Joe Augustin
Joe Augustin is a blues-folk guitarist and singer/songwriter also known as Achilles Tenderloin. We discuss his plans for a new album and what has been keeping him occupied during the epidemic.
What have you been up to?
I haven’t been on tour. That was different than what I had planned. I have been leaning more heavily on selling my artwork prints and doing some custom framing…
What’s your split? Like musician to artist do you think?
Normally it’s mostly music and sound engineering and promoting and all that kind of stuff. The music side of things is much bigger most of the time. I also have a couple part-time jobs when it’s not pandemic…
Here's Howlin' at the Earth, a previously unreleased track from my recording sessions at Greg Weisheit's Lazy Wide World Studios in the summer of 2017. The song features Aaron Nell on trumpet.
I picked this one partly because it speaks to the current and popular theme of isolation—spirit of the season!
You said you had tours planned before COVID hit. Was what you had to cancel pretty extensive?
For me it was, but compared to some friends of mine, it was going to be sparse. Almost kind-of a work vacation kind of a thing. I was going to be in Atlanta and northern Florida on one leg. Then out in Baltimore, New Jersey, and Virginia. In May I was going to be up in Michigan. Then New York, that kind of thing.
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I have been recording a little bit… I’m putting together some demos for a recording engineer friend of mine in Dayton, Ohio, Patrick Himes. He has a studio called Reel Love Recording. In late July I’m supposed to start tracking with him or at least start sitting down with him to figure out what we’re going to do. I’ve been looking forward to that since long before the pandemic.
That’s cool!
I am glad that I’ve had this time to sort-of think about it more and prepare more instead of just dive right in, half baked.
Instead of touring, you’ve had much more time to focus on this project.
Yeah! That’s been really cool to have REAL practice and writing time. Typically my practice is on stage. I might dedicate some special practice time if I have a longer gig coming up that I need to bring some other stuff back into rotation.
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Since you’ve had more time to prepare material for this recording session, have you been able to go deeper into it than you would have otherwise? Are you excited by what you’re coming up with?
Absolutely. It’s inspired me to come up with a couple of new songs. There’s always a tension with that because when you plan to make a new album, most of the time, at least for me, I already know what I want to have on it. And how I want it to fit together. So if you start writing new songs when you’re in the middle of that process the question is always, “Do I adapt the album to bring in this new material or do I just write it and use it on something else later?” But I don’t put out new records every year, like a lot of people do. So it’s a question of do I want to sit on this song for another two or three years.
So you’ve been able to explore things?
Yeah! I’ve been able to explore and I’ve had time to make some of those changes and adaptations.
Has it turned into a different record than you were first thinking of?
A little bit. It was already kind of a new direction for me anyway. Last Fall, was it last Fall or the Fall before? I’m losing track of even the before pandemic time now. I played a show in October that was part charity auction. There was a guitar that my friend built as part of the auction. Long story short, I ended up with this electric guitar. And I haven’t played electric guitar for twenty years.
And your friend built the electric guitar?
Yeah! I was really excited to have this guitar. Took it home and before that I only knew that it looked really cool. I had never heard any of the guitars that he built played. But it sounded really nice too. Now I’m playing electric guitar, which I have not done since I was playing with arguably OK punk bands when I was a teenager and early twenties person.
That’s a great story. Was the new album originally going to be an electric record? Or was that since you acquired the guitar?
By the time I talked to Patrick, I already knew it was going to have more electric stuff on it.
Do you approach music writing differently when it’s electric versus acoustic?
A little bit. But I think the main difference is the new songs I’m writing, I’m writing with an eye to recording. Normally the thought of recording a song is so far off, because I don’t record all the time. So the writing process is a little more independent of that. Now it’s different because I’ll sit down and maybe before the song is really done, I’ll sit down and come up with a drum beat for it. Or maybe put together some bass lines. It’s interesting to have that closer to the front of the process. Instead of just guitar and vocals. Most of my stuff is just guitar/vocal and then I have a multi-instrumentalist friend, Aaron Nell, who will jump in with me on trumpet and violin and all that. He does that with a very little direction from me. I trust him to always come up with something good on his own…
You seem to know a lot of musicians around in the area.
Yeah! It’s a nice by product of all my driving around and playing in all these other cities, I’m meeting musicians all the time. Then when I come home in the off-season of my touring and I’m booking and organizing and promoting shows around here, I have this huge network of regional and sometimes national musicians that I can call on to help me spice things up a little bit…
That’s cool, creating cool opportunities for each other.
Yeah! I have a series called Lyricists’ Corner. Which is a songwriter in-the-round format. Where I have three or four musicians come in and they all do original stuff and they just take turns. Kind of a round robin kind of thing. That’s been pretty steady for about five or six years now.
Have you taken any of these shows online since the pandemic?
A little bit. I had one online Lyricists’ Corner in April. And I put together an online concert for Earlham College for their big annual fundraiser featuring alumni musicians. That was a lot of fun. I think they set a fundraising record with that. I did a four or five hour charity event too for the Dayton Food Bank. My friend Kevin Milner, out of Dayton, and I have an organization called SONA: Society Of Neutral Angels we put together concerts for charitable causes. That one went pretty well too.
Most of what you’ve been organizing has been for charity.
Yeah. The Lyricists’ Corner was more to put money in the pockets of the musicians. They would give me their Venmo or Paypal.
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Joe organized two concert series in Elstro Plaza in Richmond, Indiana. The concerts run July through the end of September. “It’s a healthy mixture of local acts and people that I’ve met along my travels.”
Tuesdays from 5p-7p is the Twilight Market, farmers market and concert.
Wednesdays from 11a-1p is Eat Local Wednesdays, attendees are encouraged to get take out from a local restaurant and enjoy the concert.