After finishing The Pedal Steel EP, Joe is taking a break from stage.  The EP & other records are available for free on the website Last.FM.

We spent 40 hours tracking 4 songs last month.  They’re in MD now with Patrick in post production.  Special thanks to Bad Folk’s Joey Gavin for sitting in on the pedal steel & to Karl, Aaron & Travis from The Dive Poets.  We might do a little 4-track E.P. this fall.

Best, -Joe

Patrick Hunt will be captaining some recording this July with some old band mates.  We’re going to try to get
Pedal Steel
If We Married
Coy Looks & White Lies
Carrying Sorrow
recorded, & Joey Gavin from Bad Folk has agreed to lend his considerable talents to Pedal Steel.  I’m not sure if there will be an E.P. or just compilation for the next release.  Please come to a show.  Please consider helping design fliers.

Best, -Joe

I’ve been on sabbatical, working on major life changes.  Now I’m trying to put something together for the future.

-Joe

River Front Times review of Selected Short Works:

Selected Short Works

Singer-songwriter Joe Eisenbraun re-mains a mostly unknown figure around town who plays a show only every month or two – even though the solid, varied LP Selected Short Works marks his fifteenth release since 2001. The dude clearly has Bob Pollard-esque depths to plumb, but his talent justifies this prodigious output. Eisenbraun writes sharp, catchy songs that display wit and heart in equal measure, as they vacillate between nervy power-pop and pensive folk-rock. “To See You Again” pulses with new-wave energy and sounds like a lost Knack song, and “History” crunches along with a few nods to Cheap Trick. “Soft Rock Radio” is a highlight among the stripped-down numbers, marked by a circular banjo pattern and light drums, as Eisenbraun ruminates on the long-gone simplicity of grade-school love.

Like Billy Bragg’s similarly minded Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, marriage is a focus of many of these tunes. Opener “Diamonds, Diapers & Property” considers the weight of family life and fiscal responsibility amid twangy guitar and wheezy organ chords. Things get darker (and funnier) with “The Day I Married Her,” which finds a beleaguered husband looking back on 30 years of domestic blisters. The chorus, which states “If I killed her the day I married her, I’d be out of jail by now,” is sure to be a favorite with fans of murder ballads and wry irony alike. A little too snarky for alt-country and a little too wistful for indie-rock, Eisenbraun finds a comfortable middle ground in between genres.

- Christian Schaeffer