Joe Rian was raised by his adoptive parents in Rock Falls, Illinois, close to the Iowa border, surrounded by farms and manufacturing. The town had a big steel mill, fabricating drive shafts and ingots of steel.
Rian won a guitar signed by Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan from a radio station contest when he was 20. He didn’t want to destroy this beautiful and valuable prize, so his father bought him a guitar that Christmas, that he could thrash if he wanted to. Unfortunately, his mother passed away during the holidays that year, changing the course of his life. He moved back home to work at his dad’s machine shop after the tragedy, and began practicing guitar and writing songs. Rian would eventually get out and attend six different colleges before getting a degree from the University of Chicago, where he’d settle down and call home.
He got a job at renowned Chicago venue Buddy Guy’s Legends and soaked in the pure musicianship on display there every night. He’d get another job at Moosehead Bar that booked big band, jazz and salsa acts seven nights a week. “I just watched the pros do their craft,” says Rian, “and let it rub off on me. I’d get on stage once in a while and play with some of the bigger guys.”
Rian would busk in the summer and make more money than he would at his minimum wage jobs. He cut his teeth in the streets and learned how to entertain a crowd. “James McMurtry would joke that he wasn’t an artist,” says Rian, “but instead that he’s a beer salesman when it came to playing venue shows. I feel that. My job is for people to have fun. I make tavern music for people to dance to, not sad introspective music for listening rooms. I’m always asking myself if I’m owning the room, or what’s the next song that’s going to move you down the line and keep you engaged.”
He moved to the Bridgeport neighborhood in the ’90s next door to Peter “PJ” Christie of Sony Records band Sardina. They became good friends and started an art rock project called Admiral Stereo and the Phantom Third Channel, making music in the vein of The Velvet Underground. His father died in the mid-’90s and Rian began spiraling into depression and drugs.
“I’m adopted already,” says Rian. “Now I’m an orphan, and I’m scared and young. I developed a drug habit that helped me solve my fears — made me feel good. So I battled that, left Chicago to get away from it all, a crash and burn. I needed to relocate and center myself to get healthy.”
Rian put all his stuff in a pickup truck, drove Christie to New Orleans, and then moved himself to Colorado. He spent time learning to play Americana music between Boulder and Vail. He played a festival in Ireland and worked on his first demos. After five years, he moved back to Chicago where he recorded his first EP, Back In Bridgeport (2008), on a four-track in his bedroom with his new band The Additives. They were a four-piece that included piano player Sheila Bertoletti who’d one day become his wife. The Additives also put out their prog meets Americana album Should It End (2009) and did some multi-month touring.
Rian began recording his first solo record in 2013 with members of Bloomington, Indiana, band The Peyton Brothers. He’d drive down with engineer Jaime Gartelos, who’d continue working with Rian throughout his career. They began recording in Bloomington, but quickly found the commute from Chicago to be cumbersome. On top of this, Rian and Bertoletti started a family, had children and moved out of their Bridgeport Chicago apartment into a house. Rian let music go for some years and focused on restoring motorcycles. Someone reached out to him about a sync placement, and he revisited those unmastered Bloomington recordings and fell in love with them again. Rian sold all his motorcycles to fund finishing the album. He went back to Bloomington and recorded the second half of the record with Gartelos that became Switchyard Sessions (2019).
“It takes me a long time to put out a record,” says Rian. “I want to make sure everything’s lined up and I’ve put enough money aside to put out a record the right way. My neighbor got me into crypto and NFTs during the height of their popularity, and that’s how I funded Midwest Boy. Jamie [Gartelos] and I built a studio in my garage, and that’s where we recorded it.”
Midwest Boy (2023) is essentially a double EP with the same songs recorded with a full band, and its equivalent solo acoustic version. It’s an album about growing up as a country kid, bailing hay and other farm chores, his life working in factories, and a drinking father’s morning hangover and how it affected the family.
Rian and Gartelos recorded Think Yer In Luv in his garage studio over six sessions with the goal of getting the best live take from the four-piece band of each song for the track’s base. “We’d take a crack at a couple of songs each recording day,” says Rian. “Sometimes the band is hot and on, sometimes it just isn’t working. We were always hunting for that perfect mojo for the take.”
Think Yer In Luv is a fun heartland rock album designed to make you feel happy as it touches on alt-country, blues-rock and rhythm and blues tinged rock n roll. It’s a sincere album, but doesn’t take itself too seriously. It wants you to come along for a joyful ride. Each song is like a little snippet of one of the best days of your life.
“As an adopted kid, we really want to be loved and find acceptance,” says Rian. “I felt abandoned even though my mom and dad were great. Still something was inherently missing. I crave that acceptance. As I’m getting older, I want to make serious art and leave something for my kids to remember me. That 1978 Yoshimura replica GS 750 race bike that I restored is awesome, but they’d have no idea. Now, look at that animated thing dad did, or look at this collection of songs and poems. Art is something that lasts and is meaningful. Herman Melville died penniless and was a joke in the literary world, but Moby Dick is a classic 100 years later. All I can do is put my best work out there and see where it lands.”
Think Yer In Luv delves into slice-of-life tales of Americana, whether you’re falling in love for the first time, fishing with your dad, taking a wild road trip with your friends, or starting a new life with a family. It’s an album worthy of your time and energy, especially if you’re feeling down and could use a little pick-me-up. It’s the sort of album that your dad would be listening to while working in the garage as the kids play in the yard. There’s an idealism that Rian hits with each song to lift spirits and remind us that we should pay attention to those special moments in each of our lives.