Album Notes

"Like a 21st century carnival barker, in his left hand, Cassady holds an iron link chain with an unseen anchor that grabs into an almost forgotten American past. In his right he holds the beacon and tickets to the future. Step into his tent ."

"Cassady is no longer the cool pen-as-a-sword poet at all here. Instead, he is a bold painter of musical imagery: lyrics all softly defined brush strokes, supplemented by the pallette of Robert Bonhomme's thundering drums, Aaron Gardner's slinky bass, and Anthony Bax's crystalline percussion hurling dramatic handfuls of color and depth. The artistic signature to seal the deal belongs to Shu Nakamura, mando-guitar / dobro / keyboard artiste extraordinaire, who convinces us that he can take a guitar to places where man has never gone before!" Torchy Blaine, WDVR FM


“Eureka!” Legend has it that this exclamation (meaning, “I have found it!”) is what Greek mathematician Pythagoras cried out when he discovered his Pythagorean Theorem, which is otherwise known as the 47th Problem of Euclid. It provides a simple relation among the three sides of a right triangle so that if the lengths of any two sides are known, the length of the third side can be found. If a, b and c are sides of the triangle then:
A² + B² = C²
So why the geometry lesson? Well, similar to Pythagoras’ triangles the songs on Joe Cassady & The West End Sound’s new release, THE 47TH PROBLEM are narratives where the known is being used to grasp what is unknown, lost or at least temporarily missing. For example: the title track is a meditation on destruction to understand love; “Thin Ice” looks around the singer’s world where “enough” is finally “enough” and searches for the missing will to move on; “Find My Way Home” uses the visions of an itinerant rambler to try to capture the elusive essence of what makes a house a home; and “Big Wave” and “Willie Mays” both look to the good old days and the bad old now to try to envision a better future. Known variables are used to calculate the unknown. Get the picture? Good. Let’s try an example together.

This one is a word problem: What does The 47th PROBLEM by Joe Cassady & The West End Sound actually sound like? To solve we need to do the following:

Let A = Alt-Country/Americana Rock. Ken Barnes of USA Today selected their debut full-length release, WHAT'S YOUR SIGN? as one of his Favorite CD’s of 2007 and wrote: "Wasn't necessarily expecting good alt-country from a Manhattan band, but got it anyway. The songs' obvious intelligence doesn't get in the way of the solid, often enthralling music." The album sent Darryl Gregory of IndieMusic.com, “into a world where The Velvet Underground joins forces with The Band, where The Eagles add Chris Whitley (in a dream) to the line-up and we come out with an Alphabet City-alt.country amalgamation.”

Let B= Beat/Rock & Roll Poetry. Cassady was weaned on Townes Van Zandt and Jack Kerouac, Kris Kristofferson and Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan and well . . . Bob Dylan (hey the guy’s prolific!). Critics said that WHAT’S YOUR SIGN? “mixed the surreal with beat poet wanderings,” and featured, “ interesting lyrics that draw the listener back to see if anything was missed the first, second and third time around.” And according to Susan Frances of North East In-Tune, Cassady’s “music delivers what exists now like a mirror reflection . . . It tells it like it is in a folksy/poetic style, baring the wounds in an undisguised, thought provoking oration.”

And finally let C= The new album, THE 47th PROBLEM by Joe Cassady & The West End Sound.

So to solve for C: C = √A² + B², or:

THE 47th PROBLEM by Joe Cassady & The West End Sound = √(Alt-Country/Americana Rock)² + (Beat/ Rock & Roll Poetry)²

Make sense? Good! I think you’ve got it, but I suggest you spin the record a few times just to be sure. There might be a quiz tomorrow