“The most important thing: is to create the poetry and music for your own self-development, to make life worth living for you, to inspire others that life is worth living for them - and to earn a living from it if you can. If you can't, do it anyway and do something else to make a living.”

Joe Dolce: Green-Eyed Boy Blues

Joseph "Joe" Dolce is an American-born, Australian singer/songwriter, poet and essayist who achieved fame with his multi-million-selling song, "Shaddap You Face", released under the name of his one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, in 1980. Dolce formed various bands including Headstone Circus. Dolce relocated to Melbourne, Australia in 1978 and his first single there was "Boat People"—a protest song on the poor treatment of Vietnamese refugees—which was translated into Vietnamese and donated to the fledgling Vietnamese community starting to form in Melbourne. His one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, performed in cabarets and pubs with various line-ups including Lin Van Hek as singer/performance artist. He has continued to perform solo shows and with his longtime partner, Van Hek, as part of their music-literary cabaret Difficult Women. Over the last two years Dolce has achieved recognition as a serious poet and essayist winning the 25th Launceston Poetry Cup in Tasmania and having 45 poems and 25 new song-lyrics selected by Les Murray for publication in Quadrant magazine.

(Joe Dolce / Photo © by Trudy Kelder)

He has had poetry, essays and song-lyrics published in Meanjin, island, Contrappasso, The Canberra Times, Little Raven, Cordite, Eye to the Telescope, Carmenta, Journey, Vine Leaves, Divan and Antipodes (USA). His first book of poetry HATBOX was released in 2010. Since 2009, he has been a prolifically published poet in Australia. In 2010, he won the 25th Launceston Poetry Cup at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival. His poems were selected for Best Australian Poems 2014 & 2015. He was the winner of the 2017 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's Health Poetry Prize, for a choral libretto long listed in the same year for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's Poetry Prize and included in the Irises anthology. He longlisted for the 2018 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's Poetry Prize and was included in the Silence anthology. He was Highly Commended for the 2020 ACU Poetry Prize and included in the Generosity anthology. He was selected as the August 2020 City of Melbourne Poet Laureate. Joe Dolce’s new pop-folk-rock album Green-Eyed Boy of the Rain (2024) is a culmination of many years, and in some cases decades, of his unique poetry and music.

Interview by Michael Limnios                      Special Thanks: Joe Dolce & Jay Jota 

How has the music and literature influenced your views of the world? 

Music and literature (and many other things, such as painting, chess, children, cooking and love) have allowed me to go deeper into understanding the real world – much deeper than what we are presented daily in commercialized news and mass media social media experiences. 

For instance, many of the above artforms and activites are also forms of private meditation, done in solitude, which enable one to be content living ‘in one's own skin’ so to speak. 

What moment changed your life the most?

The one I am in at this moment!  

Impossible question to answer in any definitive way. 

There are countless memorable moments – lighthouse moments – that are shining markers along the way. 

A few for me would be: my parents decision to allow me to go to Ohio University in the Southern part of the State where I lived away from home for the first time and learned about life, and possibilities outside of my hometown family, my discovery of guitar and music there, my first successful band The Headstone Circus, the late 60s peace & love movement in Berkeley and Northern California, meeting the late Australian poet Les Murray AO in Australia who encouraged my poetry and lyric writing, meeting and working with my beautifully creative wife of 45 years, Lin van Hek, etc.

”I really miss the lost-and-never-to-be-regained experience of being in a band where several people create something bigger than each individual. And through that, you grown into your mature artistic self. You cannot achieve this working with professional session musicians who are there to be paid and make a living.” (Photo: Joe Dolce, singer, songwriter, poet and essayist with Lin Van Hek, singer, performance artist)

What characterizes your music philosophy and poetry? 

Embracing all styles that excite me and incorporating the good bits into my own work – and being able to identify clearly what parts of these same styles (and, importantly, the creators’ lifestyles!) are not worth learning. Too many artists out there have genius in their work but are unable to translate that into a well-lived creative life. Early fame, and inheritances, are killers.

Sometimes merely a single  guitar phrase or a single song can inspire me to expand my skills. eg Albert King' minimalist guitar playing. 

Other times, as in the case of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and JS Bach, I could spend a whole life immersed in their work with no end in sight.

What is the creative and driving force behind your continuous support for your art?

Art deepens my enjoyment and satisfaction in living day-to-day. Making art - and also appreciating it. 

What do you miss most nowadays from the music of past? 

I miss the musical community I was part of in the late 60s. The culture of the bands – it was all new and exciting for a smalltown Painesville kid. 

I really miss the lost-and-never-to-be-regained experience of being in a band where several people create something bigger than each individual. And through that, you grown into your mature artistic self. You cannot achieve this working with professional session musicians who are there to be paid and make a living.

