Joe Grushecky in the House
An exclusive chat with the Iron City rock icon about his new career retrospective
Singer, songwriter, guitarist and leader of one of the toughest bands to ever rage across a dimly-lit stage, Joe Grushecky doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves for a half-century of service to rock ‘n’ roll.
Grushecky honed his songwriting skills with the Iron City Houserockers circa 1977-1983, his intelligent blue-collar anthems mixing muscular, guitar-driven rock with elements of blues and soul on major label releases like Love’s So Tough, Have A Good Time…But Get Out Alive (with contributions from friends like Little Steven, Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson), and Blood On the Bricks (produced by Memphis music legend Steve Cropper).
The four I.C. Houserockers albums received plenty of critical acclaim but didn’t light a fire under record buyers more interested in pop stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna, so the band broke up. Grushecky resumed his job as a teacher working with at-risk youth in Pittsburgh, a position he held until his retirement a few years ago. But the siren’s call of rock ‘n’ roll still beckoned and, after several years, Grushecky formed a new band – Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers. They released two well-received albums on Rounder Records, 1989’s Rock and Real and 1991’s Swimming with the Sharks but, once again, Joe’s efforts were ill-timed and ill-fated, his hard-charging style of meat-and-potatoes rock eclipsed and overshadowed, first by hair metal and then by grunge.
Nevertheless, Grushecky and band continued soldiering on, releasing a slew of great rock ‘n’ roll records that largely went unheard, save by a loyal cult audience – albums like 1992’s End of the Century, 1995’s brilliant American Babylon (produced by Bruce Springsteen), and 1997’s Coming Home. Grushecky subsequently went ‘D.I.Y.’ and began producing his own albums, distributed through New Jersey’s Schoolhouse Records, a move that has resulted in some of the best work of his career, resulting in four solo and eight studio albums with the Houserockers, as well as various live sets, released over the past 25 years. It’s long been my contention that Joe’s records over the past quarter-century have surpassed those of his friend Springsteen – with whom he has been endlessly (and unfairly) compared – in delivering high-quality rock music.
Still, much like the late, beloved comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Grushecky “gets no respect,” a situation that Omnivore Recordings and the rock ‘n’ roll lifer both hope to alleviate with the recent release of Houserocker: A Joe Grushecky Anthology, a two-disc compilation that spans Grushecky’s career from the Iron City Houserockers to 2018’s More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows, including the ultra-rare 1984 single “Goodbye Steeltown,” credited to “Joey G.” All the tracks have been newly remastered by Grammy™-winning engineer Michael Graves and the album was co-produced by Joe’s son (and current Houserocker) Johnny Grushecky with Omnivore’s Cheryl Pawelski. The set includes rare photos from Grushecky’s lengthy career as well as song-by-song commentary by the artist.
In an exclusive email interview with Rock & Roll Globe, Grushecky relates how the deal with Omnivore came about.
“We were going to release a new record ourselves,” Joe writes, “but we decided to see if any companies would be interested. Our good friends Bob Chiappardi and John Esposito both recommended Omnivore. They helped set up a meeting with Cheryl Pawelski and Dutch Cramblitt. Omnivore seemed like a perfect fit for us, and Cheryl knew more about some of my records than I did.”
The three-dozen tracks on Houserocker represent some of the best performances of Grushecky’s daunting back catalog of music. How do you distill 40 years and 16 albums into two CDs?
“Cheryl and Johnny choose the tracks,” says Joe. “The themes of the particular records seemed to be represented best by the title tracks.”
Were there any songs that he wanted to include but had to leave off of Houserocker?
“Only about 150 or so,” says Joe, “including ‘Don’t Mourn For Me Like That’ (from More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows) and “When Castro Came Down From The Hills’ (from Somewhere East of Eden).”
With Houserocker representing the entirety of your career, how does it look to Grushecky from this perspective?
“Some would say I am stubborn,” he says, “but I like the word ‘persistent’ better. I have always heard music in my head. At some point in my life, I decided to record it. It has always been a huge thrill for me to take an idea I found floating in air and, with the help of our musicians, engineers, and producers, turn it into something that the whole world is able to hear if they chose to do so. It never gets old. Some records are better than others. It is something I never take for granted. I’ve told the story of my family, friends, and my city in music.”
