Jackson County singer-songwriter Joe Persinger has released a new CD entitled “The Carnival of Life.” His fourth studio album, it consists of nine original songs and a cover song written by Nashville’s Rodney Crowell.
“This is my first time to release songs on streaming platforms online, but that’s the way music’s going, so I decided to give it a try,” Persinger said.
The CD is available to download from all the popular streaming services, including Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Amazon, iTunes, Deezer, and many others. For those who don’t subscribe to a music channel, it’s also available at josephfpersinger.bandcamp.com.
A limited number of physical CD’s are available at 13th Floor Music in Seymour and at Family Drug in Brownstown. Fans also may order a CD directly from Persinger by emailing jfppublications@gmail.com or private messaging him at facebook.com/all.those.songs.
Cost of the CD is $10. Packaging and postage to mail a hard copy adds $5.
Two songs from the album were released as singles while the full CD was still in production. Persinger refers to “Rest a While” as his pandemic song, although it doesn’t mention Covid.
“During that initial Covid lockdown when we were cooped up in the house for so long, I noticed the TV newscasters were bombarding us with a steady stream of bad news about all sorts of topics, not just the virus. ‘Rest a While’ doesn’t offer a solution, of course, it just suggests we all might benefit from making a point to get away from all the noise from time to time,” the singer explained.
A reviewer for Radio Airplay described the lyrics of “Rest a While” as “caring and comforting” and said an electric guitar solo by Mike Shelton “lifts the tune to a higher level and does so with great effect.”
The other early release single was the title song, “The Carnival of Life.” That composition, in the style of a Bob Dylan “talking song,” draws on Persinger’s memories of the carnivals that came each summer to the courthouse square and a few weeks later to the county fair back in the mid-1950s.
“As an eight- or 10-year-old boy, I found the strangeness of the carnivals awfully exciting, but also a little scary. Unlike now, they often included elements usually associated with a circus — ‘freak show’ attractions that would be inappropriate in today’s world. The midway at the county fair even had strippers,” Persinger recalled.
“If there’s a deeper meaning to the song, other than simply recording a snippet of local history— without the rosy glow of nostalgia— it could be that life itself can be exciting but also frightening at times,” he added.
Other highlights on the CD include “The Ballad of Skyline Drive,” a fictionalized story song stemming from actual events on a well known route through the Jackson-Washington State Forest; the Rodney Crowell composition, “It Ain’t Over Yet,” and “An Outlaw Tale,” the fictional story of an outlaw in the 1860s who flees Indiana only to meet a violent end in New Orleans.
Filling out the album are more original songs, “Sunshine”, “The Rain Comes Down”, “Leavin’ Soon”, “The Devil’s in the Details”, and “’Til You Were Gone.”