Joe Pug * Baliff * Cali Shaw Band

It's been 4 years since Joe Pug quit his day job as a carpenter, but his remarkable rise in the music
world has been driven by the same hard-worn work ethic. His path has been an unusual one,
which has often challenged the traditional rulebook of the music industry, but even now as he
prepares to release his second album "The Great Despiser", it has always been characterized by
one prevailing idea: Find a way.

After dropping out of college the day before he was to start his senior year, he moved to Chicago
and picked up the guitar he hadn't played since his teenage years. The songs that he wrote would
eventually become the “Nation of Heat EP”, a self-released gem that has gone on to sell over
20,000 copies. It was in those heady early days that the idea was born for a unique promotional
strategy that would launch Pug into the national consciousness. In an increasingly fragmented
and disorganized music industry, it was harder and harder for a new artist to break through the
white noise. With no publicist and no access to radio, Pug decided to recruit his fans to help
spread the word. He took his most popular songs, printed up CDs, and offered to send them
free of charge to anyone who wanted to share his music with their friends. And share they
did. "People requested 2 copies, 5 copies, 10 copies, 20 copies. We'd send them all. We even
covered the postage," he remembers. The impact was immediate and undeniable. "Suddenly
we'd be rolling into towns that we'd never been before and there would be crowds there who
knew the songs. Our fans essentially became like a radio station for us, and they still are. " While
skyrocketing demand eventually forced a switch over to a digital version, the offer remains to this
day at joepugmusic.com, and has been downloaded over 30,000 times.

The momentum attracted the attention of Nashville indie label Lightning Rod Records, who
signed Pug and released his full-length debut "Messenger" in 2010. The album was met with
critical acclaim, with Paste Magazine saying "Unless your surname is Dylan, Waits, Ritter or
Prine, you could face-palm yourself to death trying to pen songs half as inspired as the 10 tracks
on Joe Pug’s debut full-length." It featured plenty of the literate acoustic tracks that he was best
known for, but an electric remake of "Speak Plainly Diana", which was done acoustically on his
first EP, provided some foreshadowing of direction he would later head. He toured incessantly
behind the album, which included appearances at Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and the Newport Folk
Fest as well as tours with Josh Ritter and Levon Helm. A higher profile did nothing to dull his
independent streak, though. He experimented extensively with ticketing his shows directly with
very low service fees, and often none at all. "Our guiding principle has always been: if we take
care of the fans, they’ll take care of us."

In 2011 Pug was lured to Austin, Texas by its storied songwriting tradition. "Chicago is a very
difficult place to leave, especially when it has supported my music to the level that it has. But I
found myself enamored with the contributions that Texas has made to the American songbook
and I had to go see where it was born.” The first album that he wrote there, ironically, would
be recorded in Chicago at Engine Recording Studio with producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse,
Iron & Wine, Califone, etc). In addition to Pug, "The Great Despiser" features various acclaimed
musicians, including Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Langhorne Slim) on piano, organ and marimba,
Califone's Jim Becker on guitar, as well as backing vocals from The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn on
the album’s title track. "With this album, we finally created arrangements that can stand shoulder
to shoulder with the lyrics. It was a real privilege to work with musicians who were able to
further the songs' narratives with their instruments. The songs were written in the same way but
were realized with sharper color."

"The Great Despiser" will be released April 24, 2012 on Lightning Rod Records.