JoY Askew
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JoY Askew

Band Pop Singer/Songwriter

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"WE LIKE Joy Askew's The Pirate of Eel Pie"

Joy Askew is a minstrel for animal activists, regularly performing at animal related events. As a vegan, Joy's compassion for animals extends to her excellent new CD. In "Hip These Days" Joy sings, "In between your mouth and the plate is the most significant choice you're gonna make." With soulful songs that range from bright to melancholy, covering topics from advocacy to war to London's music scene in the 1970's, Joy has succeeded in creating a work that celebrates both music and activism. www.joyaskew.com - Satya Magazine


"A Thing of Joy"

I first saw Joy Askew twenty years ago as the beautiful, Big Eighties-haired, mini-dress wearing keyboard player in Laurie Anderson’s wonderful concept-and-concert movie Home of the Brave. So I was delighted when I got an e-mail from her asking for a review of her latest CD, The Pirate of Eel Pie.

I’m happy to report this transplanted Brit’s record is very fine, a wise, introspective, elegiac compilation of memories and rhythms from more than thirty years of being a professional musician. (She’s worked both as a solo and as a sidewoman for folks like Peter Gabriel, Joe Jackson and Jack Bruce.) She’s now a New Yorker, still quite beautiful (a thing of Joy is a beauty forever, apparently) as I found when we were able to get together for an interview in one of seven separate Starbucks on Seventh Avenue in New York. Our conversation ranged back to her first professional gig as a teenager back in Sixties London and up to the present day, which includes gigs the next five Wednesdays (starting April 25) upstairs at the Living Room in Manhattan.

Image courtesy of Mark Fogarty.
JOY ASKEW had a recent series of gigs at Joe's Pub in New York City.
Let’s start in the present, even though The Pirate of Eel Pie works somewhat as a memory play of her time in London all those years ago. The ”pirate” in question is British pirate radio, where cutting edge jocks broadcast from out in the water to get around the monopoly of the BBC. (I guess satellite radio might be considered a modern-day descendent). This particular one broadcast from a place called Eel Pie Island.

Askew had come to London as a teen from her home in industrial Newcastle to play with Paul Jones, late of the British Invasion band Manfred Mann (“Do Wah Diddy”) and fresh from a starring role in the movie Privilege. But she looked to America for her future, an America of freeform political protests, hippie freedom, and the legacy of Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets.

So the record has songs like “Jack Kerouac,” which can join others like Natalie Merchant’s “Hey, Jack Kerouac” in the pantheon of tributes to this pioneering American spirit. There’s a somber/funny elegy for a badboy boyfriend from her London days, “Jimmy’s Gone Now,” which combines sober life lessons learned with a sneaking admiration for a guy with sinister tattoos and a ready supply of Peruvian Army marching powder. (Askew charmingly told me she’s actually not sure the real-life Jimmy is dead, which adds another wry level on.) “Walk Under Waterfalls” is another elegy, this one for three departed musicians: John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Jeff Buckley.

There are other tunes that mine more current veins, but the retrospective ones speak most strongly to me. (I kind of wish the whole record had this theme, the way I wish John and Paul would have done a whole record from the energy which produced their greatest songs, “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane.”) The title tune, for instance, has a stateliness to it, a slow-rhythm riff that sweeps along like a tide coming in. Adding to its London-calling memory to me is that Askew’s vocals here somehow remind me of England’s greatest folk singer of the day, the never-to-be-forgotten Sandy Denny. During a live show, this would be the song where you’d stand up to applaud and think, wow, I’m glad I came tonight!

Askew finally did get to America, in 1982. A big Steely Dan fan, she was delighted that one of the first people she met over here was Donald Fagen. And she quickly lined up a year-long tour with Joe Jackson, who had just released Night and Day.

A big thrill for her in the Eighties was gigging with Jack Bruce, the bassist and vocalist of Cream. As a kid, Askew was one of the first members of Cream’s fan club (I just “friended” Jack’s page on MySpace, perhaps that’s a modern-day equivalent!), and in 1988 she played keyboards for him at Madison Square Garden. In addition, her father once played in a band with Graham Bond, whose Graham Bond Organisation counted Bruce and Cream drummer Ginger Baker as members.

But perhaps her best musical experience was with Laurie Anderson, who she remains friends with to this day. Askew confirmed my memory that the gorgeous Home of the Brave was filmed in a little theater across the Hudson River in Union City, NJ with sidemen like guitarist Adrian Belew, who was filmed playing a rubber-necked guitar in one of the film’s many playful moments.

In the 1990s, Askew gigged with Peter Gabriel on his Us tour. The two met in an unlikely way, through a joint interest in Scrabble! And while touring with Gabriel, Askew wrote a suite of songs that became the center of her first solo album, 1996’s Tender City. Eel Pie is her sixth.

The Eel Pie predecessor she speaks of with the most energy is called Echo, in which seven jazz standards are deconstructed. Done after she fell in love with the drum-and-bass style, and with the legacy of Miles Davis in mind, (she loves blues and jazz) she recorded this electronica work with Takuya Nakamura.

