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We’ve been keeping a watchful eye on Jersey-born indie rocker Joe P since he began to grace the internet with his backyard performances and livestream production breakdowns back in 2021. He’s built a faithful community who yearn for an inside look at the grit of a DIY musician’s mindset with the finesse of a lifelong producer and artist. Now, having just released his debut album, Garden State Vampire, we wanted to get the scoop from Joe about the album’s unorthodox writing process, the story behind the title, and his inspirational outlook on being a musician who’s “making it.” 

OnesToWatch: Hey Joe, congrats on Garden State Vampire!

Joe P: Thank you, thank you, excited to chat about it. 

How are you feeling about everything? You have “Lily” coming out just before the album release, and then everything is out there for the world.

I'm excited for that one because it's the most folky kind of one I've ever put out. Where it's like, I've always done that. Once I do the radio shows, or if I were to do a record store performance, it all sounds like that. It just naturally comes off that way. But for “Lily,” I was like, I'm not going to try to dress this one up, I'm just going to treat it for what it is. And it was such a quick, 10-minute-long writing process. 

I was curious if Lily was actually a real person, too. 

Oh yeah, she's real. she's Emily’s sister. It keeps going down Emily’s family tree, haha. 

I know there's no “Emily Can't Sing” on this record! 

I know Emily can finally sing. I just feel like the two that happened on the previous records were just perfectly like, spontaneous. Now, she knows. Ah, and there are enough women's names on the album that I was like, I can't do another. It's like, Lily, Violet, “She's So Good,” "She Got Me….”

Oh, I didn’t put that together yet! 

Yeah, I didn't know that until it was over. I was like, Oh, wow, yeah, my bad.

You mentioned that “Lily" is kind of folkier. I do feel like you get this spectrum of genres on Garden State Vampire, where you're tapping into a lot of different sounds compared to previous records. 

Yeah, it's kind of all over. I think it's always how I'm going to do it. I don't know if I've ever made it consistent for a whole album. To say, “Okay, I’m only doing this folk thing," or “I'm only doing the crazy fast rock thing” or whatever. I think when a song comes out of me, I'm just like, “What do you want?” And then I just listen to that as long as I can. And then, I just look up and I'm done. I never have too much of a thought about it, right?

I mean, that's the beauty of self-producing, too, I feel like you can really explore whatever lends itself to the song. 

Yeah, then if anyone's like, "Oh, this song doesn't connect to this song,” I'm kind of like, yeah, but I still made it. You know? I didn't feel like playing the drums that day I made “Lily,” so I did it more just acoustic, but I kind of like that the music is more of a reflection of me as an artist and creator. 

It reflects the sort of era of making music that you're in and how it can change day to day. 

Exactly. Why stifle it? And no one cares. If you make a good song, it really doesn't matter, you made a good song. That’s all I'm trying to do.

What kind of music were you into while you were making Garden State Vampire?

Hmm, I was really into Portishead, I went from Radiohead to Portishead. Not that it sounds like that at all. Honestly, I wasn't listening too much because I finished a lot of the album in the last four weeks. It came out the way I've treated everything else in my life. Like a school project, I know the due date well in advance, but I do the best work at the last minute, right? So I was down here in this basement grinding, not knowing what time it was, for like three or four weeks. And it was just like everything to me. I really loved it. I mean, it took a lot out of me, but I think I really loved doing it that way.

I just became this weird creature. Everything that happened at all in my life, I was hypersensitive to it, because I was looking at so much lyrical content and inspiration. So I literally didn't have time to listen to music, really, because a lot of the final steps revolved around more “life” inspiration.

I see, so you feel like you ended up finding inspiration from different things for this album?

Yeah, I think I was taking inspiration from things that you maybe wouldn't have in other cases. Like, you have a quick phone call with someone, and to them, they're just on the phone with you. But here's me, hanging up and thinking, Wow, there's so much to take from that conversation, you know? It was just a lot of human interactions. “Lily” is a good reflection of that, because I wrote it during that period of those four weeks. After hearing about something that happened with Lily, I had one of those moments where, like you hit a good 4 a.m., you're writing a song, and like, it almost chokes you up, you know? It was a lot of that during this writing process, like a sit at the piano while I'm waiting for water to boil. And I’m not choosing to be inspired, it's just coming at me.

That's a cool spot to be in for your second album, too, especially because your first one is made up of some songs that you re-configured from Deal Casino. And now most of these are fresh off the press. “Birthday Baby,” though, that one the people have been waiting on for years. How has the response to that song been? 

Yeah, that was insane. People are stoked it’s finally out. That was like the same thing, though, where I had a brief moment where I wrote that first verse and posted it, and suddenly everyone was loving it. But because I didn’t finish it at that moment, I couldn't get that feeling back. I said, if I'm going to finish this, I want it to match whatever that feeling was.

Well, those feelings got some really cool songs from you. I loved “Nothing At All,” the closing track. That one was a big standout to me. I think I’m projecting in my interpretation of it, but I hear so many relatable points for musicians and creatives struggling with their lifestyles, throughout the entire album as well. 