This ‘surrender’ is only possible when you have somewhat undeveloped artistic egos and are willing to compromise toward something larger than yourself, with little regard for profit. Very similar to religion in some ways.

As you grow into a more mature and stronger artist, you become more insistent on certain standards of professionalism and perfection that you are no longer willing to compromise on with others. This makes you stronger as a solo artist, realizing your own ideas, but also makes it very difficult to form these kind of bands again with that same naivety where you were willing to go along ‘with the flow’ just to keep the band together.

”I look at the late 60s as the Golden Age of Song Lyrics and Pop Music and the first series entry of poetry into music in a commercial way. It had always existed in folk music and the art songs of the 19th century, but Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Donovan and many others brought this back into public awareness in our own time.” (Joe Dolce, American-born, Australian unique poet and musicIan / Photo © by Michelle Dunn)

What are your hopes and fears for the future?

Hopes: To have a balanced and fulfilled family life with Lin van Hek and our kids and a successful and innovative creative life where my songs, cooking, compositions and writing are recognized and supported by others enabling me to continue to earn a comfortable living and take care of myself and my family.

To continue to create work that empowers others to create beauty in their own lives in the same way that the influential artists of my own youth inspired me.

To continue to live in such a way that creates peace in myself, unfolding the possibility to myself, and others, that a harmonious and creative world is achievable without human violence towards each other. I am continually working at this -  as hard as it is sometimes to realize.

Fears: The sudden loss of our youngest daughter Blaise a couple of years ago showed me the fragile threads that hold us all together. One of the blessings of that horrible tragedy – her last gift to us – was to remember to love the ones you still have, every single day, with your whole being. Avoid petty bickering and ‘going to bed mad’ - behaviour where you think  you have all the time in the world to work things out. You don’t. Things can change in an instant.

I have the same fears as everyone else about the world and politics but also take comfort in knowing life can survive so-called extinction events if they happen. We’ve had quite a few in the history of our planet and we are still here. 

What were the reasons that made the 1960s to be the center of artistic, music and literature researches?

I look at the late 60s as the Golden Age of Song Lyrics and Pop Music and the first series entry of poetry into music in a commercial way. It had always existed in folk music and the art songs of the 19th century, but Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Donovan and many others brought this back into public awareness in our own time. 

Unfortunately, all those artists abandoned their real literary gifts, in preference to song creation, in later years, so the challenge is still out there to go further in that pure lyrical direction.

”For instance, many of the above artforms and activites are also forms of private meditation, done in solitude, which enable one to be content living ‘in one's own skin’ so to speak.”

(Photo: Joe Dolce, musician, poet, chef, and writer)

What is the role of artists in today’s society? 

So many types of artists and so many roles even within a single artist. Fundamentally, artists are just ordinary people. There’s plenty of room to use art to create many things from politics, to love stories, to entertainment and to cutting-edge visionary work that can only be understood by a minority in our lifetime. 

I liked JS Bach’s approach: he created his weekly cantatas for the church, his bread-and-butter money, that he did to earn a living and take care of his family – but, at the same time, he also created music for the future: the B-Minor Mass, St Matthew’s Passion, the Goldberg Variations – music that was perhaps only heard once or twice, that the average person of his own time was incapable of understanding. Creating for the present and the future at the same time.

What is the impact of poetry and music on the socio-cultural implications?

Generally poetry and music are forms of entertainment, for the public, and forms of self-discovery for the artists. 

Every now and then an artist breaks through into our cultural consciousness in a major way that changes the culture. 

I consider this the exception to the rule - and not the reason to become an artist or do the work.  

These kind of cultural anomalies can last a week, a year, a decade or for centuries.

Often a completely unknown artist can be the catalyst for another artist to break through. eg the little known American blues musicians of the 40s and 50s influenced the cultural musical game changers of the 60s and 70s, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, any many others. 

The most important thing: is to create the poetry and music for your own self-development, to make life worth living for you, to inspire others that life is worth living for them - and to earn a living from it if you can. If you can't, do it anyway and do something else to make a living.

If you happen to be one of  the fortunate ones that can change the culture with your work, then there are both blessings and curses to that fortune - which we’ve seen over and over again. The bay is filled with artistic shipwrecks. It is twice as dangerous when it happens to the young as they have not had time to learn the pitfalls of fame and fortune or love yet. 

To be a ‘culture changer’ is not something I would particularly wish on anyone; but the artists that can do it, without self-destructing, for as long as possible, are a unique kind of artistic hero.

There is an essential place in this world for both known and the unknown artists.

Joe Dolce - Home

(Joe Dolce /Photo © by Rennie Ellis)