Joe Lima
Joe Lima is sipping a cup of coffee and trying to remember where he was the first time he ever heard Hank Williams, Sr. "My great-grandfather owned a country store on a corner on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I remember being barefoot on well-worn wooden floors, the scent of ginger snaps...there was an enormous jar of dill pickles, a freezer case full of ice cream sandwiches. No cash register, they'd record all transactions in pencil. At night you could hear a train whistle...there was a transistor radio on the counter. I don't think I was even five years old. I was over there early one evening having an ice cream sandwich when this voice came over that radio singing 'I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You.' I was so floored by that song, my mother couldn't get me to stop crying for that poor lonesome s.o.b. You know, hearing Hank Williams for the first time actually wasn't a particularly happy experience. But I knew then that I had to be a musician."
Another deep early musical impression was the music of his emigre father's native Cuba. "I remember my parents would have these parties, and all these Cubans would come over to our house. They'd play their old records, and the music seemed like it was going to burn the house down. Beny More, Orquesta Aragon...it was wild, seductive."
Joe grew up in Baton Rouge and at seventeen set out for college in New Orleans. It was there that Joe began to gradually awaken to the astonishing diversity of American popular music in all its forms. "New Orleans is a place where a piano player might play a jazz standard one moment, and a down-and-dirty blues the next. In New Orleans, it's all just music."
One sleepy evening, Joe schlepped his acoustic guitar down to the Penny Post Coffeehouse (now the Neutral Ground) and played at their open mike."I played some Buddy Holly tunes, some Everly Brothers tunes. I think I recall mangling Elvis' version of 'Mystery Train' pretty spectacularly. And a Hank tune, of course, 'I Saw The Light.' That was the beginning of my really starting to find my place, musically, banging on an acoustic guitar in a coffeehouse." It was also in New Orleans that Joe started writing original songs, which he gradually began integrating into his act, phasing out most of the covers.
Joe has many musical loves, and his latest CD, titled simply, "Joe Lima" reflects that, encompassing the full range of his tastes and talents, with original tunes ranging from the Cubano-Hawaiian "Seven Sacred Pools" to the tongue-in-cheek twang of "99-Cent Jesus," with nods to swamp-pop and even bossa nova. However, in his able hands, it emerges as a seamless whole that, while defying narrow genre stereotypes, fits squarely into the folk tradition.
Joe finishes his coffee. "But I tell you one thing. No matter what the style, genre, whatever, ultimately what matters is the song. Hank taught me that."
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