Jerry Joseph - By The Time Your Rocket Gets to Mars (2016)

“I told my 5 year old I was worried about his dream of being an astrophysicist and going to Mars. I thought it was a long trip away from me and a dangerous trip and didn't think I wanted him to go. He replied, ‘Oh papa, you'll be in heaven a long time before I get to Mars,’ a sobering thought for my 54-year-old self," Jerry Joseph recalls. “I was on my way to Afghanistan to bring musical equipment and teach kids to play guitar and do a couple shows and I was having a difficult time leaving my own children for a long and sketchy trip.”

In 2014, Jerry Joseph headed to Afghanistan to volunteer as a teacher at an underground co-ed rock school. With thoughts of family on his mind and the backdrop of Kabul, Joseph began to write what would become the songs of By The Time Your Rocket Gets To Mars. “There's a lot of downtime in Kabul hanging around in walled courtyards listening to the daily call to prayers and American Blackhawk helicopters so I started writing. My point was not to write ‘war’ songs. I wanted to write about magic and God and humans being human.”

Joseph has been called the “the Anthony Bourdain of touring musicians” (Marquee Magazine). Like Bourdain, Joseph is drawn to far-flung, under-explored locales, and has spent the past several years touring in destinations like Lebanon, Iceland, Cambodia and Israel. Music and global politics came together for him early, the grandson of Lebanese, Syrian and Irish Catholic immigrants, surfing the beaches, playing in reggae and rock bands and spinning singles by The Clash while growing up in La Jolla, California and Wellington, New Zealand.