‘Radio Waves’: Joan Osborne plays The Rio Theatre, releases new album  

Joan Osborne’s new album “Radio Waves” is a collection of recordings the singer discovered while cleaning out her closets during early pandemic lockdowns. These 13 songs are favorites from live performances at radio stations by Osborne and her band between 1995 and 2012. The mixes are stellar and highlight Osborne’s powerful vocals and energized band.

“Radio Waves” is set for release on Feb. 22 and features an array of original and cover versions of Blues and Soul tunes like Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everybody is a Star” performed at KROQ in 2002, Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today” (Radio Bremen, Germany, 2002) and Osborne’s 1995 hit song “One of Us” (Dutch Radio, 2001) which garnered three Grammy nominations. Osborne’s last studio album was the politically-infused Trouble and Strife in 2020.

Joan Osborne and band will be rocking the Rio Theatre at 8 p.m. Jan. 21. Proof of vaccination or negative PCR test within 72 hours and a valid photo ID will be required for entrance as well as a mouth/nose covering. Joan Osborne recently spoke with The Sentinel from her home in Brooklyn, New York.

Souls and psyches

Q: “I hope you’re doing as well as possible through this pandemic.”

A: “Thankfully, everybody in our household is healthy. We’re doing a lot of home testing before we see anyone and just trying to be as safe as possible,” Osborne told the Sentinel. “This whole thing with COVID is like being in an abusive relationship. You know, just when you think you’re out and it’s over, you get pulled back into it again. It’s kind of insane.”

Q: “It’s been a particularly difficult time for performing artists.”

A: “There’s the side of it where you want to be as safe as possible, but you also have to live your life,” Osborne said. “We understand that live music is important for people’s souls and their psyches. It’s not just me and my living, it’s about what live music can do for communities and individuals. It’s an important thing. We’re going to be as safe as we possibly can be. But we also understand that there are reasons to tour and have live music.”

Live music rituals

A: “It’s become clear that being in a group of people at a performance – dancing and listening – is almost a ritual that people are really missing.”

Q: “There’s a mental health crisis happening right now because we are so cut off from each other,” Osborne explained. “And because we’re not having these rituals where we have connections with people. Just getting into a room with a bunch of strangers – your fellow humans not in your family or your pod – and enjoying some experience together; that’s important for the social fabric. Especially in a time when people have been pitted against each other so much by political forces whether you’re on the Left or on the Right.

“As they say, there’s nothing that unites people like a common enemy,” Osborne continued. “And defeating this pandemic could have been that common enemy that would’ve brought us together as a society, because we’ve been divided for many years. This could have been a sort of balm and instead it’s thrown more fuel on this fire. It’s giving people yet another reason to hate on each other and feel more polarized.

“We’re such a divided society and live music is one of the few opportunities that you have to just be with people and not look at them as their politics and whatever tribe they belong to. But just as fellow human beings enjoying an experience,” Osborne said. “I think music has a job to do right now. We don’t want people to get sick with this virus. But there’s also a risk to our social fabric and our mental health by just completely cutting the arts out of our lives.”

Q: “I love the album and you sound great on these recordings.”

A: “Thank you so much. During the pandemic, of course, we were forced to stay home. So, I ended up going through a lot of my closets I’ve been meaning to clean out for the last seven years. And I discovered all of these old tapes, CDs and files on my computer from the many radio visits I’ve made over the years,” Osborne shared. “Pretty much every time we go on tour, we visit many different radio stations and you go in, talk to the DJs and play your latest music. So, I discovered all of these recordings that had been handed to me by radio engineers as we were walking out the door. I’d be like, ‘Thanks,’ and then just put it in a box somewhere. I found all these great versions of the songs we’d done over the years and it really started to take shape.”

Womanly hips

A: “You set up your own record label Womanly Hips. Did you do that so you could produce your music without being controlled by corporate labels?”

Q: “It was 1991 when I started Womanly Hips Records. It was really just because I was in this position where I was touring all around the Northeast and we were starting to develop a serious audience and a fairly large following,” Osborne recalled. “Everywhere we’d go people would say, ‘I want to buy your record.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t have a record. Maybe I should get on that!’ It wasn’t like there were major labels beating down my door to try to sign me. So, I went to the library and bookstores and got these books about how to put out your own record. I just kind of DIY’d it. There was a big tradition of that with the punk bands in the ’70s and so there was a real precedent. I really picked up lessons from those people. I did my own version of it.”

Q: “Punk was the music that hit me when I was 17 years old in 1979. Was it important to you?”

A: “It was very important as an example of; you don’t need somebody’s permission to make music a big part of your life,” Osborne said. “You need to put the work in and have ideas that you want to spread. But you don’t have to be chosen by someone else. You can make it happen on your own and I think that whole DIY aesthetic was very important to me and a lot of the other groups that came out of the scene that I came out of. You don’t have to wait for somebody to choose you, you can just do it yourself. That was a real sort of freeing, liberating idea.”

Spiritual music

Q: “Your vocals are powerful. You’re sort of wailing on “Saint Teresa.” And “Shake Your Hips” goes into this mild chaos where you’re holding the notes for a long time.”

A: “’Saint Teresa’ came from a 1995 visit to a Los Angeles radio station (KCRW). The wailing quality that you’re talking about, it’s very much because I was listening to a lot of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He was a Pakistani singer of qawwali style music, which is a spiritual music of Pakistan and India,” Osborne said. “It’s very much about reaching this ecstatic state and getting you closer to God in the same way that American gospel music is. I fell in love with that and was experimenting a little bit with those techniques in my own voice. ‘Saint Teresa’ has these lyrical ideas of spirituality and of a connection to the ecstatic. Yeah, it’s one of my favorites on the record.

“We did a Blues record called ‘Bring it on Home’ and ‘Shake Your Hips’ is from that. I’ve been so fortunate to work with incredible musicians throughout my career. That track in particular really lets you see the power of this great band,” Osborne continued. “It’s like hopping on a Harley Davidson or something! (laugh) You have this amazing power behind you and it really lifts you to places that you would never have gotten to before as a singer. And that’s really wonderful to go back and revisit too.

“I also love a couple of demos that I filed away and had completely forgotten about. There’s a Toshi Reagon song called ‘Real Love.’ I sang along to a beatbox and layered some vocals on top of it and was going to get back to it later and never did,” Osborne said. “And I re-discovered that. It’s like looking back at old photographs.”

Q: “It’s wonderful that you’ve had such a long and successful career.”

A: “I appreciate that I’m fortunate enough to have been doing this for thirty-plus years for my career,” Osborne said. “It’s a rare privilege to be able to do music in this way. I really owe it all to the audiences and the fans who continue to come to performances. It’s not something that I take for granted. Every time we come to a town, we give 110% and we want to let people know that we very much appreciate them. We’re aware that we wouldn’t be here without them.”

Listen to this interview with Joan Osborne at noon Thursday on “Transformation Highway” with John Malkin on KZSC 88.1 FM / kzsc.org.