"Josh Weinstein is a philosopher/poet who happens to play amazing piano (plus whatever else he can get his hands on). With Love & Alcohol, Weinstein may fully establish himself in critical circles as one of the most talented songwriters the US has to offer. This is the sort of performance that gets considered for awards."
--”Wildy's World Reviews, February, 2009
Bukowski-esque lyrics evoke a a slide-show of anonymous strangers haunting the dark corners of a midnight city. Shades of front-porch-blues and field-gospel co-mingle with Waitsian jazz and folk harmonies. Rock guitar pulses over upright bass. A single voice calls out over slow-burn blues piano while a trumpet plays from the next room.
In intimate settings, Josh Weinstein often has his drummer show up empty-handed and "play the room”--use found objects to bring immediacy and unpredictability to the performance.
It's no wonder Weinstein's second release, 2006's Brooklyn Is Sinking, appears on "Best of..." lists at WFUV and npr.org. A scholar, educator, studio pianist and performing songwriter, Josh Weinstein has emerged as an important voice in contemporary pop composition.
Weinstein grew up in Poughkeepsie, NY, and spent childhood weekends in New York City, mostly in bars, with his father. His mother was a 60's folk singer/songwriter and recording artist, grandmother was a concert cellist who had a weekly radio performance program on the CBC in Canada.
An English major in college, Weinstein worked as bartender, jingle-writer and friday-night "Hey, how ya doing, thanks for listening" cocktail jazz piano player to pay for grad school in Literature.
He worked in the "real world" as a writer, editor, and advertising copywriter. Wrote music and played piano in a variety of bands at night, honing the bare-knuckle, blues-meets-whiskey-meets-street-corner-philosopher style that characterizes his sound.
Lived in Colorado, then California. Then Washington, DC and Maine. Moved back to New York City in late 1999. Lived two buildings south of the World Trade Center towers. Was there for the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Went underground. Reevaluated. Quit job in 2002 to return to music full-time.
Recorded first album, Petty Alchemy, in August, 2003. and second, Brooklyn Is Sinking, in 2006. Has since racked up numerous Honorable Mention-or-better song-contest finishes, spins on hundreds of radio stations throughout the country and appearances at innumerable festivals and venues, large and small.
After a one-year performing hiaitus to help raise his new son, Weinstein is back in force with his strongest album yet, Love & Alcohol, to be released in Spring 2009 on RandomLogo Records.
Love & Alcohol is a street's-eye view of love and everything after, written and edited in the late-night hours, fueled by too little of the former and too much of the latter.
Basic tracks were recorded on Valentine's Day, with an electro-acoustic four-piece ensemble that included journeyman "Roches" bassist Paul Ossola and "Songs from a Random House" drummer John Bollinger. Overdubs throughout the year when/wherever Weinstein could get a microphone in front of friends and colleagues--everyone from guitarist G.E. Smith to cellist Erik Friedlander to organist Clifford Carter.
The spare production incorporates found-object and non-trap-kit percussion, engineered soundscapes, and nontraditional, non-beginning-middle-end song structure.
Yet at its core, L & A is fundamentally a blues album--
an in-the-cracks, off-center, idiosyncratic look at life lived somewhere between Love & Alcohol.
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