Joey Cape
with support from Jose Prieto of MakeWar

Joey Cape hits the road performing songs from his latest release, A Good Year To Forget, additional cuts from his solo catalog and Lagwagon classics.

PLEASE NOTE: Artist is requiring all attendees of this event to have received a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to entering the venue OR be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. In attending the event, you certify and attest that you and all individuals in your party attending the event will abide by the following regulations: 

All fans will provide printed proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to entering the venue, OR will be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (at least two weeks after final dose) at the time of the event and provide proof of vaccination – either the original vaccination card or a printed copy of the vaccination card. Fans with a valid medical note preventing vaccination are required to take a COVID-19 diagnostic test within 72 hours before the event and will provide proof of negative result prior to entering the venue. 

The time Joey Cape spent with his parents over the past year didn’t just allow him to reconnect with them; it also afforded him time to write songs. Because recording studios were shutting down everywhere due to COVID, Cape got creative and turned the “cabana-type thing” he was living in into a home recording studio. “I just decided that if I was going to make a record like this, I should make it in full isolation,” he says. “I have a Murphy bed, so every morning I’d push up the bed, pull out the studio stuff, have some coffee or tea, get out my little chair and off I went.” Despite Cape’s isolation while writing A Good Year To Forget, his fans will hear much more than just a voice, guitar and bass on this record. Indeed, he ended up playing a plethora of instruments when recording the album, including electric and lap steel guitars, piano, mandolin and drums.

“I almost made a solo record alone,” he laughs. “But that great fun you have in collaborating with other people in the studio is just priceless. There’s always something positive you can find-something of redeeming value in an experience where there’s a struggle of suffering. I played everything because I reached a point where I realized that’s something I’d have to hold onto if it was going to be the record I wanted and set out to make. It forced things to be very basic, but I’m okay with that.”

A Good Year To Forget seeks to find the positive in the negatives to become a record of pure triumphant beauty. Hushed and haunted, there’s an almost Nick Drake-ian poignancy to these 12 songs, especially on the wistful The Poetry Of Our Mistakes. Come Home, a song inspired directly by the words his mother had spoken on the phone, is a beautifully melancholic, slightly folky tune full of hurt and longing that also manages to be reassuring at the same time. Elsewhere, Under the Doormat is a harrowingly beautiful ode to a lost love of the past. Check Your Ego at the Door is a ballroom lament steeped in timelessness, while Fictional is a scornful take on the false images and lives that proliferate on social media.

“By any standard, 2020 was a bad year,” Cape says. “This record has truly distilled my own experience of the past year, what I’ve learned and what I’ve felt. It feels right and I’m very proud of the result.”