Cry Baby - One Month Old
Holllaaaaa
Cry Baby is just over a month old, and it has been getting some very great attention so far including three weeks at #1 on CKUA and charting Earshot's folk and roots charts for all of October! Cry Baby has also been garnering some notice on spotify where my song 'Dead Ends And Damaged Hearts" has over 25, 000 streams!
It's been an incredible month of touring western Canada, just me and my guitar where I surpassed 300,000 km on my trusty old van! My last leg of shows is this week in Ontario, where I fly to Toronto to release my album at The Dakota Tavern Nov. 13th.
I'd like to share a few things that people have been saying so far, starting with my favourite write up from Ross Neilsen from Saskatoon.. Thank you for reading..
"Four fantastic releases yesterday. Trying to get through them all. This morning as I chased my son around the house I listened to CRY BABY by Edmonton’s Joe Nolan. Not an ideal listening environment but it still grabbed my ears. So after I put my spawn down to nap I lay on the couch and listened again. Full focus. This is not a review. These are my thoughts that came to me whilst listening. Maybe they pertain to the album. Maybe I just need a shrink!
As we grow up, I think we keep discovering new parts of ourselves that aid us in burying the old, maybe nasty, parts of ourselves that we want or need to move on from. We cover those old parts with self help books, therapy sessions, food, drugs and alcohol. Whatever does the trick. And, hopefully, some day you wake up and feel like a new, better, human. Finally learned from all those mistakes. Maybe reborn. Refreshed. Whatever you want to call it. However you need to describe it. Those old, nasty, parts of you are history. Successfully dismantled or covered up. Except we’ve all seen the movie ending where the monster is blown to bits and dead. Yet in the last second of the film, it wiggles to life again. Does anything terrible ever really die? You can layer upon layer over your most tender, vulnerable part of that soul. Protect it. Keep it hid. Somehow, Nolan manages to push his finger through all that life fabric and stick it, perfectly, right. In. That. Teeny. Tiny. Sensitive. Un-healed wound. Reminding us that our undesirable parts are as much a part of us, maybe even more, as our beautiful qualities. Would we even notice beauty if there wasn’t ugly in the world. Would you ever be compelled to be better if you weren’t ever worse? Would you ever desire or appreciate sobriety if you’d never been Black Out Drunk? Would you ever read that beautiful prose if it weren’t for Another Dead Poet? The duality of life compels us. Propels us. Dispels us.
I recall somewhere on a marquee for another Nolan where Joe was mistakingly billed. I’d say it won’t be long until that confusion would be a wistful wanting where you might sell an extra ticket or two. Cross Your Fingers."