Joie Calio Plays Two-Hour Show at NJ House Concert

Joie Calio, a Seattle-based singer-songwriter-guitarist, performed a two-hour solo acoustic set at a house concert in Medford, New Jersey on Saturday night. It was a fantastic night filled with soulful, gorgeous music, and complemented by a bass-shaped cake.

Dada fans know Calio as that band’s longtime bassist. Calio confirmed that night, in fact, that Dada is working on a new album and plan to tour on it later this year. But he also has a side project called X Levitation Cult and continues to write and record solo material. Much of Saturday’s show was devoted to XLC’s debut CD, Happiness in Hell, which is filled with bittersweet lyrics, sweetly sung. And Calio, the co-lead singer of Dada, ably threw in a few Dada songs too, notably “Dorina,” “Agent's Got No Secret,” and "Rise."

The long set included several songs from his 2004 solo album, Complications of Glitter, including “About Monkeys and God,” “You’re Not My Sunshine,” and the title track. He also played a few covers, notably “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and “Rockin in the Free World.”

The crowd of about 40 also got treated to a new song he’d written just a few days earlier following his car accident while driving in the snow. The song, “Roundabout” is his most bluesy one yet and featured slick slide guitar. It was extra appropriate that night as one of his biggest fans there found herself getting into a car accident on the way to the show. She made it though, dedicated fan she is.

Our evening’s hosts, Michelle and Tim, had made a chocolate cake modeled after Calio’s red bass (see photo). It was both a work of art and delicious and it enthralled Calio who seemed to be thinking about it throughout the show.

Calio was very friendly and mingled with the crowd after the show. He learned that my boyfriend and I were the mystery couple hanging in the band’s room after the New Year’s Eve Dada show in Philly. (At the time, we were ensconced in a long conversation with Phil, the drummer). And, we learned how the band derived its name, a cool, but not brief, story.

According to Calio, at a party one night, he was showing some intoxicated folks the levitation trick, one involving a few people using just their fingertips to lift someone. Guests were awed and he wound up getting requests at future parties to do the trick. Soon, he found himself at the doctor with a bone chip on his knuckle. When he told the doctor how it happened, the doc prescribed this advice: “No more levitation!” So the “levitation cult” idea was born from all of the requests, but he wanted a third word in his band name. Unsure what it would be, he kept writing “x” before “levitation cult” as he pondered a cool first word. Finally, one day, his producer said he liked the “x” so that stuck.