I love music and I love to tell stories - so I guess it is inevitable that I wound up being a songwriter. Sometimes the story is bigger than the song and I tell stories between the songs. Other times the song captures something that I couldn't possibly explain in a million years.

I learned to play guitar because Mike Nesmith from The Monkees looked a lot less lame than those other guys who couldn't play an instrument and had to just stand there and sing. I also did it because I figured that I might as well have something accompanying me since I was going to stand there and sing either way. That, and to get girls to pay attention to me. It worked pretty well.

A few years ago I released a CD I called Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto. It fairly captured a lot of my feelings about summer and failed relationships - both of which rattle through my life on their own cycles. I've been slowly piecing together another record while threading my way through those warm afternoons and emotional icebergs.

There are usually some other folks onstage with me. I've had as many as ten people playing my music at the same time. Other times it is just me, a guitar and a stack of harmonicas. In either case I have been told that people connect to me and my message and that is what makes me keep doing it.




Joe Armstrong's music swaggers with an urban toughness at the same time that it swings with a rural gait reminiscent of Life's Rich Pageant- era REM, the Cowboy Junkies and Son Volt. On Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto, Armstrong has combined thick production, rambling arrangements, and kick-ass players to make a rough-and-tumble record that rattles with echoes of the salad days of college rock.

The overall effect of Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto is similar to that of a college road trip. It is breezy, both nostalgic and forward-looking, and it evokes long ribbons of highway, mountains, prairies, and not enough sleep. In short, it's excited and breathless, and Armstrong's introspective lyrics counter the aggressive Jayhawks punch of the band.

The record's strongest ballad, "Home," is a simple affair with glistening acoustic guitar, mournful accordion, and an appropriately Michael Stipe-influenced vocal performance. The song sounds as if it was created at the bottom of a very deep, very sad well. Although the record is dominated by sprawling, jangly rockers, "Home" sets the tone-thoughtful, bittersweet, and proficient.

- Performing Songwriter magazine

WXRT radio called Joe Armstrong an experience of "guitars that have a friendly, powerful and magical quality that make you want to listen."

home