I know I've said it before, but I love what I do. Wasn't always the case. I've had a lot of jobs. A LOT of jobs. I'd say most of ‘em I didn’t love. That's life.
I've sold newspapers, circus tickets (to benefit the differently abled - don't ask), cars, funeral plots, perfumes and colognes….also, I've sold myself, I've sold safes and who knows what else? I've done construction, retail, been a mover, a shaker, a deal breaker, a mark, a mook, a taxi driver, worked factories, steel mills, and whole bunch of shit that I've pushed out of my brain. Hell, I'm still selling myself. What do you think this is?
I'm from the Delaware valley. Lived all over there. Worked all over there too, naturally. Always playing and writing music, always working some crap regular job, trying to live a lifestyle befitting a large mammal in America in the 20 or 21st century. That's right, I've lived centuries. Sorta. So this makes me come off as abrasive to some folks out here on the west coast. It's strange. I'm a big ol' teddy bear, and I never want to hurt anyone, you know? That goes for people's feelings too. I don't want to cause folks any harm in any capacity. The world does that naturally for us. Doesn't need an accelerant.
Oh jeez guys, I'm afraid this might be a verbose one. I'm supposed to be talking about what it is I do, music-wise and I'm just at the “I may be abrasive and I've had lots of jobs and I've lived a life” portion. Moving right along…
Don't know what my deal is. What my problem is. The diagnosis. Don't know. We didn't deal with shit like that in the 70s and 80s. There was no spectrum per se. So, now as an adult male, I get to go back through the years and be like “Oooooh, no wonder music was such a balm to the soul. Life was a chaotic shit-o-cane that just hurled stuff at us non stop until suddenly the ones that remained alive looked around one day and thought ”Huh, haven't died or been killed yet. Nice. I have (or had) a job and a spouse and children? Whoa." And then you just keep on for another couple of decades if you're lucky. THEN you perish. Nothing new there.
Music takes me out of that. You know, when you're young and you have that realization of what reality truly entails? The thing that makes a lot of us choose to believe in some higher power gobbledygook, hoping that delusional thinking will lead to truth. Which, is indeed something. Me personally, I never went for the big lie. It still seems silly to me. Music is real. That other stuff? Not so much. Believe what you want to believe, I'll be over here in Realityland. Sure, it's bleak and sucky at times, but it's also vivid and fresh as can be, which is what an artist wants in their creative life at all times.
There have been so many artists over the years that shape what we do, how we live, how society moves. Then, there are the songs. Trillions probably. I dunno. I'm not going to reach out to the professors at MIT to get an accurate number, but it's up there for sure. So why is it that so many of us gravitate to the same ol' songs time and time again. Sure, it could be as simple as “it's catchy” or “it's just a good timeless universal song that everyone can feel throughout time.” But let's face it. It ain't that.
Let's blow through some examples.
Hey I told you this was gonna be a long one. Strap in.
Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison.
I dig Van. Sure, not as controversial as some, but not without controversy either. But holy shit, just listen to his albums Veedon Fleece or Astral Weeks, or hell, most of his stuff pre-98 (or thereabouts) and you'll find something that will touch you profoundly more often than not.
Personally, I think Van is way on the spectrum. It may not surprise you to learn that Northern Ireland wasn't at the forefront of research into various neurological disabilities back in the 1950s, right around the time Van's folks would have had to have thought “You know, our young son is quite brilliant in some ways, especially when music is involved, but in other ways he's maddeningly daft and difficult to reach!”
So it's not a surprise that it was a totally acceptable thing to throw alcohol on top of it in massive quantities back then either. There was no diagnosis, no medicine really so heavy drinking was the next best thing most likely. So Van must have spent countless nights in clubs, singing and playing sax and blowing harp any chance he got. Listen to his first band Them sometime. The ones who birthed Gloria. Pure adrenalized Celtic lightning filtered through the blues and R&B. A mean outfit, to say the least.
Then Van comes over to New York, thinking he's the cat's jammies, and hooks up with a mobbed-up writer/producer named Bert Berns. In true 60's fashion, Bert saw the talent Van possessed and signed him. Then it turns out that the contract was shady. Van owes a bunch of money and songs that he doesn't have. Then Berns dies. Then the wife gets the mob to help her out with getting this Irish musician in line. Something like that. Brown Eyed Girl came out of that somewhere. I think it was recorded right before things went really south between Van and Bert. Oh, and Van also recorded like 31 nonsense songs like “Blowing Your Nose” and “Want A Danish?” out of spite to get out of the contract quickly.
I mean, he also recorded TB Sheets in there somewhere, which is a really good piece of music in my opinion. I'd ask “why not TB Sheets instead of Brown Eyed Girl?” but I guess a 3 minute song about young love is an easier sell than a 10 minute long blues dirge about watching a good friend die slowly from Tuberculosis. I get it.