That’s an interesting one. “Nothing At All” started in a co-write thing, when I went to this barn in New York. It was this estate of the Mumford and Sons people – Clairo was there, Maggie Rogers was there, all these people. It was this collective 20-25 people in different rooms, writing different songs, and “Nothing At All” just started coming together in one of these rooms. A lot of the lyrics happened in NY, it kind of had a country song mentality. And then I went home and turned it into this dark thing. What you hear in the final recording is actually a composite of when I opened three versions of the song on my computer the one from upstate New York, a slower one, and then a new one that I made at home—and just started combining them into what you hear now. 

But yeah, that’s maybe my favorite song, which is interesting because it closes the album. It was hard picking out the order. Because making an album now, it's not like 1970, where you assume everyone's going to listen to this all the way through. Literally the most popular albums in the world, if you look at the streams as you go down, they just get less and less. But I'm going to just stay strong and do it like an album properly.

I think people are coming back around to albums where we're starting to appreciate them again. The singles have been doing incredible though, “She Got Me” is one that totally caught me off guard. Especially with that music video, too.

Yeah! I like “She Got Me” because it sounds like when you first start playing music, like, you just play and have fun and don't think about anything, and you just go. I really wanted to have a song on the album that has that spirit to it.

It's so great. And last time, we talked about your horror movie short film, and now for “She Got Me,” you’ve created this thriller, fight scene music video. Where did that come from?

It was just this idea me and Tony had, who does all my videos and plays bass on tour. We just always had this idea of having a video where a woman fights all these dudes, Kill Bill style. It was so much fun, there were stunt coordinators and people making sure no one like, got stabbed or whatever. It was the first video I ever did where, like, I didn't have to do anything other than play. It was wild for that to sink in.

I think at heart you're always gonna be that 14-year-old DIY musician who has the urge to do everything.

Yeah, those moments where all the stuff that I'm always working for hits and it happens, it’s crazy. Like pulling up to a show in the middle of nowhere and it's sold out or there's a ton of people. That's why I'm doing this, that's why I work so hard at this, is to get that eventually. I got really good at the working. Now, I’ve never done the thing that you actually work for. 

It's like learning to accept the payoff.

Yes, yeah. I'm lucky that I love the work, because that's the majority of it. Sometimes it’s being stuck in an airport for two days because your flight to a show got delayed and then you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere. You know, those things, you have to love those. Or else the parts where it's a sold-out show or people are helping you on a music video set, they aren't really gonna matter. It's not gonna hit the same way. 

And something about you is that you're often stuck in an airport. 

Dude, yeah. My biggest fear is flying. And then my solo project happened and now I'm the person who gives advice to people about getting TSA pre-check. But I went from like, never flying, and everyone’s telling me it’s no big deal. And then I do it and of course my flights get delayed like 17 times. Every time I go to the airport, there's so many issues. And people are like, Joe's back, stuck at the airport again! 

Didn’t a volcano erupt and delay your flight one time? 

Yeah, Mexico. We ate food right next to the gate because everything was in Spanish and we weren’t gonna understand the announcements, so we figured we’d just be close. We took our eyes off of it and they changed the gate. Then, we're sprinting full speed in the airport and we missed it. The next one was at 6 a.m, and when it rolls around, a volcano erupts. So every flight’s canceled and I have a festival to play at. So we decide to drive five hours across Mexico during an active volcanic eruption. They let us play the second day of the festival instead, and it was great. But the universe is so weird, somehow I became this travel guy.

You're heading back out on tour again, right, starting at Sea Hear Now in September?  

Yes, it’s a pretty long run. We’re finishing up at the Stone Pony on December 13, which is great, we’re doing the Hometown show. I love the hometown thing, it’s also so wild. It's like, my aunt and uncle are there, and then there’s also someone who drove 10 hours and is like, crying. And how do you manage that? Like your aunt that you haven't seen in a while wants to buy all your merch and I’m trying to talk to the person who drove 10 hours, and then there’s dudes from high school in the corner like, let's go to a bar! And it's just the weirdest reunion ever. 

Haha my mother will be at the hometown show, so I will tell her to not swarm you. 

No, she’s good, she’s good. Moms are the best. 

Speaking of hometowns, why did you decide to go with Garden State Vampire as the name for this album? 

It's named after the lyric in “Guilt Hole.” It really just summed up everything I'd been doing. Driving from my place in Jersey to the Atlantic Records studios all the time—like that Sopranos opening credits drive—you see all those landmarks, the factories and stuff. I was going to sleep at 6 a..m and waking up in the middle of the day or whatever to go to the studio. So I literally was on the opposite schedule of everyone else. And it just made sense.

Well, I'm so stoked for it to be out in the world. If Garden State Vampire was a candle, what scent it would be? 

Like Newark. No, not that. It’s one of those candles that only smells good once it's actually lit up. You don't really like how it smells when it's just sitting there and someone holds it up to your nose, right? But when you light it, 30 minutes later, it's like a nice room to walk into. But you wouldn't have known right away. 

Joe P's Garden State Vampire is available now.