Album Notes

ABOUT "MUSIC FROM POTTER'S FIELD"

The seeds of this album were planted when Graham Rhodes asked me to write a set of songs to accompany his play "Potter's Field" on the subject of the First World War.

For some reason I've never been able to picture Victorian or Edwardian England in any sort of detail not passed on to me by Charles Dickens, but talk about the trenches and the fog clears. From August 1914 onwards I can picture myself as part of the fabric of history. It's where the modern world began.

These songs are tales of men and women caught up in events beyond their control. They're war songs, yes, but they are people songs too. Folk songs. They are the stories of those rushing to sign up, and those refusing to; stories of life and death, bitterness and hope.

I have become very protective of the characters here, and I wanted to be true to them. I’ve tried to sing through them and for them, not at them. Military Historians can tell you what battalion fought on what front on what date. I'm only interested in what they saw and how they coped.

I had a teacher at school called Mr Hanson who could bring history to life like no-one I’d met before. It stopped being a dry list of cold hard fact, and became a whole new world occupied by real people; an interconnecting web of ifs and buts and maybes; as much a part of the present as I was.

This is my attempt to do the same.

Joe

ABOUT JOE SOLO
Joe Solo began his musical life playing punk covers in a school band. Performing his first original song live in 1987, he discovered folk music through the punk leanings of The Pogues, The Men They Couldn't Hang and Billy Bragg. Inspired by their songs and stories, Joe hit the road travelling and busking, soaking up the sights and sounds of everywhere from Birmingham to Berlin, eventually hitch-hiking his way round England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Holland and Belgium.

Settling in Hull in the spring of 1991, he formed pop-punk four-piece Lithium Joe. The band toured and recorded independently for the next ten years playing close to four hundred shows around Britain and Ireland. After four singles and two albums they finally split in 2001.

Following the band's demise, Joe returned to his roots, taking with him the attitude and spirit of his days in the band. His tastes had widened too. A love of Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch. “She knocked me flat the way The Clash had done when I was a kid. I had all these different styles buzzing round my head, so I set about trying to mix them. Trying to marry punk, folk and country without treading on tradition.”

With the aim of “making an album a year until I drop down dead” Joe's last offering “Me & Billy The Kid” showcased his love of storytelling like never before. Doomed soldiers rubbed shoulders with hobo visionaries and jaded pub singers, each with their own tale to tell. A giant step forward.

Never one to resist a challenge, Joe responded to a request by Scarborough-based writer Graham Rhodes for some music to accompany a play he’d written about the First World War. A thirteen song collection titled “Music From Potter's Field” was released in February 2009. “I totally immersed myself in this one, and my nightmares you would not want. But it was a real labour of love and I was sad when it was finished really.”

Following its release, Joe set up The Potter’s Field Project a blend of songs, stories, poetry and prose and is taking it round schools in a bid to help connect young people with the period. Something which has seen him dubbed “The Singing Historian”.

A further album “Forwards Is Just Backwards In Reverse” is already planned for 2010. “I don't do standing still. Got to keep working. Got to keep pushing myself. If you ever stop it’s over isn’t it? That just isn’t for me. I’ll be around a good while yet.”


DISCOGRAPHY

As Joe Solo:
Music From Potter's Field CDLP 2009
Me & Billy The Kid CDLP 2008
Strong At The Broken Places CDLP 2007
Seaside Songs & Smalltown Stories CDLP 2006
The Man Who Dreamed Of Fairyland CDLP 2005
An Exile In Suburbia CDLP 2004

With Lithium Joe:
At The Rainbow's End CDLP 2001
Upstairs At Park Street CDLP 2000
War Stories 7"EP 1998
SOS Bombs 7"EP 1997
Smalltown CDEP 1996
Enjoy Life 7"EP 1995