Album Notes

Joe Santa Maria...what a cool name.

Joe Santa Maria was born Joe Santa Maria on November 7, 1966 in mystical Worcester, Massachusetts. Although he briefly considered changing his name in 1968 to Spiro Agnew, he has gone by the name Joe Santa Maria for over four decades. By the age of nine young Joe was usually squinting like crazy and dreaming of becoming the Six Million Dollar Man. This dream was shattered when his parents refused to let him get himself into a horrible disfiguring accident. Depressed by this turn of events, Joe turned his attention to an offer from his parents to get guitar lessons. Having a life long problem with being told what to do, short and awkward looking Joe took to the guitar with the same way he took to his school work, with a blatant disregard for reasonable effort. Soon the guitar was in the closet and it was back to bionic dreams. Four years later, Joe had a vision as he was fishing in a local Chinese Restaurant's aquarium. The vision was that of an electric guitar and a ham and cheese sub with mustard. Starving, Joe took the sign for what it was and immediately went home and made a sandwich. later he thought about the guitar. He went to the closet, pushed away the piles of Captain America comics and pulled out the guitar he had tossed aside years before. Painfully tearing the skin from every finger on his left hand, he forced himself the most horrible sounds possible. Then one day whilst visiting a friend he was handed Sgt. Pepper. He thought "Oh God, I hate the Bee Gee's" his friend then mentioned that Sgt. Pepper was a Beatles record. "Oh" Joe said.

From then on guitar and songwriting became an obsession. Hours and hours were spent piecing together Beatles songs one note at a time. In fact, Joe says over thirty years later it's still his favorite thing to do!

Joe Santa Maria wrote songs and performed with several Massachusetts area bands throughout the 1980's and 1990's beginning with "Slightly Orange" 1983 and ending with "Whitetoast" in 2003. In between, countless bands and projects.

By the year 2000, Joe began building a studio in his home. He discovered that he was at his happiest writing and performing the songs himself. By then hundreds of demos were created using various home equipment and his live solo act became completely original material.

In March of 2006, Joe met producer Andrew Gallagher. It was the first time Joe had ever collaborated with someone of Gallagher extreme talent. Andrew and Joe worked on the above three song single "Crashing In' from June through October of 2006.

Joe Santa Maria now has had nine songs in the top ten on various internet radio stations over the past year. Songs such as "Panic", "Happy Birthday Baby", "3 and 1", "November's Alright", have all appeared on charts all over the world. Joe's CD has been sold to music lovers in Japan, Germany, Australia, Thailand, Turkey, South Africa, Spain, Italy and the USA.

Joe is currently negotiating a project with Universal Music Group for publishing and songwriting.

To check out demos for Joe's upcoming album visit www.iacmusic.com or www.myspace.com/joesantamaria.