Joe Kane watched the mountains of east county shrink in his rear view mirror as he headed west, toward the ocean. “I have to write about this place,” he thought.
That was the moment of inspiration, but there have been many others since he moved to Coronado almost two decades ago.
“My youngest son is 17 now,” Kane said. “Every time we come across that bridge into Coronado, where you can see it all laid out in front of you – you can see the ocean, you can see the [Silver] Strand, you can see the bay. I tell my son to look at it and take it all in because this is a little corner of paradise.”
Kane’s new album, “Coronado Gold,” paints a soulful portrait of life in Southern California, winding lyricism and melody intro a strong-evoked sense of place. The album dropped in May, and is available on major streaming platforms.
For Kane, the project is a culmination of a lifelong dream.
“Music was always my first love,” he said. Kane spent nearly a decade in a band prior to joining the U.S. Navy. When he retired in 2020 after nearly 27 years of service, he saw his guitar sitting in a corner.
“It’s like it was waiting for me,” Kane said. “It was time to re-engage with my original passion.”
Although he’d taken a hiatus from performing, Kane never stopped songwriting. He used his GI Bill to enroll in a one-year sound engineering program, where he could hone the skills of audio engineering and recording, and set a goal of releasing a complete album by the end of May 2023.
“It almost didn’t happen,” Kane said, “because first of all, when you start off on any type of journey like this, there can be a lot of self-doubt. It’s unfamiliar territory and it’s easy to think maybe the project is too ambitious.”
To get past that wall, Kane told himself, essentially, to just do it. And he did.
“Every culture, every civilization, every tribe in every single part of the world has music – you can’t escape it,” Kane said. “There’s something really fundamental to it.”
After years of solo creative pursuits – not only in songwriting, but also in his career as a journalist and photojournalist for the Navy – one of the most enjoyable aspects of producing an album was tapping into that universality through collaborations.
Synergistic work is chief to the music industry, so while Kane wrote and performed for all vocal and some instrument tracking, he also included recordings from musicians in three countries and five U.S. states.
“It’s just mind-boggling to me; there’s so much talent out there,” Kane said. “People love to play music and if you can find them, you can create something really beautiful with almost no budget. Of course, you have to learn; you have to stay dedicated, but it’s amazing that people just want to express what music does to us. It lights up our souls.”
Working with other musicians elevated his songs in a way he never imagined, Kane said. Although it was a struggle to relinquish control of something so intimate as a song of his own composition, seeing peers bring their own interpretation to tracks was worth it.
Now that he’s reached his goal of releasing an album, Kane is considering his future. He will continue to pursue music, but he is also a painter – he created the album’s cover art – and has his other interests and relationships to pursue.
It’s the curse of being an artist. He wants to create; he wants to live to draw inspiration for his work; he wants to be around loved ones. There’s just always so much to do. But at least he’s always busy.
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