JOY FOCUS
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 12th March 2009.
Joy Focus are an American pop/rock duo made up of husband and wife team Holly Joy on vocals and Rikk Currence on, er, just about everything else. They are, at the time of writing, unsigned... which is plainly ridiculous when you hear how good their recent album 'Cyber Suburban Electro Rock Circus' is.
Rikk answers questions here on behalf of the pair.
You are a musical duo and a wedded couple. Which came first, the music or the marriage?
Rikk: Marriage. We’ve been married for twelve years – together for seventeen. Prior to working together in JoyFocus, we both had our own independent musical endeavors. Being married has made working together musically much more cohesive and added a layer of chemistry & depth you can’t manufacture or find anywhere else. Holly Is the perfect partner for me in this musical vehicle we call JoyFocus. This (JoyFocus) wouldn’t work with anyone else, any other way.
Who were your musical influences and inspirations?
Rikk: The artists that have influenced our sound the most would be (in no particular order) Queen, Boston, The Beatles, Kings X, Journey, The Beach Boys, Abba, Cyndi Lauper the Eurythmics, Stryper, Heart & the Cars. We love music – all kinds of music, but the artists mentioned carry the most weight in terms of pure influence & inspiration.
How would you describe the Joy Focus sound?
Rikk: “Epically pop driven” sort of sums it up. We write music that most would consider to have a greater scope & depth in terms of musical & emotional content. We are also big on production values and just HUGE musical and vocal sounds in general. We love making big sounding, very produced & polished records.
The writing is a particularly strong aspect of the Joy Focus sound. Have you written anything for anyone else or are you quite, for want of a better phrase, ‘selfish’ with your work?
Rikk: I’m very open to writing and producing for other folks, I just haven’t been approached yet. If you're out there and need a song or a producer – Look me up! :)
Is the creative process an ongoing saga, or do you deliberately make time to write each specific album?
Rikk: With JoyFocus, I always write with an entire record in mind – a complete composition.
For Cyber suburban Electro Rock Circus, I wrote forty eight (48) different & complete pieces of music, and considered over a dozen different covers before settling on “Here Comes the Rain Again”. I would say in general, my writing for JoyFocus is very album directed / specific. I’m looking to make records that are complete thoughts – something that you can listen to from beginning to end and feel like you’ve just seen a movie or read a good book. The songs all need to work together musically & lyrically for me to consider any record we make “complete.”
Where do the writing inspirations come from? Do you look at the world around you or just kind of ‘make stuff up’ to fit with the music?
Rikk: Every song I write is based on someone I know, something I’ve been through or something I’ve seen. It’s all personal. If I haven’t been involved, the emotional connection isn’t there and that’s a huge part of our sound – the emotional response to what I’m writing about. Now, if I was writing for someone else, that would be a different story and set of circumstances – but for JoyFocus it has to be 100% something I’ve directly experienced.
Are there any particular tracks from the Joy Focus past or present you are especially proud of?
Rikk: Songs are like your children – you love them all and they all have different strengths. I am particularly fond of the latest record, just because the entire album, I feel, is our strongest collection of material to date.
Do you consider Joy Focus a Christian rock band, or a band whose members happen to have Christian beliefs?
Rikk: Only in the music industry do my personal spiritual beliefs seem to be some sort of issue that need better defining. It’s funny. We’ve never called ourselves “Christian Rock” – ever. It’s always the press that lump us into that category. The idea of “Christian rock” is absurd. Is there “Buddhist rock”, “Muslim rock” or maybe “Lutheran rock”? Of course not. We’re Christians, so what? We believe in God and read the bible – again, what’s the public concern? It doesn’t seem to have had a negative affect on my playing, writing or producing – so what does my personal spiritual life have to do with my professional music career?
The answer is nothing at all. In my opinion, the only reason the term “Christian” rock exists is as a marketing adjective for corporations to sell specifically to their desired demographic. Music is music and personal spiritual beliefs are just that – personal spiritual beliefs. If you don’t believe in God – congratulations. That’s your choice, not mine, and as a result, none of my business. Get over it folks – we’re a rock band, and If I might say so myself, a better than average rock band – so just let it go and rock out with us. We won’t disappoint, I promise.
Do you find that people, as soon as the words Christian and rock are used in the same sentence, lose all interest in your work? I can imagine it’s quite a hurdle to overcome.
Rikk: Sometimes. You know, I’ve always said, if you don’t like JoyFocus or our music, at least don’t like us because we suck, or we aren’t the style you listen to. Don’t write us off because you see the word “religion”, “Christian” or “spiritual” in an interview or review. Our music is accessible, by design, to everyone. It’s really only an issue to those that make it so – it doesn’t really occupy a lot of thought space with us. We find our time & energy better spent writing & recording good music than worrying if any particular group of people think that what we’re doing is “okay” or “by the rules”.
Does it annoy you that people focus on the religion rather than the music? Should I shut up now...? :)
Rikk: Not at all – it’s out there and I’d rather talk about it than just let folks draw inaccurate conclusions. :)
We totally get it. In this day & age, religion doesn’t have a really exemplary track record in most aspects of modern society. I’m not trying to save your soul, nor is my music. I’m trying to make quality music people relate to. The idea is for the music to stand on its own two feet and not need some sort of “disclaimer” because the musicians happen to have certain spiritual beliefs. We’re just musicians trying to do our best. If you need something to focus on in our music other than the spiritual overtones our lyrics tend to carry, focus on how amazing my drums sound in the track “All That You Need” or “Grey Day My Way” – because they do!
You have a lot of cool clothing on your website – it actually looks like a proper fashion line! Did you work hard to not simply have a load of me-too merchandise?
Rikk: This is where it helps to have a woman in the band! You know, I’m just tired of bands putting no effort into what they do, especially in this day & age of technology where you have options as independent artists that you would have never had even five years ago. With the clothing, we wanted to have something a little more than just a black or white tee shirt with an album cover on it. We also wanted it to reflect our sort of laid back nature. It’s certainly more of a “clothing line” per say than collection of band tee shirts.
What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?
Rikk: Wow. That’s a good question… It’s probably a tie between Prince & the revolution in 1984 or 1985 and the original 1988 USA Monsters of Rock tour with Van Halen, Metalica, Dokken & the Scorpions.
Do you have any plans in the pipeline to do a Joy Focus tour?
Rikk: Yes – but only to the places & for the people that would actually want to see us. We aren’t actively just playing live for the sake of playing live – for us there would be no point. However, we’re hoping after a few months of being out, the new record will excite some folks enough to want us to come play live for them.
If you do play live, presumably you hire in other musicians...?
Rikk: Yes and Yes. Sometime Holly & I do some “unplugged” or more intimate shows where it’s juts the two of us – but for the big rock show, we bring out a big rock band.
Is there anyone you’d especially love to accompany you, assuming money was no object?
Rikk: The “dream” JF backing band would consist of Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big, Racer X) on lead guitar, Doug Pinnick (Kings X) on bass and Billy Ward (Session) on Drums. That would be a band as musically amazing as Toto in the 80’s or the original Van Halen Line up.
What are you up to once you finish answering these questions?
Rikk: Another interview :)
Anything else you would like to mention in the footnote, like release dates, websites, gigs etc?
Rikk: Make sure you go to our website, http://www.joyfocus.com/ and check out all of our music. You can purchase our records on itunes and various other download sites world wide.
The new Joy Focus album, 'Cyber Suburban Electro Rock Circus' is out now. Check out the review on Rock Realms for further details... because we certainly liked it!
