COVER STORY .

Crying Rainbow Tears

Joe Jack Talcum channels the strange and the sad (for like five bands and counting).


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Published: Oct 22, 2008

On our walk to grab coffee at 30th Street, I ask Joe Genaro about the guitar he's carrying. Got a gig tonight or something?

Michael T. Regan

He smiles and shakes his head no. He's headed out to West Philly after the interview. Gonna jam with his buddy Justin. "We're trying to start a new band," he says. "But, y'know, we need some songs first."

Another band? Genaro, better known as Joe Jack Talcum, has no fewer than five active projects on his plate right now. First there's that string of Dead Milkmen reunion shows — Austin's Fun Fun Fun Fest in November, preceded by the very sold out warm-up gig at the First Unitarian Church this Sunday, and the "secret" also-sold-out Johnny Brenda's appearance the night before (under the pseudonym Les Enfants de Prague).

But Genaro is active playing sharp power-pop-punk keyboards in The Low Budgets, as well; he dabbles in absurdist home recording under the name The Cheesies; he tours with ukulele-core trio UkeBox; and he recently put out the first Joe Jack Talcum solo recordings in more than a decade (the Photographs from the Shoebox split with Philly's Mischief Brew).

"I'm kind of scatterbrained," he laughs. "I can't focus on any one thing for very long."

Another incongruous statement, since the material on his half of Shoebox seems the product of intense focus. Done up in a very sparse style, its minimal strums and harmonica chords are shaded with chilling piano and bottleneck slide.

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Yes, "chilling." This isn't quite the same guy who gave us "Let's Get the Baby High." He's still got that neurotic nasal warble, and the overarching Beat Happening vibe is undeniably punk, but his half of the split seems less snotty, more staid. Could be the older-wiser factor. Or maybe these songs sat around long enough to sprout profundity. "When I'm writing, I don't know what it's going to be for," Genaro says. "This was true even back in the Dead Milkmen days."

That band was cheeky and satirical by design. In the days of "Punk Rock Girl," what might have come of a song as sincere and somber as "Alcohol" from Shoebox? "You are my sweetheart, my one desire/ I gave you my heart, I gave you my liver/ I gave you my love/ and you took my pain."

"Joe and his many bands have been described as 'zany,'" says Mischief Brew's Erik Petersen. "Which is inarguably true. But people can sometimes miss the fact that there are some seriously sad moments in there."

In the early days, these lamentations of personal failure, unattainable love and loss were resigned to Genaro's myriad cassette tape projects — Jasper Thread, Butterfly Fairweather, Butterfly Joe. Today, engrossed listeners can download the old recordings en masse from his Web site (jacktalcum.com), or hear them when he plays out as an acoustic artist on tour with UkeBox, or The Low Budgets, or whoever.

"The problem is I have so much material already," says Genaro. "I've only touched the surface of what's available for my set. It doesn't seem like I have to write more songs."