Joel Jerome to release solo album

JOEL JEROME (OF DIOS) RELEASING SOLO ALBUM, 'WHEN BECK WAS COOL', AN HOMAGE TO BECK'S EARLY WORK, APRIL 19TH THROUGH FUTURE FARMER RECORDINGS

If we are lucky, there are a few episodes in all our lives where a work of art not only makes us pause and reflect, but actually transforms us. And they don't always happen in a museum or concert hall. In 1994, Joel Jerome was driving to a friend's house, flipping through FM stations. He tuned into Los Angeles' KXLU just as the chorus of Beck's "Pay No Mind" kicked in, and had one of those rare aesthetic epiphanies.

Jerome had heard the buzz about Beck Hansen and his left-field hit "Loser." But this? This was something completely unexpected. "I thought, This is really good… and strange," recalls Jerome. "I hadn't heard acoustic guitar, with a band, in a modern context, on the radio in such a long time." "Pay No Mind" struck him as the complete antithesis to grunge and corporate alt-rock, a folksy little ditty with oddball lyrics and a delivery that suggested its author might've inhaled a heady cloud of paint fumes before hitting "record."

Jerome sought out all three of Beck's official 1994 albums—Mellow Gold, One Foot in the Grave, and Stereopathetic Soulmanure—as well as his early cassette releases and non-LP singles. He listened to them fervently, internalizing them. Up to that point, the Beatles had been young Joel's biggest musical influence. Now the Fab Four had serious competition. "Beck was a huge building block for me as far as song writing. I loved how laidback and anything-goes that music is." Jerome's emerging musical voice was already unconventional yet catchy, but Beck inspired him to get "weirder and weirder" while retaining a pop sensibility.

It wasn't just the music that inspired Jerome, either. "There was his whole history, this mythology that was really cool. He'd traveled here and there, making music wherever he could." In the midst of a frantic bidding war, Beck fought hard to retain creative freedom. And he didn't sit around waiting for clubs to offer proper bookings; he'd just appear at a show and play between other bands. "All that was very punk rock to me. I really dug that attitude."

Fast forward ahead 15 years. Joel Jerome has cemented his own humble reputation fronting the trippy Hawthorne, CA rock combo Dios, whose 2004 self-titled debut earned raves from Pitchfork for making California rock seem "a little less predictable." Jerome was crashing in a house in San Pedro, and gearing up to begin writing the fourth Dios full-length. When a roommate moved out, Joel transformed an upstairs bedroom into a home studio. To get his creative juices flowing, he would warm up playing the early Beck songs he'd learned, loved, and performed in public for years, and fiddle around with his recording equipment as he went.

"Before I knew it, I had four or five Beck songs I'd done in a week. And I thought, Man, I should just do a dozen of these, and put them out somehow." His brother Kevin dropped by and played drums on some tracks, and individual members of Dios popped in and out. Working at home allowed the recordings to remain loose and informal. Over the course of autumn and winter 2009, Jerome continued to let his take on Beck's early catalog unfurl. When the time rolled around to leave the house in San Pedro, and relinquish his home studio, he'd recorded more than enough material for a full-length.

The resulting solo album, When Beck Was Cool, is a remarkable marriage of a gifted interpreter with inspiring material. You don't need to know the original versions to appreciate Jerome interpretations, which range from flirtatious forays into country-rock ("Got No Mind") to a mélange of string and woodwind timbres, pianos and whistling ("Girl Dreams") that evokes his beloved Beatles as much as Beck. Indeed, many listeners may be discovering these songs for the first time. Aside from the epic "Blackhole," which closes out the disc—just as it did Mellow Gold—the originals aren't found on Beck's major label albums. The demented, socio-political "MTV Makes Me Wanna Smoke Crack" comes from an über-rare 1993 split-single. The hazy, multi-layered "Cyanide Breathmint" was plucked from K Records' One Foot in the Grave, while the quasi-instrumental "Ozzy," which Jerome imparts with a malevolent, Southern Rock crunch, began life on Stereopathetic Soulmanure. And unless you own copies of early tape-only oddities like Don't Get Bent Out of Shape and Beck, Like the Beer, don't even pretend you've heard "Fume" before.

While Jerome isn't as passionate about Mr. Hansen's later oeuvre, he stresses that this album comes from a place of sincere admiration. "Ultimately this is an homage. I'm not making fun of the music, because this is some of the best stuff I've ever heard." In the mid-'90s, Beck was the epitome of musical cool to Jerome, and that's the primary thrust of the title. "I know it's a little snarky," he admits, "but I have a feeling Beck would laugh it off and think it's funny. He certainly would've appreciated it back in the day. And if you understand him or his music, you'll get that."

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/joeljeromemusicpage
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/joeljeromemusic
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/552406423