Joe Piano is no longer an alter-ego for musician Jesse Weber-Owens of Louisville. It is now a band. They just released a new song called "Maybe Once" that delves into Jesse's struggles with addiction and mental illness. Jesse explains what inspired the song and how the band formed:
"It's such a good feeling for us to finally put this track out after sitting on it for so many years. Maybe Once was inspired by a phone call that I had a few years ago. I was talking to a close friend of mine, and in the conversation I told her that I had been doing heroin. While that's enough of a thing to write about, The other side of the song, and the true meaning to it I would say Is that when I had the conversation with her that day, I wasn’t acting like I thought it was a problem at all. It was like I dropped all that on her as if I was just telling her about my day, being really nonchalant about it with no wonder about how it made her feel.
It took some time to see that conversation through her perspective with my own eyes. eventually when I thought about it and saw myself from the outside, it hurt pretty bad, so I got writing pretty quick. It was still about a year after that conversation that I even wrote the song, but I quickly felt like I was onto something special with it. You’ll all be glad to know I've been clean for a good while now.
Beside our debut EP Wavering Dream, this track was one of the first recordings we ever did for the Joe Piano project, back in 2018. It was recorded when I started working closely in the studio with Evan Vicic, a Louisville Orchestra violist and producer.
My dear friend and oldest bandmate Jon Mueller who is also an LO player introduced us a few years back, and we’ve been working together since. Evan also produced and played on our first single, Deersinger back in 2019.
Joe Piano was a concept of myself I unintentionally created sometime during a long summer of indulging myself with delusions and drugs. I thought of it when I was writing a lot of music on keys, and with “Joe” as a nickname of mine, you can guess the rest. I was in bad shape with the schizophrenia side of things for a time where Joe Piano was almost like it was a character I would become. id walk around wearing shades 24/7, acting a certain way. I felt like I was some noir drifter character in an important book being written about somebody else, and that it was my duty to bust into the story, talking all the stream of consciousness nonsense like I would, and just look cool with my shades, and for that I would be clever.
To be transparent, this band was born based on an inflated, diluted version of myself, with my own rules of reality.
I did the solo thing as Joe Piano which was great for me for that time, but the more bandmates we had join, the less It felt like Joe Piano was a solo project anymore, and the more it felt like were just a regular old band. the way everybody is just as invested in the project as I am, made me feel wrong carrying the name for myself. So in a sense, the man died and the band was born.
Joe Piano is Jon Mueller on Viola, Jean-Christopher Gorce on bass, keys and horn, Alex Petri on Percussion, and me on guitar, keys, bass and vocals. We couldn’t have done any of this without Evan Vicic, he's the MVP of this release
This single is coming to you VIA Space Basement Records LLC, with a special bonus track. you can listen on all platforms now."
