"El Porto" In Stores Now! Joe Firstman

joephoto Joe Firstman bought an $18 cross-country Greyhound ticket from his home in North Carolina to Los Angeles, arriving with a beat-up guitar and head full of songs. He quickly found the big stage. It all happened quickly: first came the big Hollywood gigs, then the industry buzz, then the big deal with Atlantic Records and national tours with big rock stars like Sheryl Crow, Jewel, and Willie Nelson. There was ego and excess and beautiful ladies and music, music, music. Firstman wrote it all down and sang his songs like his life depended on it.

"In the songs of Joe Firstman, sensitive young men prowl the hills of Los Angeles, searching for fame and beauty, only to find self-destructive behavior and egos gone wild…” wrote Jim Farber in the New York Daily News. “While Hollywood's peaks and pitfalls have been prominently charted by songwriters from Don Henley, Stevie Nicks and Jackson Browne to Warren Zevon, Firstman aims to reinvent the milieu for his own generation."

When the world stopped spinning, he’d landed a regular gig as the bandleader on the “Last Call with Carson Daly” show. For four years, this was his university – playing and writing songs in whatever style the show’s musical guests played and learning how to engage a studio audience, day in and day out. That gig ended in early 2009. 
   The songs on “El Porto” aren’t country. But they are indeed songs that somehow take you to the country. They’ve got space and ease and generosity. They are simple songs, simply sung. It’s music that Big Daddy would have recognized, all warmth and wood and melody and flow. It’s the sound of somebody coming home: the songs of a man who has rambled far and wide and has come full circle back to where he started, a bit older, a little wiser, with a deeper appreciation for the simple things in life.