When I start a piece of new original music, sometimes the chords and melody come first. Sometimes the hook comes first. With this song, I’m not sure how it developed.This new music is not so new. I wrote it years ago in 2002. I have a feeling the chords and the picking pattern on the high e-string were the start of it all.

Did I write it for my song circle? Duh … I don’t know. What I do know is I love the story. It’s about a strong, constant woman, living in a seaside fishing village, who’s husband goes to sea for months at a time. It might have been an homage to my friend Sue, who had a husband in the Coast Guard. He’d be gone for weeks at a time, stationed on a lighthouse in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. A strong woman making the best of a bad situation. Trying to make things better for her daughter and namesake Constance. Continue Reading > > >

When I originally posted this, I was going to dedicate a single page to my original music. I’ve now decided to break up the page into separate posts. This encourages me to post more of my original music … and maybe tell a few more stories about it. 

The “Music” menu will change, for now, to joMusic until I can incorporate multi-level menus for all my original music on { go2jo } . Then it will revert back … eventually.

And now we return you to your regularly scheduled program …

Throughout my life I’ve always been a musician at heart. From piano lessons as a kid to the first Yamaha acoustic guitar I bought in high school … music has always been around me. As a kid I had 4 years of classical piano lessons. But as a youngster, I didn’t want to play Brahms or Mozart … I wanted to learn songs by the Turtles, the Monkeys or the Beatles. But when confronted, my aging piano teacher said NO! No rock and roll Joe! That’s when I said good-bye to her and to lessons. Continue Reading > > >

Here are very raw demos of songs I wrote and recorded with my fellow members of the Human Element. Hope you enjoy!

Freedom was the opening song of every gig we played. It always got folks attention! This version is an over produced demo version I recorded in my Bond Street, Asbury Park, NJ recording studio. It was originally recorded on my Akai 1212 12-track recorder. Demos were always mixed down to cassette tape …so we could listen to this stuff in our cars, or on a boom box to see how things sounded outside the studio. Many times I’d mix down instrumental stuff that was going on inside my head … and before too long I’d always get melody ideas and lyric fragments.

When I was writing these songs it seemed the hook and melody always came first. Even if the lyrics were still in “babel” stage most times I’d have the chorus hook in my head first … and everything else would follow. There would be times I’d wake up in the middle of the night … I’d walk up the stairs to the studio and fire up my equipment at three in the morning and lay down the idea that woke me up. That was the beauty of living in an Asbury storefront … you didn’t have to worry about neighbors. There were none! Those were the days!

On this track I’m doing all the vocals, background vocals, and guitar. Fred programmed all his drums on a Yamaha RX11 drum machine which was very “high tech” back then. Chris played bass direct to the board, and Chris’ brother Dennis played keys.

Freedom

©1986 Joe Streno / Elemental Music

lyrics.pdf

Continue Reading > > >

Should I stay … or should I go.

It was the question I asked before the fateful trip. The Asbury excursion. The one to reunite the three.

In my heart I was waiting for this moment. I couldn’t be in attendance last year. But this year I WANTED to be there. I hadn’t seen any of them since the mid-nineteen-eighties. For argument’s sake and our love of round numbers I’ll call it twenty-five. Had it been that long? Maybe. Maybe more. Even our collective (failing) brains could not arrive at an accurate accounting. At this age … what’s a few years give or take.

After trading eMails with Geoff … and his kind offer of plane fare … I was able to come up with the money to buy my own round-trip ticket on Continental. If I went for two weeks the fare was reduced to $400.00. Time I had. Money. Not so much. Friends like these? Not enough!

It was set. Asbury Park, August 11th and leave for my family in south Jersey on the morning of the 16th. But on August 14th … The Hoover Hootenanny!

Geoff’s lovely wife Tatiana picked me up from Newark Airport the evening of my arrival. Like most New York City transplants Geoff never learned to drive. Good thing Tatiana did! “Yo Hoov! How will I know your wife? Will she have a sign?” “Oh. She’ll have a sign!.” Continue Reading > > >

Here I am. Back where it all started. It’s amazing. It’s amusing. It’s a place I’ve iconized in my minds eye. It was a place of growth and a place of rebirth. For me. For many. Part of something bigger than all of us. Youth. Art. Music. Lust. Passion. A culmination of time, talent, opportunity, and friendships, crystallizing into the stuff dreams are made of. But at what point do we wake up?

It’s now 2010 some 25 years later. Time has taken a toll, on memories and conditions. Asbury is still a town in transition. A town possibly on the verge of rebirth, but still a slow and painful one. As I walked the streets with my friends Geoff Hoover & Dorothy Orant Morrison, ghosts of days past shown themselves and at times were laid to rest. Places that were once dead were now gentrified. For better or worse. Time marches on. And so did we. Continue Reading > > >

A hummingbird flits at the feeder. Unaware that the rains of fall have come. The coolness of day changes green to orange red. Falling to earth like a shredded patchwork quilt. The flowers are few and nectar is rare, but those flying dynamos carry on. Such persistence. Such dedication to a singular effort.

The cats nuzzled together. Keeping warm through their union. The hummingbird persists. The cats unaware and uncaring of their industrious friend’s progress. They’ve had their fill. First eating. Then cleaning. Then sleep.

And here I sit. Friday mid-afternoon. The couch. My nest. Sleepless. How I wish I could be as industrious and relentless as that hummingbird. Or as unaware as said cats. But here I sit braced from pain. The pain of a wounded knee. It’s no allusion. No intimation. Just fact dressed in a black supportive shroud.

I was walking through the park one day. Well okay. Not so much a park, as my living room. And it was Continue Reading > > >