Homegrown Indie Pop

Joe Adragna and The Junior League’s melodic songs

BY BRETT MILANO

Any talk with Junior League mastermind

Joe Adragna is bound to come around to the glories of classic pop. He’s been immersed in that world since he heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the radio at age four, and his knowledge of pop’s back pages informs his savvy as a songwriter. Name a deep track by the Monkees or the Cyrkle and he can probably sing you the chorus hook, and then he might go off and write one of his own.

The trick is how he channels all those hooks in his head and come out with songs that may evoke a particular mood or era but are undeniably his. “Because I’m not as good as anything I listen to, it’s always going to sound like me,” he deadpans. “I wish I could say how the process works, but I truly have no idea. When I’m messing around with a song, it’s like being a kid, the way it felt when you pretend to play. You’re shooting for a target in your head, but you miss that and wind up hitting something else. Trying to get somewhere and wherever you end up, it winds up being you.”

Junior League’s Jazz Fest appearance is notable on two counts: It gets some homegrown indie pop into the Fest, something that doesn’t happen often enough. And it marks a live appearance for a band that doesn’t play out that often. This will in fact be the first Junior League show since the band played the Circle Bar, about a week before COVID hit. On record it’s largely a one-man operation with various friends pitching in, but the Fest show will feature a full band including members of like-minded bands: Lee Barbier of the Myrtles, DC Harbold of Clockwork Elvis and Bipolaroid,

Liam Catchings of Barisal Guns, and Keith Simoneaux of Thoughts of Mary.

Hailing from the New York area, Adragna left the band he was playing with there and moved to New Orleans in 2000 when his wife took a job locally. Not being drawn so much to characteristic New Orleans music, he fell in with bands who were more into the garage and psychedelic side of things—most often playing drums in Bipolaroid and Clockwork Elvis. But it all came together for him the night the Minus Five—the spinoff band led by Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and Peter Buck (R.E.M.) played the House of Blues. He wound up making friends with both and taking them around to buy records at the nearby Magic Bus, and the show proved to be a life-changer.

“At the time I didn’t really know anybody here and didn’t have much of anything going on. I did have a bunch of songs that I’d written over the last couple of years and since I could play a bit of everything myself, that’s what I did—kind of doing it McCartney II style. After New York I lived in Florida for a while, and nobody ever came around to play. So, when the Minus Five came to New Orleans I was really excited to see a band with so many great pop/rock songs.” He also worked up the gumption to introduce himself after the show. “I had a couple of drinks at the Irish pub [Kerry Irish Pub] near the HOB [House of Blues] because I was feeling so awkward. But they were great, and that night I went home and decided I was going to record all these songs I had written. And it was an important night for me because Scott’s been a friend ever since.”

McCaughey became one of the musical friends who contribute to Junior League albums, but they remain to large extent a one-man, multi-overdub operation. “I basically come in with an idea of what I want to do. I’ll put down a guitar track and work with ProTools at home. I’ll have, for lack of a better word, a vibe in mind. After I’ve put down as many instruments as I can, I’ll go to friends and say ‘Hey, check this out, what do you think?’ They may take it in a direction that you don’t expect.” The most recent album, Bridge & Tunnel, came partly out of a wave of nostalgia for New York; the songs mix ’60s ambiance with a bit of the CBGB era, with lyrics nodding back to Studio 54 and to Andy Warhol’s Factory. “I’d written a few songs that were New York-centric, and a couple of friends suggested I use that as a backdrop through the record; that spurred me on to write a few more.” Which meant calling on his own teenaged dreams of what he might find there: “I got the idea of a suburban character who always dreamed on the big city, heaving-about place like 54. I remember going in and finding the stores where you could buy used Levis and vinyl bootlegs—everything seemed possible.”

Adragna’s also become a full-fledged member of the Minus Five, touring and recording alongside their rotating cast of indie-pop luminaries (the last album Stroke Manor included him, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn and his partner Linda Pitmon, and Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker alongside Buck and McCaughey); some of the above have also been on his records. It’s a loose arrangement, he says: “We’ve done a few dates here and there, and whenever Scott needs me, I’m there.”

But like many good things in life, it always comes back to the Beatles—specifically the thrill of hearing the above song for the first time. “That was it, I could not stop singing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. We had Beatles cake toppers that my parents got me at Carvel’s Ice Cream. I’d shut the blinds in my bedroom and move them around to the Beatles at Hollywood Bowl album.” The Fabs also inspired him to start playing—first on drums, then he picked up guitar, bass and keys—and drew him ever deeper into the well of pop from that era and beyond. The Monkees are another fave rave; he’s even played in a Monkees tribute band called Missing Links with some Junior League pals.

“I do listen to other things; I grew up with the Smiths and R.E.M. Sometimes I’m looking through the prettiness of a Beatles song filtered through the liveliness of Graham [of Blur]

Coxon’s guitar playing. Of course, everything you filter through yourself is going to sound different. But I’ll always love melodic songs that last from two to four minutes.” O