Anyway, sure, Brown Eyed Girl is a fine song. It has that riff and the organ sounds great. It's breezy. It's also as overplayed as a song could be. I remember growing tired of it when I was around 10 and it was on the radio all of the time in the 70s and 80s. Then, you'd hear it played at every bar, by every band and person with a guitar at a bar or restaurant. The store. Dentist's office.
This isn't Van's fault. Hell, it's not even Berns' fault, or the mob. I don't think it's the mob anyway. Wait, is the mob responsible for the ubiquity of Brown Eyed Girl?? Did I just uncover a conspiracy? “If an hour goes by, and I don't hear that sha-la-la on the airwaves, I'm going to be back here at this station, only this time I'm gonna be the pretty one and you….well, you ain't gonna be so pretty when I get done with ya.”
So what is it? Payola? That only goes so far into the culture. I still hear it on the radio when I listen to the radio sometimes, but not as much. I will hear it more often than not when there's someone at a winery or brewery or bar though. I don't know why. “Because people seem to like it.” Okay. That's good enough. I mean, I ain't playing it, but that's their right. Personally, I think it's a type of Stockholm Syndrome. We're tethered to this piece of sonic sha-la-la until we want to marry it, no matter how it makes us feel. Beats me. I'm no Oliver Sacks.
Where was I ? Oh. The songs that are played to death. I know I've mentioned some of these before but here goes anyway:
Simple Man by Skynyrd:
Look, there are too many goddamned simple men on this Earth, which is why society is in the awful spot that it's in, and that's why I won't play this song. They don't need an anthem. We are firmly in the era of the simple man. Not “less is more” simple either. More like “I fly Old Glory out the back of my truck so I don't forget where I am!” simple. “Everything confuses me and that's gonna be everyone's problem” simple. Pass. Besides, Skynyrd's Tuesday's Gone has a similar vibe and is a far better song to my ears.
Special mention: Come on, “That Smell”? Who doesn't think that song rips? I'm sure when I'm playing with my combo (to be announced at an indeterminate time) we'll attempt “That Smell” quarterly. Just because.
Mama Tried by Merle Haggard:
I love Merle. However, it never fails, some drunk guy who smells like manure and Axe body spray will yell “Mama Tied!” to which the only response is “Mama didn't try hard enough.” It's always the men whose mothers don't talk to them anymore that want to hear this one.
I mean, don't get me wrong…I like a lot of shit that folks would def consider to be the crappiest of the crappy, but I don't play it out when I'm at a gig. Unless someone requests it, of course. If that's the case, throw a tenner in the tip jar and it is ON.
And look, I'm not a music snob per se; I just like what I like, and there's more than a few things I won't play. If I'm not a fan of something, I'm not going to play it well. That's how it works. You deserve better. So when someone asks for “Wagon Wheel”, I just let them know they will hear someone play it within the next 48 hours if not sooner, if they want. You'll enjoy their version too. Everything isn't for everyone, which is something we all need to learn from time to time. Another thing: there are a trillion songs out there. We can easily find common ground, song-wise. That's a big part of the fun, honestly.
The other stuff I don't get down with is as follows:
Pop punk. Green Day especially. Just never got it. I mean ..I get it, but hard pass. Power chords, nothing exciting musically to my ears, and the lyrics usually mention boogers at least once per album.
Special mentions: Real actual punk. From Little Richard to Husker Du. I love the Ramones to an unreasonable extent. Seriously. I know not one but two songs off of Dee Dee's “rap” album “Standing In The Spotlight”. Call me on that. The Replacements, Undertones, DK, X, The Damned. So much gold there. Okay, and for whatever reason I won't complain if you crank up All the Small Things if we're 15 hours into a road trip. I'm only human. Turn the lights on, and so forth.
The RHCP, and while we're at it, the faux funk thing that continues to linger about round these parts. Tower Of Power was a while ago. If I had a nickel for every Tower of Power ex member I've met around these parts (not as many as Dead hangers on), I'd have 65 cents or so. I love funk music. LOVE it. A lot of what people are purporting to be funky is not funky at all. But much like the sudden influx of Ai music, people will listen to and dance to anything. Even me. It always amazes me how locked in kids are to my guitar when I perform. I'm not one who find joy or solace or whatever it is people get from having kids around, but you know what kids? You're welcome to groove to my stuff as long as you don't knock my gear over, cry excessively or get me sick.
But turn my sleeve anytime you want to talk about Parliament, Funkadelic, Parliament Funkadelic, P-Funk All Stars, Bootsy, Isleys, anything James Brown adjacent, the Midwest funk scene in the ‘70s and ’80s, and more.
Grunge. Ooph. Not a fan. I remember each time throughout the late 80s and early 90s where it would be like “Have you heard The Smashing Pumpkins? They're the most original thing in music, and they're quite possibly the saviours of rock n roll.” I know rock n roll is mainly just a catch all term for "music that kicks all types of ass", regardless of genre" so there's nothing that needed saving really, but I'd be curious and eventually find my way to an album of theirs, listen and be like “Oooooh I get it. This is terrible. This critic must hate their own ears or something. Pity."