Houserocker: A Joe Grushecky Anthology offers a lot of value for the money for any rocker worth their leather jacket and denim jeans. The bulk of the first disc is comprised of vintage Iron City Houserockers songs, including such classic bangers as “We’re Not Dead Yet,” “Love’s So Tough,” “Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive),” “Blood On the Bricks,” and the fan favorite “Junior’s Bar.” Differing from the long out-of-print 1992 Houserockers’ compilation Pumping Iron & Sweating Steel, Houserocker throws in a few more gems from the often-overlooked 1980s-era albums Blood On the Bricks and Cracking Under Pressure, both of which are ripe for reissue and rediscovery (Ms. Pawelski?). The disc closes with a pair of fine tunes from Rock and Real (the title track and “How Long”) and the fierce “Swimming With Sharks” from the Rounder Records LP of the same name.
Disc two of Houserocker kicks off with the brilliant “Talking To the King,” Grushecky’s twang ‘n’ bang ode to Elvis, from End of the Century. From this point, it’s like a stone skipping across the river of Grushecky’s lengthy career, songs like “Never Be Enough Time” and “Labor of Love” (both from American Babylon) displaying Grushecky’s songwriting prowess while the title tracks of several albums (True Companion, East Carson Street, Somewhere East of Eden) perfectly sum up the themes of each collection while promising musical riches within each, largely because Grushecky is an artist that still thinks in terms of creating an “album” that is knitted together lyrically and musically, rather than merely throwing together a collection of disparate songs.
Grushecky’s collaboration with his buddy Bruce Springsteen earned them a Grammy™ Award for their 2004 song “Code of Silence.”
“He casts a long shadow,” Grushecky told me in a 2010 interview for Blurt magazine. “When you play with Bruce, you have to be pretty confident in what you’re doing or else he’ll overwhelm it – not that he attempts to – with the strength of his personality. We always have a blast when we play together.”
AUDIO: Joe Grushecky “Code of Silence”
Houserocker includes Grushecky’s version of “Code of Silence,” which he reprised on his 2006 solo album, A Good Life, six-string contributions from Springsteen and longtime friend Rick Witkowski (from Crack the Sky) sending the performance into the stratosphere. Houserocker closes out with “Blood Sweat and Beers,” a boozy, brawling throwback that swings like Eddie Cochran and rocks like the Blasters. My only complaint I have about the Houserocker tracklist is the omission of “American Babylon,” the title track of the Houserockers’ 1995 album and one of his most powerful songs in both lyrical poetry and instrumental devastation, but that’s a minor cavil considering so many otherwise great songs on the collection.
Bookending the release of Houserocker is a brand-spanking-new Houserockers album, Can’t Outrun A Memory, which will be released on both vinyl and on CD on July 12th (full disclosure: I originally wrote liner notes for the album, which weren’t subsequently used by Omnivore). The first collection of new Houserockers material in seven years, Can’t Outrun A Memory features a baker’s dozen of Grushecky originals along with a fiery cover of Eric Burdon & the Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” The CD version includes four bonus tracks, including spirited acoustic versions of two of the album’s best songs. Of the new album, Joe says “we set out to make a great rock and roll record. Can’t Outrun A Memory is the sum of all the music I’ve made and listened to over the years.”
At an age where his contemporaries have long given up the dream or – even worse – spend their days playing golf or tending to their wine cellar, Grushecky has delivered an album that’s every bit as fierce, ambitious, and defiant as anything he’s ever recorded over the past 45 years. If Grushecky’s More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows concerned itself with mortality and legacy, Can’t Outrun A Memory deals with how we get to the end of the road…do we seize each day with unbridled energy, or do we allow entropy to creep into the short time we have on this spinning orb?
Says Joe, “Can’t Outrun a Memory floats back and forth between today and the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. They were turbulent times. I could feel tension in the air then much like today. It seemed like the country was deciding what it wanted to be. They differences between good and bad are stark in both time periods. In 1968, I was in college and had almost given up on playing music. Spending a summer in Atlantic City, buying my first Tele, and being in a terrible car accident put me back on the path to where I am today.”
So, what’s next for the rock ‘n’ roll lifer? “The plan, as always” he states, “is onward and upward!”
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