Search - Joe Pagetta :: Small Worlds

Joe Pagetta's second CD-release on Fully Dressed Records, and his first full-length album, finds him expanding his style and subject matter while at the same time making it all gel in an acoustic format. "Small Worlds" features 11 new songs written in Nashville since the Jersey City native's relocation there in late 1998. The disc features the traveling present-tense of "Coming Home" and the acoustic power-pop/duet of "You Really Love Me." Popular-culture icons, both fictitious and real, get twists in "Ebeneezer Scrooge" and "My Elvis Poster," while the folk-style of "Tears of Lake Michigan" and "Bogeyman" share disc space with the heart-string balladry of "Haven't Seen Myself," "There's No Talking Any Sense Into You" and "My Eyes Are Dry." Show favorites "Were My Eyes Bigger Than My Heart?" and "Beautiful Woman" round off the collection. GodsOfMusic.com says "Tears of Lake Michigan" "...is like fresh air...good songmanship and story telling." "I hope this CD shows significant growth in my songwriting over the last few years," says the twenty-nine years-old Pagetta. "While I haven't veered away from the acoustic- singer-songwriter format as much, I've tried to expand stylistically, both in my singing and my guitar playing. I'm extremely proud of these songs." The Louisville Eccentric Observer called Pagetta's first CD, the 1999 EP "Recollections of Maybeville," "a complete miniature world of restive contemplation" filled with "wonderful observations." "I realized with my last CD, that I had written songs that had to be focused on and listened to attentively in order to be enjoyed, which is fine... but while focus is always on lyrical content, I wanted to make this album a little easier to enjoy and in many ways, feel pleasant to the ears. The album is much more relaxing and not nearly as intense. You can walk away from your stereo and still enjoy the sound of it. I wouldn't recommend it, but you could." Like on his first CD, Pagetta once again wrote all the songs save for one. This time, it's the opening track, "Coming Home," written with Kathy Crow. The CD was recorded in East Nashville, Tennessee at the Sound Gallery and was engineered by Tom Hirschmann.