The Junior League Counts on its Friends at Jazz Fest

Joe Adragna of The Junior League, by Greg Miles

As a one-man band most of the time, he needs them for shows and as a sounding board.

Who would have thought the day would come when making classic pop music made you, like, a ham radio operator? A master of an obscure art? Part of a faintly retro club that’s not so retro it’s in again? Joe Adragna of The Junior League is in that situation. On Friday, while Lizzo was playing on Jazz Fest’s Festival Stage, he posted a photo on Facebook of The Monkees’ Live 1967 next to his turntable. “I will never, ever, ever tire of this lp,” the post read, and nothing about it would have made any sense to the core audience of the artist on Jazz Fest’s biggest stage Friday.

In the battle of rock vs. rap, rap won. Music that doesn’t have any hip-hop in its DNA doesn’t stand a chance in the marketplace, and the pop made by The Beatles, their competitors and inheritors now sounds almost quaint. That’s not what The Junior League is going for, but it’s a good framework to appreciate Adragna’s music.

His songs are immediately catchy, smart and appealing, but they’re not ebullient. They’re not frisky puppies frolicking for your attention. They’re one man’s vision, and their good natured quality comes with an undercurrent of acceptance and melancholy. He may not be getting everything he hoped for out of this gig, but he’s smart enough to appreciate what he’s getting, including his first Jazz Fest appearance Sunday at 11:25 a.m. on the Lagniappe Stage.

When he got the call, he let it go to voicemail because he didn’t recognize the number. “I thought it was a telemarketer,” he says, laughing. “I didn’t pick up.”

Essentially, Adragna is The Junior League. He has musicians who play gigs with him, but he doesn’t gig a lot. “I get it,” he says. The clubs are not a lot more enthusiastic about bands playing ’60s influenced pop, though his isn’t quite as retro as that might sound. He loves The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Monkees, but he thinks of the ‘60s as lasting from 1964 to 1974. “Midnight at the Oasis,” “Ventura Highway,” “Be Thankful For What You’ve Got”—that’s a sweet spot for me. But with Graham Coxom (of Blur) on guitar,” he says.

You can hear that on Bridge & Tunnel, his 2021 album. Adragna started work on it in 2020, when he wondered, “Will we ever be allowed out again?” The forced semi-seclusion made him nostalgic for New York City where he grew up, and wrote a four or five songs with that backdrop with the melancholy of COVID, loneliness and separation as a companion.

He played those songs for a friend who suggested that he stick with the NYC thing, and when Linda Pitmon, the drummer for her husband Steve Wynn and The Baseball Project, showed him the photo that became the cover, he had the inspiration for the rest of the album.

He hears Glen Campbell as the musical inspiration on one song, and ‘90s indie pop band The Sunshine Fix for another. “There’s a song, ‘Somewhere in the Morning Light’ that I wanted to sound like Deerhunter meets Graham Coxon” Adragna says. But because the pop tool box is what it is, Adragna’s songs almost can’t be a bummer. There’s almost always a shimmer, a chime, a harmony, a melodic flourish or a surge of energy that surprises and brings a smile. “Library Bar” is about being young, aimless, and day drinking, but the sing-along chorus and wordless vocal counterpoint makes it at least provisionally buoyant.

Adragna makes his music primarily by himself. “I’ve got a little room upstairs where I have my drums set up,” he says. He also has his recording gear there, along with guitars and amps plugged in and ready to when he’s inspired. He was a drummer first, starting at 10 when he played along to Beatles albums. The drums are the instrument he has the most confidence in, but he can play guitar, bass and some keyboards. His Achilles heel is his lead guitar playing. I sound “like someone who doesn’t know how to play guitar trying to play a Dave Davies song,” Adragna says, laughing. You won’t hear it that way.

He’s aware of the limitations of his set-up. It makes it possible for him to work when inspiration hits, and it’s got a good, comfortable vibe, which is something he believes you can hear on a record. When he’s finished, he usually sends his tracks to musician Michael Giblin, who has a number of bands, or Scott McCaughey of The Minus 5, who was also in The Young Fresh Fellows and R.E.M.’s touring band. McCaughey has become a friend over the years, and they share influences and the whole guitar pop challenge. Adragna has played drums on some of his records and McCaughey adds guitars and a final mix to some of Adragna’s.

“He knows where I’m at,” Adragna says. “He’s an incredible arranger.” Adragna does rough mixes of his songs before he sends them off, but he thinks the opportunity is too good to pass up. McCaughey’s experience have given him good ears, and he has gear Adragna doesn’t including stuff that helps him improve the drum sound, something notoriously hard to get right in small spaces for DIY producers.

“I’d be an idiot not to.”

Adragna is working on a new Junior League album and figures he is 60 or so percent done. He has a title for it, Nattering Nabobs, a phrase borrowed from President Richard Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew, who called the media “nattering nabobs of negativism.” The time frame for the reference tracks, as does the tone a title like that foreshadows. Junior League albums always have a little melancholy. Sometimes it’s more pronounced, sometimes it’s less. He thinks of his albums not as a series of discreet projects but as chapters in one long story. “It’s not like I’ve changed a lot,” he says. He can listen to them and tell what he was listening to and what was going on in his life, but there’s a lot of continuity in them.

It’s too easy to trace The Junior League’s tone to being bullied and unpopular growing up on Long Island, but it comes up a couple of times during conversation, so it’s present for Adragna. It also helps him appreciate what he has accomplished and the friends he has, including Giblin, McCaughey, Pitmon, and Jay Ferguson of the Canadian indie pop band Sloan. “I’ve made so many good friends through music,” he says. “I was unpopular. I got bullied a lot, so to have that connection is even more special because I know what it’s like not to have people to talk to.”

In 2029, Joe Adragna appeared on our Christmas music podcast, The Twelve Songs of Christmas, to talk about corporate Christmas music compilations. Scott McCaughey appeared in 2019 to talk about The Minus 5’s Christmas album, Dear December.

The Junior League’s next scheduled appearance is May 20 at Pirogue’s Whiskey Bayou in Arabi.

Joe Adragna, by Greg Miles