It’s time for another Featured Artist! At Songcast, we’re always looking for new ways to help promote YOUR music. Check out this week’s Spotlight interview with Joe Gallagher Jr:

What’s your first musical memory?
My first musical memory is entering a smoke filled room in my grandmother’s house where I found my uncle Robert and 4 hippie friends jamming away on their guitars to some old Grateful Dead tunes.

What artist inspires you?
What artist inspires me? Currently, for me, I’m amazed by Shinedown. His vocals are a force to be reckoned with, the songwriting is fantastic and they’ve made astounding breakthroughs musically.

What’s your latest track or album?
My latest track is called “Bullets.” It’s one of six songs being released come Christmas 2012 on a ep entitled “Warfare, Freedom and Sky Lights.” The song is about taking adversity and rising above it, pushing through, turning negatives from other people into positives that make me sing “situations come and I’ll be standing on top of the world”

What song or album do you HATE?
I HATE cookie cut, printed and manufactured singers who get classified as artists but can’t write to save their lives.

What’s a song or album everyone should be listening to right now?
Black Keys “El Camino” is by far one of the best albums I have ever come across. I love how engaged I become within the first 10 seconds of track one. The rest of the album just flows from one track to the next, saying everything it needs to say and then some.

What profession would you choose if you couldn’t choose music?
If I couldn’t do music, I would be an international, covert operational, multilingual spy with special skills such as sword fighting, booby-trapping and wall climbing by way of grappling hook.

Tell us more about your local scene.
My local scene is really not that bad. I got New Haven a half hour south and Hartford a half hour north and plenty of small bars to play in between. New Haven is where I play mostly, places like Toads and Stella Blues are my favorite spots.

As a performer, what would be your ‘perfect’ live experience?
My perfect live performance would take place at Bonnaroo in Tennessee and I’d be looking out to a sea of people who are holding up lighters and who aggressively throw glow sticks into the crowd.

What aspect drew you to the particular genre of music that you now perform/write?
At first, I was drawn to hip hop and reggae. This was before I could really play, sing or write songs. Then I got into country because of the deep emotion felt in most country songs but it wasn’t edgy enough for me so I then turned to alternative and started fusing all the influential genres together to create my own sound.

Share one personal event in your life that greatly influenced a song/album that you have created during your musical career.
The album I’m currently working on has been derived from a multitude of experiences but the heaviest impact on this album was probably my decision to stop drinking and using drugs. I’m not saying that this album is “about” quitting my substance abuse but because I joined AA, I was able to move forward in parallel to my true potential. The album is about the struggle, the fights and the animosity . It’s about the liberation, freedom and the courage. It’s about seeing through a process from beginning to end without giving up.

A big thanks to Joe Gallagher Jr for speaking with us this week! Be sure to check out Joe on his website and Facebook.  If you’d like to be featured in an upcoming interview, shoot us an email with your name and SongCast user ID and we’ll get in touch.