I’m so thankful to them… Please stop by and check it out! Feel free to join in the conversations there, to share your ideas, post your pix, and to just have fun with the music.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=97941022893&ref=nf

LOL. That sounded so serious. You’d think I have some big or important news.

Alas… Not today. Today was just a regular day. My angel had her first day of camp. She gets to play piano and dance and swim and do all sorts of wonderful and amazing stuff for the next seven weeks. I had lunch with my friend Marci from the band “Lucky 13″. We talked about life and music. We dined on Thai food and had a great time.

I connected with some friends (Hi Huckleberry!) and then spent time with my wife just chatting in our living room. The transition from school year to summer vacation is a really nice one. There have been lots of crazy busy days, weeks and months this past year. There will be plenty more ahead. But, today it was just nice to sit around and be in the space between spring’s exhale and summer’s inhale.

Portland Maine/Western Massachussettes This Week

For all of you New Englanders… I’ll be playing two solo shows with the lovely Jenee Halstead this week. The first will be in Portland Maine on Thursday, July 2nd at Port City Blue. Details are on the sidebar.

The second show is at the Mission in Pittsfield, MA. Show starts at 8pm and I’ll be bringing lots of new tunes to the table.

If you have any friends in those cities, please let ‘em know!

Canvas Returns as the Green Palate on July 9th in Cold Spring Harbor!

My buddy Adele at the Green Palate Experience (Formerly Canvas Magazine) has seriously busted her butt to find us a new home for our monthly open mic. I’m happy to announce that we’ll be taking the show to the Cold Spring Harbor Library and Environmental Center.

The folks there are very gracious and are allowing us to continue this wonderful community building event. I’m just so happy we have a home for everyone. The space is even bigger and they have a baby grand piano too!

I hope to see all of the talented locals make their way out on July 9th. The amazing RJ Cowdery is our feature. The snacks will be plentiful and the entertainment will be so fine.

How’re you doing? Drop me a note! Let me know how you’re doing!

I’ve been redesigning the website and am making some tweaks here. So, if things look a little funky over the next couple of days, just bear with me. We’ll have it smoothed out soon enough.

If you missed our interview and performance on WFUV’s Sunday Breakfast last Sunday, you can find it here:

http://main.str3am.com/wfuv-od/9125.asf

This will launch the program in your streaming media player. It’s an archive of the entire Sunday Breakfast program, hosted by John Platt. Our visit is broadcast during the last hour of the 3 hour program.

I don’t know if it will be up for long, so check it out soon!

Thanks for listening!

So many things are shifting and evolving. Before you know it, everything you counted on as true and solid has morphed into something completely new and unexpected. No matter how much we want to keep things the same, suddenly your daughter wants to wax her eyebrows, you get grey nose hairs, and your wife becomes a hot biker chick who rides off into the rising sun.

When I finished “Traveling Salesman”, I wondered if there were any more songs coming. I’ve spoken with many artists about this. We sometimes fear that the last song we wrote is the last song we’re going to get.

But that’s not the case. I’m writing a lot and am starting to own the fact that this is what I do. “Hey Joe, what do you do?” people ask. To which I now respond, “I’m a songwriter and I write songs!”

For a long time I couldn’t say that. It was too weird. But, not any more.

These new songs are different. But, more like an evolution - rather than a departure from the songs on “Traveling Salesman”.

I’m starting to see the stories of my life, and lives of people around me, bubbling up. Sometimes I find myself sensoring or editing out pieces that might be upsetting… That’s when I stop and breathe, and remember to let the song be as it wants to be.

Two Quick Reminders!

Tune into WFUV (90.7fm in metro NY) and www.wfuv.org on Sunday, June 7th, when we join John Platt as his in-studio guests for “Sunday Breakfast”. The show starts at 8am, and our segment airs from 10am-11am.

Once you’ve had your whistle-whetted, don’t forget to come to NYC’s Living Room on Tuesday, June 9th (7pm) where we will join John Platt once again for “On Your Radar”. This is going to be a great show.

We kick it off at 7pm, followed by Sometymes Why (the Neotrad trio of: Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still), Ruthy Unger Merenda (The Mammals, Mike and Ruthy), and Kristin Andreassen (Uncle Earl), and the show is wrapped up by Earl Pickens (“Heaps of fun and a whole lot of trouble.”).

Interviews and special surprise guests will be plentiful! Check out my tour page at www.joeiadanza.com/tour for all of the details.

Canvas…

One last thing… I’ve hosted the worlds most wonderful open stage for Canvas Magazine for over a year and a half. It has been a wonderful ride and I’m so grateful to have been part of creating a safe space for people to share their art.

Last month Canvas announced they would cease publication, and so June 11th will be our last Canvas open mic in their space. We are working together to figure out if and how we can transition it to another location.

If you’re in the Huntington area on June 11th, please join me and let’s say a joyful farewell to this great space. Join me also in wishing my friends Tom Pellicane and Matt O’Grady (Canvas’ publishers) a successful journey forward as they re-focus their business and follow their dreams.

Many Blessings to you all my friends! Thanks for listening!

My ol’ college buddy Dan Amrich is the shizzle as senior editor of “XBox Magazine”. He’s also a pop-music aficionado and a great guitar player. Most folks don’t know (ok, now you do) that Dan taught me to play and appreciate the blues when I was still a narrow-minded flash-metal guitar shredder. What I didn’t know, until recently, was that he is also 1/2 of the song parody duo called “Palette-Swap Ninja”. Dan and his buddy Jude write and record parodies of songs and post them on their website at http://paletteswapninja.com/.

A few weeks back, Dan asked a bunch of us if we would record “Gang” vocals for their latest construction “Learn to Spell”. It’s a version of “Gives You Hell” by The All-American Rejects, and “it’s dedicated to anybody who posts like English is not a second language, but a distant third or fourth”.

Each of the 19 or so participants recorded the vocals on their own and sent the tracks in where they could be compiled by Dan and Jude in their studio. It’s unlikely you’ll hear me in the mass of voices during the vocal break, but it’s pretty fun nevertheless, and I’m psyched to have invited to be a part of it. You can check it out and download it here:

http://paletteswapninja.com/?p=257

Palatte-Swap Ninja Rules!

The taping was great fun and is a wonderful opportunity for us to promote our upcoming show at the Living Room on Tuesday, June 9th (7pm). That June 9th performance is part of John Platt’s ongoing concert series “On Your Radar”. Many wonderful artists have played the series and we’re honored to be invited to play.

Also performing that night will be Earl Pickens (who just released a new album which covers the entire U2 Joshua Tree record Americana style - Dude!), and Sometymes Y - which is made up of the lovely Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still), Kristin Andreassen (Uncle Earl) and Ruth Ungar Merenda (The Mammals). It’s going to be a hot night…

You never know what you’re going to get with a radio interview… It’s what makes them so much fun to do. There are always questions you don’t expect to be asked. We talked for quite a while about where things came from, where they are, and where they’re going. We even managed to do a few songs live in the studio for y’all.

So, please tune in! You can hear our segment when it’s broadcast on June 7th (Sunday) at 10am. Tune into 90.7 fm in the New York area, or visit www.wfuv.org for the live stream.

Of course, “Sunday Breakfast” is great even without me and My Beautiful Band. Support our local public radio and tune in! John starts serving up great music at 8am.

Also joining joe will be local folk-favorites Debra Lynne, Lucky 13, Gathering Time and more!

Check the tour page for details.