FREE FROM SIN

It was 2008 when Joe Altier came to a massive crossroad in his life. He had enjoyed international success with a band he decided to quit, Brand New Sin. His father died. He broke up with his girlfriend. He was 34 years old with nothing to show for it. No car, no money, nothing. Altier felt relieved but at the same time could only think, “Oh, shit. What the fuck am I gonna do now?” He tossed around the typical ideas: go back to school or use his existing degrees to pursue a career in education or audio engineering. “Music is what I do,” he thought to himself then and, incredibly, it’s exactly what he does now. Though he doesn’t go by Joe Altier when he plays; much of Syracuse probably recognizes him as Just Joe.

Altier, originally from Central Square, has been hooked on music since he can remember. His mother, Clista, played piano and taught him to read and play when he was 5 years old. “I was reading music probably before I could read words at that time,” Altier says. “It was always a hobby, an obsession. But it was always like, ‘You’re not supposed to do that. What are you, crazy? Get a real job.’” While attending St. Fisher College in Pittsford, Altier played inside linebacker and graduated with degrees in history and secondary education. He graduated in 1997 and went on to obtain a degree in audio engineering at the Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts in Maryland. He hoped the latter degree would help him gain entrée to the music business, but he still found himself lacking in confidence and experience.

Things changed in 2001. Syracuse metal band Godbelow was looking for a new lead singer, and Altier came in for an audition. Founding member Brian Azzoto, more commonly called Slider, was in the group at the time. “A mutual friend told me to make sure we didn’t pick anybody until we heard his friend, Joe Altier,” Slider says. “We had him come down, he started singing and I was like, ‘We’re in big trouble because we’re not letting this guy go and we’ll never play Godbelow music ever again because that’s just not his deal.’ He doesn’t scream, he’s got a deep voice, but not that gravelly, dark voice that Godbelow was looking for. But it was like, ‘Man, this cat can sing and I think we can tailor our stuff to accommodate him.’ And that’s what we did.”

With Altier as their new front man, the band took on a new moniker as well: Brand New Sin. Before they even played a live show, the band finished an album with Now or Never Records out of New Jersey. By their fifth show, Altier and BNS were playing at Manhattan club CBGB’s and soon the New England MetalFest, with a prime Friday night slot on the main stage. A few weeks after that they were showcasing for agents at the South by Southwest festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, before going on tour with Motorhead.

“My story was a lot different than most,” Altier admits. “People say, ‘Man, I was in tons of bands for years,’ but I got lucky and walked right into a great bunch of guys that already had interest {within the industry} and then we kinda went to the next level. It wasn’t like millions of dollars and limos and blow and hookers and things like that right out of the gate, but it was cool to put that first record out in June of 2002, and then we spent the next year and a half road-doggin’ it on tour with Motorhead and bands like Fu Manchu, Biohazard, Black Label Society, Saliva, Breaking Benjamin, Clutch and Kittie.”

When the band was home, it practiced six or seven days a week, typically from noon until 8 p.m. “We worked our asses off,” Altier says. “Writing and writing and rehearsing and drinking a lot of beer while we did it.”

With the long hours also came, naturally, the lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. “We all had our hair down to our asses, tattoos and we kind of had a reputation of being bad asses,” Slider says. “We destroyed dressing rooms and smashed shit and did stuff like that.”

But the fast success wasn’t secure. Now or Never Records went under in 2003 and the owner had to sell his stable of bands to other labels. