Nashville City Paper, December 20, 2005

Pagetta crafts salute to Nashville neighborhood

By Ron Wynn, rwynn@nashvillecitypaper.com

Even when he was playing in Greenwich Village clubs, singer/songwriter Joe Pagetta was both familiar with and a huge fan of the Nashville music community. He closely studied the successful impact that being headquartered here seemed to have on such performers as John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett.

After moving here seven years ago, Pagetta slowly and steadily developed friendships and a local following, and his current release, Joywood, reflects the ongoing influence of Music City in his compositions. He plays Family Wash, participating in the Short Sets program alongside Jennifer Nicely, Jubal Lee Young and host Cole Slivka.

"I don't want to say that there aren"t fine songwriters in New York and New Jersey because that isn"t true," Pagetta said, acknowledging his admiration for Nashville songwriters. "But the thing that I"ve found most different since coming to Nashville has been that the focus is first and foremost on the song itself. Personal image, which is really important in New York, doesn"t matter here nearly as much as the quality of the writing.

"I"ve found a lot of great writers here that aren"t necessarily writing for Music Row. Songwriting in Nashville is both an art form and a craft, and working here has made do some re-evaluation in terms of my own approach. You look at songs differently, you ask yourself if every song should necessarily follow a verse-chorus, verse-chorus, bridge and out setting. Someone like Lucinda Williams " who writes a lot of songs that don"t even have bridges, they just flow straight through to a resolution and are fantastic " they really make you think about what you"re doing with your lyrics and your structure."

Joywood shows that Pagetta has learned well from his time here. The 13-track CD was produced by George Marinelli, an original member of Bruce Hornsby and the Range and a longtime Bonnie Raitt sideman, and features his emphatic, alternately tender and assertive leads doing a mix of pop and rock-flavored numbers. He's aided by such guest stars as Dave Jacques, Paul Griffth, Dave Pomerory, Brian Barnett, Cole Slivka and Kim Carnes. It pays homage to the East Nashville neighborhood where much of the music was written, and continues the direction forged by Pagetta on such past projects as the EP recollections of maybeville and Small Worlds.

"I"ve just begun work on a bunch of new songs and hope to have another project completed sometime next year," Pagetta answered in response to questions about future developments. "One thing that working in this environment does is stimulate you to keep writing and always striving to do more and better songs."