Jeff Niesel, former CLE Scene editor, interviews Joe

Awhile back in October 2010, Jeff Niesel, former music editor of Cleveland Scene Magazine interviewed Joe for a piece in the magazine to promote the release party for “Crowe Valley Blues”. What was actually printed was a small excerpt of a larger piece. Here is the full interview, which was conducted via email.

Jeff: Tell me about the band’s origins. When did you first form and how did you all meet?

Joe: Tomasz (guitar), Erin(bass), and I met in 2003 while playing in a band with Matt Shack of Pale Creation. The genesis of Venomin James happened when Tomasz brought in some demo songs he wrote that were more in the vein of Black Sabbath, Karma To Burn, or Kyuss than what we were playing with Matt.

During this time, we were auditioning drummers and vocalists, until we finally found Jim Meador, who became the vocalist and lyric writer. We recorded demos of the songs we had, and started handing CDRs out & posting them online, to recruit a permanent drummer. We started playing shows in 2006 with Brandon on the drums, until Jared Koston answered one of our ads and became drummer. With Jared, we worked up all the songs we had, recorded them ourselves at Supernatural Sound (our studio), and released “Left Hand Man” ourselves in Sept. 2007.

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