JOE REILLY: Planting Gardens

Joe Reilly

Planting Gardens

© 2006 Joe Reilly (783707400778)

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A spiritual suite of modern roots, pop, and folk with a message of non-violence, inclusive community, environmental justice, and robot love.

tracks

1 The River
2 The Michigan Song
3 Detroit Summer
4 Jumba, Camelo Romelus
5 The Artist, Thich Nhat Hanh
6 State of the Possible, Featuring Peace Be Free
7 Infinite Hearts
8 God Is Love, Thich Nhat Hanh
9 Planting Gardens
10 True Love, Thich Nhat Hanh
11 I Still Love You, Featuring Peace Be Free
12 Geronimo's Cadillac
13 Alejan's Groove
14 The Robot
15 Dance, Featuring Aquil
16 Follow the Sun, Featuring Namaste Brown
17 Thank You Prayer

notes

Planting Gardens is the latest album by singer songwriter and activist Joe Reilly. The result of a three-year process of songwriting, musical collaborations, and spiritual activism, this album offers listeners a hopeful vision of peace, non-violence, and love within the context of community building. In times when positive messages are difficult to find in the media, Reilly waters seeds of compassion and understanding with poetic lyrics, beautiful melodies, and soulful rhythms.

Planting Gardens gives us a tour of Joe’s experiences and reflections of life in Detroit and Chicago and of the earth and waters in between.

"City oh city I sing to your soul. Let the babies and seedlings be free and grow. Before you replace them with buildings and roads. Remember the sunlight and flowers who grow." ~Follow the Sun

Cultivating soils of our consciousness with messages of environmental justice and stewardship, Joe’s songs appeal to all who seek a deeper connection with themselves, with each other, and with the earth.

"Maybe I should be a little more like the river, flowing slowly, into the sea." ~The River

Throughout his travels of natural, urban, and spiritual worlds, Joe never loses sight of his origins.

"Michigan is the state where the lakes are great and the water is fresh so you can hydrate." ~The Michigan Song

Backed by his Chicago-based band The Faith Project, Reilly recorded the album with Kalamazoo engineers Ian Gorman and John Campos at the Leaven Center, a retreat and study center nurturing the relationship between spirituality and social justice in Lyons, Michigan. The spiritual activism supported by the Leaven Center as well as the beauty and serenity of its land provided the perfect conditions for the germination of this creative project. A ten-minute enhanced video portion of the album documents this creative process and includes interviews and scenes of the Leaven Center recording sessions.

The Faith Project consists of jazz drummer Jon Faro, soul gospel bassist Alejandro Cornejo, Haitian Master Percussionist Camelo Romelus and special guest vocalist, Chicago’s Native soul diva Michaela Marchi. Their multicultural musical chemistry transcends barriers of race, class, and religion to create a solid foundation of world rhythm behind Joe’s powerful voice. This effect is accentuated by several special guests to the album such as Native American Music Award winners Keith Secola (Akina Music) and Annie Humphrey (Makoche Records), folk singer Sue Demel (Sons of the Never Wrong, Gadfly Records), and members of the Long Hairz Collective.

Complementing the music are three excerpts from a talk by Vietnamese Zen Master, author, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, given during a retreat for entertainers at the Deer Park Monastery in California.

On the song Detroit Summer, inspired by Joe’s involvement with the grassroots movement in the Motor City founded by Grace Lee Boggs, Reilly and The Faith Project are joined by Detroit’s own St. Leo Choir.

Background
Joe Reilly has been a singer, songwriter, and guitarist for over twelve years and has had extensive performance and touring experience, bringing messages of hope and peace in his songs to audiences in the Midwest and across the United States. Both of his parents are singers and guitarists and Joe grew up listening to their classical and liturgical music in his home and church, learning that music can be prayerful, healing, and celebratory. With their help he began to teach himself to play guitar and sing. In addition to self-instruction he has also studied voice and guitar privately and at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. Joe is Italian, Irish, and Native American (Cherokee). His background in the study and performance of many different musical styles, including Native American music, folk, blues, jazz, liturgical, and classical, as well as his academic studies of environmental justice and racism and spiritual roots in Catholicism, Buddhism, and Native American religions has led to a writing style that incorporates these diverse influences into a unique and powerful voice.

The Message
The result is a creative and honest voice that calls for a holistic healing of our society for the benefit of all beings and future generations. Joe has written, arranged, recorded, and published over 30 songs on three albums and has worked to build a career that supports the sharing of his music with a diversity of listeners through recording, community-based performances, educational and instructional workshops, and tours. In 2005 Joe received a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant award from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. He used this award to teach singing, guitar, and songwriting to Native American and homeless youth in Chicago, producing a CD of youth songs titled "Finding Our Own Voice." It is through the active sharing of his music that he hopes to inspire and empower people to heal their relationships to themselves, each other, and the earth.

Experience
Joe has performed at festivals such as the Concert of Colors (Detroit 2004), venues such as Schubas (Chicago 2003, 2004), the Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago 2005) and Uncommon Ground (Chicago, 2002-05), tours such as "How Far is Home?" (Minnesota 2002-04), and talent contests such as Amateur Night at the Apollo (Detroit 2003). In addition to public performances, Joe uses his music as an educational tool in classrooms and after school programs with at-risk youth such as Project Paradigm (Detroit 2003), Teen Living Program (Chicago 2005), the American Indian Center of Chicago (2003-05) and for adults with disabilities at Esperanza Community Services (Chicago 2004).

