Country-soul singer waited for right time
San Francsico Chronicle
By Joel Selvin
Although he says there wasn't a time in his life when he didn't keep some gear at a recording studio, Emory Joseph is releasing his debut CD at an age when many rock musicians are hanging it up. "I wanted to wait until I could write songs that were good enough," said Joseph, whose "Labor & Spirits" is a refreshing chunk of handmade Southern soul from the St. Louis native, now living in Oakland.

"The way I look at it," he said, "I saved myself from making a lot of bad records."

While he was waiting, Joseph worked shoeing horses, cooking barbecue and singing at occasional recording sessions. "Three things I know -- food, music and animals," he said. "It's been a nice life."

Tall, olive-skinned, hair hanging to his shoulder from under his milk- chocolate fedora, Joseph pulled together some impressive accompaniment for his first record, including Levon Helm of the Band, Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention and T-Bone Wolk, who used to be Hall and Oates' bandleader. He released the results himself, found a distributor, put a band together and is pursuing talks with a booking agency. He is working the album at radio stations across the country and picking up his first reviews ("Gorgeously good- timey . . . kinda back-porch Randy Newman," said England's Mojo magazine).

"Every day somebody's calling wanting something," he said. "I couldn't handle it if it was happening any faster."

Joseph described his music as Dr. John hanging out at Stax Records where he runs into Willie Nelson. "Labor & Spirits" is a unique country and soul hybrid, but Joseph is clearly someone who is equally at home in the city or country. He lived in Brooklyn for a while, but he was working taking care of police dogs and horses at the New York Police Department stables. Although he grew up in St. Louis, he spent plenty of time on the family farm in Missouri.

"I was always working on a farm or running in the city," he said. "It was very rare where I could be both those people at the same time."

Joseph was living in New York during the early '80s, the heyday of the Lone Star Cafe, a Texas roadhouse misplaced in downtown Manhattan, where he began to see the cultural barriers of his youth dissolve. Old Nashville hand Delbert McClinton would play the club, followed by blues guitarist Albert Collins the next night, and songwriter Doc Pomus ("Save the Last Dance for Me") would eat lunch there every day. It was a slow, circuitous route from the Lone Star to "Labor & Spirits."

He lived for six years on a sailboat with his wife, but is now a stay-at- home dad to a 5-year-old daughter in Oakland's Glenview district while his wife holds down a corporate job. But he is no struggling youngster -- he is a grown man past 40 -- and he fits none of the four or five templates in operation by the record industry. Joseph figures to take his message to his people directly. He started with a full-page advertisement in Chili Pepper magazine.

"We are living in this great age of music festivals," he said. "We have the best festivals where people eat food and listen to music. That's what I do. I cook, play music, tell stories, laugh. That's who I am. I like kids, horses, cats, dogs." .

Ad-libs: Macy Gray, Sixpence None the Richer and Luce appear at Alice's Summerthing, June 15 at Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park . . . Yellowjackets headline June 13-15, followed by Senegal's Orchestra Baobab June 25-26 at Yoshi's . . . Oakland newcomers Fingertight are on tour opening for Pearl Jam.