Joe Kaplow is a New Jersey-born, Santa Cruz, CA-based singer.songwriter and musician. Before his music career got serious he had to make a serious decision: Take over his parents’ thoroughbred fam in New Jersey or pursue music in California and relinquish the family home to sale. And although on occasion, he wonders if he could have made a music career work, if he had stayed on his parents farm, he’s happy where he is.
The New Jersey-born, California-based artist’s work is deeply inspired and informed by his life’s moments — “smelling 4 acres of freshly cut grass, watching the steam from a horse’s breath in the early morning, finally holding the neck of my guitar after holding bridles and worn wooden handles all day,” he says. “And then — smelling 4000 acres of freshly burnt wildfire, watching the steam from the Pacific Ocean’s breath in the early morning, finally holding the neck of my guitar after holding the worn steering wheel of the tour van all day.”
Kaplow’s third album Posh, Poodle, Krystal and Toe is slated for a May 17, 2024 release through Fluff and Gravy Records. Deriving its title, appropriately enough, after his bandmates’ nicknames, the album is more of a cohesive “band” statement than his previously self-recorded material. Most of the album’s tracks were cut over a five-day span, performed live at Enterprise, OR‘s OK Theater with engineer Bart Budwig.
The album’s songs were learned and workshopped on the spot, capturing very honest, energetic “fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants” moments and takes Kaplow’s honest and raw songwriting style and propels it forward with spontaneous collaboration and undeniable rhythm.
Posh, Poodle, Krystal and Toe‘s latest single “Rock and Roll” is a slow-burning and meditative track anchored in the lived-in, bitterly harsh and shitty realties of being a struggling musician/artist/writer/creative featuring a deceptively simple arrangement of strummed and plucked, acoustic twang, easy-going backbeat paired with Kaplow’s achingly plaintive wail. The song seems to ask the question — “when does the struggle to make it work get too overwhelming to continue?” While sounding a bit like a heartbroken S/T-era The Band, the song is inspired by an actual experience while on tour:
“We had a bad show. Overall, it wasn’t a very good tour,” Kaplow explains. “After playing a show to three people in the back corner of some bar in San Diego that was decorated more appropriately for a football game than a concert, our drummer had a breakdown. On the sidewalk outside the venue he began to cry. Then his despair turned to rage, screaming at me how foolish I was for booking this show and booking the tour, how he had to take time off work and lost money, how he spent 2 weeks away from his girlfriend who was now questioning dating a musician, and how he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since tour began. I thought to myself, ‘I know, isn’t it great?’ ‘Rock and Roll’ is a song about how it feels to be a touring musician before you get the tour bus. It’s hard. The late Robbie Robertson of The Band said, ‘It’s a goddamn impossible way of life.’ ”
Directed by Ben Judkins and Joe Kaplow, filmed by Ben Judkins and edited by Rob Armenti, the accompanying video for “Rock and Roll” was shot on a grainy Super 8 and follows Kaplow on tour through California. While there are moments of sublime beauty, pride and goofy joy, there’s also a sense of struggle and hard-won experience throughout.