Joseph Toper

BIO
Joseph Toper, a singer, songwriter and a devote believer in free thinking hails from Middletown, Connecticut. A quite town where the clouds seem to stand still over head and when the sun sets, all the freaks seem to come out. Toper started playing guitar at the late age of eighteen due to his strict religious upbringing. As soon as he picked up the guitar it started, just as his parents feared, he fell in love with almost every form of music and decided his role in this world was to be a musician. Toper has never received any formal training except for the occasional jam session with his friends. He plays guitar, piano, drums, and bass.
Toper did not start seriously writing material until 2009 when late one night in a drunken stupor he stumbled upon a video of the infamous Cat Stevens performing, live, one of his greats “Father and Son”. That one video opened Joseph’s eyes to a world of music unlike he had ever seen. After that he got together ten songs and recorded a self titled album in his parent’s boiler room. The album has generated a good amount of underground buzz as a ten track album consisting of songs ranging from love, his ongoing battle with drug addiction, and the point he tries to get across in almost every song, never being afraid to ask why.
The genre Toper falls under could be seen as acoustic, with the type of writing style that could be seen in the sixties and seventies, mixed with today’s modern alternative rock sound. Some early influences are Cat Stevens, John Lennon, Aaron Lewis (Staind), Shaun Morgan (Seether), The Eels, Hunter S. Thompson, and Kurt Cobain.
Toper has been known to play mostly coffee houses due to the close personal vibe which he tries to create for every show. His performance on stage can be seen as very emotional and heartfelt with a strong sense of feeling like he is at home, treating the audience like a family. He has played mostly shows at Javapalooza, a coffee house in his hometown and indie based venues such as The Space and in store venues like Border’s Books.
He is currently re-recording his first album in a professional studio and is also working on material for his sophomore album which should be released sometime in the spring. He hopes that with his second album, he will hit more nerves than ever before with an album that will force the world to look at itself and cringe at what it sees. Toper tries to express that he is not being judgmental by clearly identifying his own faults in songs like “User with a Gun” which takes the listener down into the life of an addict in a world of self loathing and fear for what he has become.
The name Joseph Toper was created as a stage name, Joseph being his middle name and Toper being a term used to refer to someone as a wandering homeless drunk, which by judging his song material, seems he has felt like most of his adult life. He’s always looking in the window, not understanding why people do the things they do, haunted by an ever resounding why that taps at the back of his head like a tuning fork. When Toper approaches writing a song he tries to do it in the same way an author approaches writing a novel, only, while an author has two or three hundred pages to express his or her ideas, a song writer has one or two pages to work with, with every line is his songs like a sledge hammer to one’s consciousness.
If you are interested and would like to contact Toper you can by visiting his web site at http://www.myspace.com/josephtoper.
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