. Hopefully my writing from a lyrical point of view is hopefully a little bit different than what you've heard before and people comment on how dark it can be or some people catch on to my sense of humor. I think most of them are pretty funny myself but mostly people comment on how bleak they are. I really like it when people pay attention and catch the humor in it all as well because that's also what I'm trying to do. That's the influence of people like Leonard Cohen, even Morrissey and definitely Nick Cave who deal with really dark subjects but to me their stuff is often hilarious. A lot of authors I like have that same quality with dealing with dark subjects and having a tremendous sense of humor and that's one of the things I really like about writing. You're not going to get lyrics that remind you of a Hank Williams song, "Drunk & Single" might be an exception to that but for the most part I think lyrically I've carved out a little something that's unique to me.

R.D.: Yea I can see that. You can tell when you're hearing a Joe Fletcher song versus any type of rock & roll record, that's definitely true. One thing I've always found to very interesting about you Joe is that at one point in your life you were at teacher at Foxborough Regional Charter School in Foxboro, MA. Do you ever feel that teacher side of you come out when you're performing live or talking to young musicians about honing their craft?

J.F.: How so?

R.D.: If anyone wants to ask you for advice on something or if they want to ask you what you thought about a record they wrote.

J.F.: I feel as a teacher it's important to set a good example, be a good human being and not only talk about the curriculum but give people examples on how to be a better person and be true to what you believe in. When I sit down and talk to a younger musician I try to take the same approach but I don't think of myself as a teacher when I'm talking to peers and friends because I don't have to do that, just speak honestly about what has worked for you and what has not worked for you and hopefully that'll help them out a little bit. I don't think of it as an educator type thing but more as a friend.

R.D.: Sometimes you have to draw the line. One last question for you Joe is that you have a solo record coming out titled You Got The Wrong Man. When can we hear about it being released? I know there's quite a buzz about it and a lot of people want to give it a listen.

J.F.: Late October is what we're looking at for the release right now, I got a publicist who's just kind of launching the campaign now and we have a certain amount of lead time before we get it out to the people. It's definitely a bit of a departure in the sense that it's a pretty sparse acoustic record, a lot of fingerpickin' kind of songs. I've been on the road solo a lot over the last year and it's just kind of the way these songs came out. They're not band songs, they're more quiet acoustic songs.

So there you have it. It's always a pleasure talking to Joe and I can't thank him enough for the interview. I wish him the best of luck when he gets settled in Nashville and you can guarantee that he won't be leaving The Ocean State in the fall without him and The Wrong Reasons playing a bash. Along with "Nashville To Newport", Joe Fletcher & The Wrong Reasons will be playing at The Newport Blues Cafe tonight with Christopher Paul Stelling, The Low Anthem and Roz Raskin & The Rice Cakes as part of "Revival! at Newport". It's The Newport Folk Festival kick-off party and tickets are going fast, the festival is already near sold-out so this might be your only chance to get a taste of one of the biggest events to hit Rhode Island this year.

Keep your eyes peeled for Joe Fletcher's solo debut, You Got The Wrong Man and make sure to see him play anytime he rolls through your neighborhood.

 

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