I don't know that much of Joe's life story, but I can fill in a little. His father was Jewish at least in name, mother not, Joe wasn't raised Jewish. He live in Boston area a long time but not his whole life. He went to MIT & various other smarty-pants places, studying physics, as you could probably tell from some of his songs.

There was a time he went to live on a commune in Virgina, which amazed me 'cause he didn't seem like a commune-type person, but also because I knew the founder of this eek-BF Skinner-based commune, Kat Kincaid, from Sacred Harp singing. I drove with her to several deep-south singings. I didn't know about the Skinner thing 'til she told me.

She's the only person I know I know personally who got an obit in the New York Times.

The reason I know anything at all about Joe is his talking as I drove him to the T from the Somerville Armory singings & the Charlestown Navy Yard Shanty-&-sea singings, before Covid.

If I was a better human I'd have driven him home to Malden or Medford or wherever he lived, but the roads in Boston are such that sometimes the only way in, or the only straight way anyway,is a pretty frightening parkway & I just wasn't up for that.

Joe said he'd driven for a few minutes in Boston, then never again.

It was Joe I sat next to at the Burns Suppers, before Covid. And the shanty people would sometimes go to Mary Chungs in Central Square, now sadly closed, when that singing was at MIT, also in Central Square.

Sometimes they wouldn't show up & Joe & I would have dinner anyway.

He sang better on-line than he did in person, which surprised me, as he never struck me as a nervous singer, but maybe he was.

All the regular public singings in Boston are run by people who say you have to sing songs with choruses. This irks me no end, not that I dislike choruses! & I haven't been back to the indoor Somerville Armory singing after it started again after Covid. Joe said he had. I'm not catching Covid (I'm diabetic so immunosupressed) to sing chorus songs.


I hope Joe didn't catch anything there.

Maybe more later if I think of something. Glad the thread hasn't yet disappeared from my ability to latch on to it.