Oh, goodness gracious. How much fun is this performance project of Joe Lies?! A nice swan song for Chicago, a city where my favorite talented, driven and awesome friends are those who are in functioning bands that build, dissipate and transform with associations, logic and common interest. From the moment I entered Chicago, music, music culture and those relationships that are built of familiarity and support have defined my experience here. Chicago, as it contorts and cries to redefine itself, has a constant.The bands that exist here. Bands require intense relationships. Chicago is a city built on intensity and looking forward to the next step. As I spent nine years traversing the non-profit world of interdisciplinary art and education, relief came with my musician friends who were doing the same thing. And our hours matched, and some gorgeous friendships were made. These friendships were beautiful and consistent enough to make Joe Lies an easy band/ performance project/ silly playground to pursue.
To tie Joe Lies into the body of my work as a performance artist is easy. It is as simple as association, much like the Femme Fatale project. There are clear parallels between the two. The femme fatale project put an archetype from a clear genre of horror into a human atmosphere, showcasing ritual, isolation, humor and scrutiny. Joe Lies takes that a step further- still playing with the archetype of a powerful and influential woman- this time taken from a silly 80's film(Say Anything)- and offering the next step. We are a band. We play out. We need to build an audience. It is a play on the pop culture and influence with which I am familiar, clearly, and an association with which I could easily find my musician friends to jump and say, "Yes! Let's play! That's fucking funny." And we can play, make obscure references, have much fun, and build. What a treat to simply to build and explore because we find a common joke and association amusing. Sometimes, there is nothing more simple nor pure than just that. So, with the grace of this, the play has been wonderful and fun.
This is the point of both the Femme Fatale project and Joe Lies. They are both exaggerated character studies of an archetype put in a painfully pedestrian frame. While the Femme Fatale Project focused on isolation, Joe Lies teases and offers isolation as an impetus to build association and community. Lyrics are literally pulled from journals of real circumstance and played with in presentation. We play as a band. and we play with a real relationship of a band, hopefully, joyfully, and based on our comfort, practice and kinship. We are a relationship. As every band is. As every association is. As every tortured journal entry that we discover and explore promises to be. We have a goal, set by an archetype, to fulfill. Brilliance and ridiculousness will ensue. And that is what it is. Hilarious, uncertain, honest, and done when it is done. The relationship remains. And we have 63 songs. All about pain. All about you.
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