Recordings
Joe has included his music in many different ensembles and has collaborated with dozens of other artists to create group recordings and performances. From 1997-2001 Joe was a singer with a Native American drum group called Treetown and performed at many Pow-Wows and Native American gatherings. In 2001 he made his first recording as a solo artist, arranging a diverse group of musicians and singers as accompanists with him on nine original songs. In 2001 Joe co-founded the Long Hairz Collective, a trio including Joe, poet Brian Babb, and emcee William Copeland. Combining styles of hip-hop, folk, blues, and spoken word in their songs, the Long Hairz Collective recorded a CD in 2002 and continue to perform and successfully distribute their CD. Over the past year Joe has spent much of his time coordinating the Faith Project, an extremely talented band in Chicago that includes Joe as its founder, jazz drummer Jon Faro, soul bassist Alejandro Cornejo, and Haitian master percussionist Camelo Romelus. Joe has returned to Michigan (Ann Arbor) and has just released his next album, Planting Gardens, featuring the Faith Project.

Artist’s Statement
"I create music for the benefit of all beings, empowering listeners to become actively engaged in their communities and raising their consciousness with messages of social and environmental justice. Understanding music as an expression of spirit, I write, sing, and perform in order to celebrate life and allow God, my ancestors, and love to sing through me. My music invites listeners to join in this celebration. I have inherited music as a gift and actively nurture its development through study, practice, performance, and life experience. I humbly offer these songs from my heart to the world like a gentle spring thunder shower, watering seeds of compassion, hope, love, understanding, healing, courage, laughter, freedom, clarity, and reconciliation in the hearts of those who choose to listen. I am grateful for all who have watered those seeds within me and who have encouraged me to take risks and share my gifts in open and honest ways."

reviews

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  • deeply healing
    author: Mary Fox Olson

    Thank you -- so much for Planting Seeds of healing and prayer with every note you offer us! Wonderful -- thank you for being ours in the Dharma -- Love, Mary

  • Combines regional folk with quirky humor and multicultural activism
    author: Real Detroit Weekly

    Planting Gardens chronicles Reilly's journey across the Great Lakes state. Its songs were written on the banks of the Detroit River, in the hills of the Huron watershed and on the shores of Lake Michigan. Reilly...seamlessly combines the regional folk of Sufjan Stevens with the quirky humor of Barenaked Ladies and the multicultural activism of Ozomatli.

  • do you want to feel better? then buy this CD
    author: dylan

    It will move you to tears and then lift your heart. In this cynical age, it is so rare to find music in which there is not a single despairing note, not a single one. Every song breathes hope and the possibility of transformation. Please listen to it and be healed.

  • Total Groove!!
    author: Jim Murray

    It is truly a complete life experience from total groove to spiritual experience featuring music, poems, rap, and spoken word.

  • Fantastic!
    author: Kathy Linderman

    I bought this CD for my 8 year old son, who knows (and loves) Joe from Leslie Science Center camps and sing-a-longs. It is wonderful to have music that the whole family can enjoy! The messages are just want we want to be teaching our son: the importance of taking care of the earth, social justice, peace...Thank you Joe!

  • author: Deborah 'Bluewater,' Sweet Water Women

    Your voice, your playfulness, the openness, touching lyrics and the messages- including those from Thich Nhat Hanh- all make for an enjoyable unique CD - Bravo Joseph!!

  • Great Reworking
    author: Shad Engkilterra

    Planting Gardens adds depth and intricacy to some of Joe's older songs. It was great to hear different styles that matched the mood and lyrics of songs that I have heard him perform solo.

  • music that flows through us, calls us closer to who we want and need to be
    author: Charmie Gholson Ann Arbor Observer

    This music and lyrics are clever, poetic, poignant and playful. Joe Reilly blends hip-hop, blues, gospel, world rhythm and traditional American Indian styles. He writes music with wisdom and humility far beyond his years. Reilly zeroes in on something very powerful and sends it out into the room. The first time I heard Planting Gardens, it caught in my chest and stayed there for a long time.

  • simply beautiful
    author: lisa

    Peaceful and uplifting , the kids just love it when we play it in the car, makes everybody happy, makes everybody think about the world we live in

  • The musical details are articulate, spacious and full...very satisfying.
    author: Terry Kay

    Beautiful bloom of a CD. The musical details are articulate, spacious and full...very satisfying. Love the variety and all the different musical influences and musicians plus the exquisite feminine background watercolor vocals. You know...it's a heartsong that includes everyone. Play on.

  • author: Bishop Tom Gumbleton, Archdiocese of Detroit, founder of Pax Chr

    Joe Reilly writes music with his eyes and heart. He sees goodness and possibility where others see evil and gloom. He feels the plight of the poor and downtrodden in his gut and values their humanity. And in some talented and magical way, Joe puts these feelings, hopes and observations to music which connects us not only to the musician but to the subjects of his music. May we be open to the connections, and in the seeing and feeling may we all be better people. I am proud that the St. Leo parish choir played a part in the making of this CD.

  • author: Jim Embry, founder of the Sustainable Communities Initiative

    Open your ears and lay bare your heart...allow these sounds to enter and heal the far reaches of your inner space...so that your spirit can dance in rhythm with the cosmic clock and restore the sacred connections with all our relations.

  • soulfully rhythmic spiritual songs
    author: Ann Arbor Observer

    A collection of enticingly melodic, soulfully rhythmic spiritual songs offering visions of peace, nonviolence, and love within the context of community building.

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