Eel Pie took four years to complete, with sessions in San Francisco, Woodstock, and in her own New York City home studio, where she complements her performing and recording careers with vocal, songwriting and piano teaching, as well as producing other acts. (She is also an animal activist.) Bonnie Raitt drummer Rickey Fataar was her co-producer in San Francisco, and drummer Jerry Marotta in Woodstock. (Her websites are www.joyaskew.com and www.myspace.com/joyaskew)

We compared enthusiasms for Miles (she saw him play live during the Jack Johnson days), and she grabbed onto something I said about Dylan and Miles being similar in being willing to play bad music along with their great stuff to make a statement about her future musical aspirations.

“I think I haven’t been bad enough,” she said. “I feel I’ve got a lot to say. I need to get out there and say it.” - Boomer Box


"Put Some Joy In your Life!"

Put some Joy in your life!

Joy Askew comes to the Colony this Sunday

“Hey Spider- I do remember your review of Tender City!”
Wow! I wrote that review of Joy Askew’s debut CD about ten years ago in the long defunct Hudson Valley Calendar. When my friend Judy Whitfield told me she booked Joy for this Sunday, February 18 at her Women in Music series at Woodstock’s Colony Café, I contacted Askew again and asked if she remembered me.
Joy is indeed a joy, one of my favorite musicians. If you’re wondering, she favors accenting the second syllable of Askew, as in the synonym for off-kilter. Joy is a musician’s musician. Ask Joe Jackson, Peter Gabriel, Quincy Jones, Laurie Anderson, Larry Klein, Larry Fast, Rodney Crowell, Adrian Belew, Jack Bruce and others with name recognition. Closer to home, Woodstockers Jules Shear, Tony Levin and Jerry Marotta have also worked with Askew
Since “Tender City,” Joy has released three more solo CDs (with a brand new fourth about to burst out). Her collaborative recording projects include “Echo, ”a sublime techno treatment of pop standards with jazz-dub-ambient sorcerer Takuya Nakamura, and “Words,” by New York City jazz guitarist and singer Leni Stern, another favorite of mine.
Askew grew up in Newcastle, the English town famous for coals and (as Elvis Costello reminded us) shipbuilding. At 14, inspired by British greats as diverse as Led Zeppelin, the Who, Cream, Hendrix, Christine Perfect (nee McVie), later of Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall and his brilliant guitarist Peter Green, Joy started playing and singing around town in a blues band with her brother Roger. In London, as lead singer with an all female rock band named Bitch, she discovered jazz. American players – among them Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, George Benson, Bill Evans and Buddy Rich – showed up on the London scene, and Askew sought them out.
When an opportunity came to tour America with “Eye to Eye,” a gorgeous-sounding sophisticated 80s jazz-rock duo produced by Gary Katz (Steely Dan’s producer), Askew seized it. Since then she’s been busy, staying under the mega-media radar but winning the hearts, minds and ears of the finest musicians, and the loyalty of mainstream-weary seekers of adventurous music.
Askew has Woodstock connections, and not only with other musicians. A dedicated animal rights advocate, Joy has been helping Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary managers Doug Abel and Jenny Brown, playing two fund-raisers at the sanctuary last year.
Askew describes her upcoming Sunday performance as “an 'unplugged' version of my set, with me playing piano and guitar,” joined by singer-percussionist Amanda Homi from NYC and two singers – Kirsti Gholson and Bruce Milner – from the 9-voice, Woodstock-based singing group Prana. Joy’s new CD, “Pirates of Eel Pie,” with Rutles’ drummer Richie Fattar, Jerry Marotta and Scott Petito, may be ready in time for sale at Sunday’s performance. There’s a $10 door charge and the show starts at 7. ++ - Woodstock Times


Discography

"Tender City" - 1996 BMG
"Gorgeous Creature" - 1997
"When" - 1998 movie soundtrack
"The Same Desperado" -2000
"Echo" -2002 Newline Records USA
"The Pirate of Eel Pie" - released March 2007
tracks from Tender City and Echo received airplay. Echo reached top ten on the West coast for 5 weeks and is still streaming on radio Paradise.

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Bio

When I first came to the USA from England I spent 10 years playing keys and singing with such Luminaries as Peter Gabriel, Joe Jackson, Jack Bruce and performance artist Laurie Anderson and I am in her film "Home of The Brave". Gathering a lot of inspiration from these wonderful artists I have spent the last 10 years writing and releasing 6 albums and playing with various different lineups. "Tender City" was my first release on Private Music and 6 years later I took a left turn and together with Japanese electronics wiz takuya Nakamura released a downtempo jazz CD on the Newline Records label titled Echo.
My current band is NewYorkCity's finest! The bassist Dave also plays in popular band Ween and brings a big perspective to the sound. Drummer Brian Wolfe excels and roars on the energy bursting songs as "War (why don't you go home)" and "Hip These Days".