Welcome to a brand new feature where we sit down and talk to bands and artists about their latest albums to find out all about it. Today we speak to the musician Joey Wit about the album Rose Gold.

Hello nice to meet you, tell us about yourself!

Hello! I’m Joey Wit, a singer/songwriter and touring artist from New England in the United States. I’ll be touring the UK, Ireland, and Iceland this September supporting my new record, Rose Gold! I’ve made the trip across the Atlantic several times now, most recently as the support act for Joel Hoekstra (Whitesnake, Trans-Siberian Orchestra) and Brandon Gibbs (Poison, Devil City Angels) on their acoustic tour last spring. I had originally been a professional baseball player here in the US, but injuries plagued my career. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as music had always been my passion, and I suddenly had an opportunity to throw all my energy into songwriting, performing and recording.

Tell us about the new album…

The new LP, Rose Gold, is a collection of 10 songs, the majority of which were written on the Connecticut shoreline in around 2019 and 2020. It had actually been quite an interesting couple of years from a personal standpoint as well as lots of obvious changes to the world we all live in. Having that time to sit, think, structure and craft the songs was quite beneficial to this record. I knew what I wanted to do with it and how to execute it prior to recording. From a headspace perspective, I’d say I was actually quite patient rather than just trying to get the songs out. I was trying to really nail what I heard in my head and fine tune the lyrics, find the perfect words and chord changes, and instrument choices. 

These songs sort of felt like I found myself as a songwriter from a confidence standpoint and decision-making standpoint in the studio. There was a willingness and eagerness to explore other avenues. In the same way I didn’t just rely on the traditional ‘verse chorus verse’ method of song writing for all of the numbers, I didn’t necessarily rely on traditional studio techniques either. We didn’t just try and paint a picture, rather we sketched it out first in black-and-white and then found the appropriate shades of colour to fill it in. As a whole, I think it showcases everything from the traditional song writing elements, a sort of pop sensibility, a couple heartfelt ballads, and several new unexpected movements!

Favourite track in new album and why?

Y’know, it changes! Gearing up for the tour, putting together the set, and going over parts sort gave me a chance to listen to each song with a fresh perspective. I really love “Fire Pilot,” the recording of this song was just so much fun, we definitely challenged ourselves. When we play that number live it’s always great to see a first time audience member’s reaction, it sort of keeps ya on your toes, like where is this tune going to go next! The sudden changes and emotional push/pull of that song, along with “Fake Paper,” are a bright spot on the album for me!

Tell us a bit about the recording process, was it fun to do?

Oh my goodness it was the most fun! I had the best team a guy could ask for to make this record. It was done completely analog to 2-inch 24-track tape. No pro tools or logic, 100 percent old school, the way my favourite records were made and my heroes recorded. We didn’t have a cut and paste or punch in edit option, everything you hear is a real performance by a human being captured to tape. 

I go back to when we first pressed record and were doing drum tracks. Matt Starr (Ace Frehley, Mr. Big) and I took one day to rehearse all the songs, we got back to the studio the next morning back in August 2021, and we just let it rip. No click just live energetic rock ‘n’ roll. These days that may seem crazy and extremely difficult to pull off to a lot of artists and producers, but it just felt so raw and real, proper rock n roll. I don’t think we could’ve made this record any other way. 

I think that those first few days really set the tone for what we were trying to accomplish. It seems like it was pretty effortless to execute, but looking back it was risky as hell. Matt paved the highway for us to drive down and from then on it became a matter of tone choices and best note choices when tracking the other instruments. I don’t remember a particularly bad moment or difficult moment during the recording process. It was an incredibly pleasant experience from day one until the final day in the studio. For this record, I definitely made a clear decision to include some instruments that we hadn’t used in prior sessions. The horn solo on “Fire Pilot,” the violin on “Storytelling,” different keyboard selections; even the harmony and backing vocals featured throughout the record felt fresh.

What inspired the album name?

A little man on a flaming pie came to me in a dream and said “the record shall be called Rose Gold” and so it is…this same little fella gave John Lennon ‘Beatles, with an A’, so there was no argument from me!

Tell us the idea behind the album cover?

Believe it or not I took the record cover photo! Yeah, so I was in Liverpool for a few days after a tour had wrapped up last year and found myself just bouncing around town on my own. I walked up to Hope Street, stopped into the Philharmonic Pub along with a couple other places, just taking some random photos as I went about. I don’t believe I had intended it to be a record cover at first, but I do remember snapping the shot and thinking it came out really nice and balanced. It was when I went back and we were looking for cover art that this one leaped at me, like there was no other option. It all seemed to strangely fit, the cover, record title and sonic content all seem to tell parts of the greater story!

What one of your songs on the new album do you think will be the most difficult to rehearse for a live audience?

So I had mentioned “Fire Pilot” and “Fake Paper” earlier as fun ones to play live, they have the most changes, but I think the band I really enjoy the challenge of precisely nailing those changes so those shouldn’t be too difficult in rehearsals. But we’ve got a brand new live band on this tour coming over from the States! 

So we’ll be across the Atlantic a couple days early to run the set and iron out the details, I think the excitement is far outweighing the challenges for everybody right now we’re all just buzzing for the first gig! Sometimes it’s the simplest songs that can present the biggest challenges, like having so much open space sometimes makes ya think about adding unnecessary notes, texture, or layers but I think we’re pretty tasteful in our decision making! 

We’ve also added a fifth member for this tour so no one will have to do a ton of the heavy lifting on their own! One of my best friends, Wesley Russell, lives in Liverpool and he’ll be playing a multi instrumentalist role on both guitar, keys, and backing vocals! There’s a couple songs we’ve added to the set that we’ve never played live as a band before, “Leave it To Me” and “Heavy Crown” so it will be really fun to see how those two come together during rehearsals. 

Playing live for and meeting new people on the road is probably my favourite part about this music adventure, the band we have in place are all top musicians and cannot wait to put on a great show!

Why should people listen to the album?

This record is as real and authentic as it gets. Everything from the vulnerable lyrical content to the instrument choices, to the method in which we recorded it, committing everything to tape, is so pure. My DNA is baked into it. I’m incredibly proud of it. I think there are pieces that will attract every kind of true active music listener, and I believe we’ve arranged them to tell a bigger story. Putting out LPs in the age of the single is not for the faint of heart, but I still believe in records like a storybook or journal, capturing a moment in time through this emotional sonic journey no one can really define yet somehow soundtrack our lives! 

There’s both a freshness and familiarity to this record that I really enjoy and feel listeners will as well. It’s new and challenging in the sense that I’ve never sought out to write songs based on what was popular at the time or tried to force certain topics into my songs to try and strike a particular public nerve. Being an original songwriter it always seemed more virtuous to write exactly what was in your heart. So I stick to being true to myself as a writer which I find really attractive in other artists as well. 

I think that authenticity shines through on the record and is really evident in some of the more metaphorical lyrics and the songs that take that progressive sonic twist! I hope that listeners will see and hear that realness, and they can take these songs, spend time with them, and make them their own.