This Friday the Shillelagh Club welcomes the incredibly talented Joe Taino to play our Happy Hour celebration for the first time. Joe is a veteran guitarist and has been doing what he does for a long time. There are many great guitarists out there, but Joe has a “sound” that is uniquely his own. Joe says that he became interested in music after watching the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night, when he was nine years old and growing up in Puerto Rico. He got his first guitar when he was eleven and says that he started learning “everything he could get this hands on.” His early influences were the Beatles, Elvis, The Monkeys, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Santana, to name a few.
“I got hooked on the Blues, after hearing Eric Clapton’s Sleepy Time and Sitting on Top of the World,” Joe says, “and from that point on I did nothing but play records and listen to English speaking stations where they played rock and roll, jazz, rhythm and blues by artists like B.B. King, Albert King, Freddie King, Etta James, T-Bone Walker and Taj Mahal.”
By the early 1980s Joe was doing well enough to open shows for artists like, The Allman Brothers, Johnny Winter, John Myall, Robin Trower, and Ruth Brown. Joe has frequently toured Europe, Japan, Brazil and the Caribbean, and can be seen at the best Blues Clubs as well as the major Blues Festivals. Joe has also recorded for many commercials including Dial Soap, 7-UP and Schafer Beer. Joe now plays continuously in the tri-state area and is currently promoting his new CD, “Incognito”, which he has recently released.