This also extends to (in no particular order): Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, STP, Staind, Korn, Collective Soul, Third Eye Blind, DMB, Foo Fighters, and a bunch of other things I don't feel like thinking about right now. I like adventurous chord progressions, wide-ranging subject matter, all kinds of tones, but grunge did not have that for me. Not my jam. Alternative music is fine, but when grunge came along, it meant “an alternative to anything you'd ever want to listen to” to me. Not good. Nirvana has a few bangers, plus that Seattle scene gave us Mark Lanegan (Bubblegum is a fave).
Modern Country, say from 87 on. Okay, maybe I'm a fuddy duddy luddite, a lib or whatever but I'm not in the market for a pickup truck, incest sans consequences or blowing the rich people who hate me more than they hate themselves. I have zero beef with the production techniques of 90s and early aughts R&B, but somehow listening to Nashville producers slap that stuff onto a track about how “daddy's littlest victim of everything pours whiskey in his coffee cup cuz he's a rebel” (note: as of June 2026, at least 60 percent of country music released today has a line about pouring whiskey into a coffee cup) doesn't sit right with me. It must be the ears and brain. I'd worry about offending someone with this paragraph, but if you're listening to a Morgan Wallen or Stuffy Brakes or whoever, I'm guessing words and sentences aren't really your thing. Explains the attraction to acronyms. Sorry, that is to say the attraction to words that start with the first lett….never mind.
I do enjoy the following more than just a little: George Jones (anything and everything.. by far one of my favorite sounds is the Possum's voice), Willie, Waylon, Tammy, Margo, Dolly, Buck, Johnny, Webb, Roger Miller….too many to list here. A wealth of great artists in that genre, but to me, Americana picked up where country left off with Garth or whomever if not sooner.
The Dead. Okay, before you start launching Jerry rolls at me, let me just say: I dig the Dead. I'm one of the “early stuff” people. I've been exposed a lot, and while I have hung out at more than a few Dead show parking lots (for reasons too obvious to get into), it was never my true love like it seemed to be for so many others. I'm not going to fake something for the sake of wanting to fit in, which there's a fair amount of in some of those circles, but as always, as long as you're not hurting anyone, what do I care?
The thing that I've always dug about the Dead was their fearlessness, set-wise and of course, their interpretations of covers and how they rarely played anything the same way ever. That's something I try to bring into my own performances when I can. Truthfully, I can usually tell what a band's going to do just by watching them lumber onto a stage and pick up their instruments. There's nothing worse than knowing exactly EVERYTHING that is going to go on. That goes for my own gigs too. Unless it's some super specific set that's been requested or something, I tend to leave things a bit open to whatever the moment brings. Is that scary? Nah, it's more of a cathartic exhilaration thing.
Sure, some of the stuff that doesn't do right by me is a personal preference thing. I don't play contrarian because I think hot takes will make people remember me or whatever the point of saying some contrarian bs is. It's my ears. When they go electric, it loses me a bit. I always say I'll get into the Dead and go down the Dick's Picks rabbit hole when I'm in my mid 60s or so. Save some stuff for later. Plus, hopefully LSD will be legal by then. A guy can dream. And trip.
Shouts go to: Ship of Fools, New Riders, that one Weir album that is escaping me, and some other stuff that is escaping me. I blame the parking lot at JFK, July 7, 1989.
Ultimately, my mission is this:
You hire Juke to play your winery, your party, your brewery, amusement park, etc.….you're getting a show. Not a Vegas spectacle, no light show or lasers. I'm just a guy with an acoustic, an amp, and a mic…and I'm going to play whatever seems right for everybody in that moment.
You want to talk to your sister and sip some Pinot as golden hour comes on? I can score that for you, give it the unobtrusive sonic sunbath that a golden hour with friends and fam deserves.
You want to drink some beer, wine, cider or have some cocktails and get loose? I can score that scene for you, too. Upbeat, buoyant acoustic rock n roll, classic country and soul, kinetic punk and funk and more is what that calls for. Fun reigns supreme.
Or you can lean in and listen to some original songs that feature such things as a guy drinking sangria in a car with a pet rat, a mother of 3 trying to get through her day without totally losing her shit, or songs about where society has been, is now, and where it could go. Plus some hand picked, farm-to-fork cover songs from all over. One hit wonders, Motown, old cowboy and celt ballads, British Invasion, new wave classics, etc. You know, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
No set is ever the same. That's my tribute to the Dead.
That's the Mission Statement until further notice, kids.
Okay, now I'm going to get my fingers to shut up and go do some work. If this comes off prickly, negative, smarmy or anything of the sort, sorry. Just wait until you read about the stuff I LOVE. That's coming. Probably once I put up a fancy crypto paywall. Sky's the limit!
