Album Notes

Joe’s musical education came from stealing songs and stories from the many road-worn acts that, week after week, rolled through the local beer joint his family ran in northern Ontario. Every night he\'d fall asleep to the sound of country music filtering up through the floorboards and every morning a new Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash or Creedence Clearwater Revival tune would be stuck in his head. It\'s bound to have an effect on a kid.

His first appearance was at his parent\'s hotel, at age 12, filling in for the hired act who was too drunk to play. The people ate it up - plus it paid 25 bucks and all the soda he could handle. Joe was hooked. He soon found himself making good money playing traditional and current (late 70\'s) country in local bands every weekend and the next 20 years were spent off and on the road. Punk, pop, rockabilly, polka, blues, new country, old country, whatever... Joe played it all. Sometimes it was guitar, sometimes it was bass or drums. All the while Joe was learning about songs. How to write \'em and to record \'em.

A move in the early part of 2001 to Nova Scotia was, in many ways, the start of Joe Fournier\'s current career. It was while bangin\' and sawin\' together his Eight Track Shack studio that he started getting ideas for the kind of songs he\'d never written before. Songs that drew on his country roots, personal experiences and crazy characters met while gigging and traveling all those years. Soon there was enough material to fill two albums. By January 2002, at age 41, Joe had recorded his first CD and sent it out into the world. In no time flat he was fielding calls from publishers and managers from Sweden to Nashville.

Joe received rave reviews for Raw Sugar Shed, released in the summer of 2002. Whiskey Stars came out in Europe in 2003 and Canada/US in 2004.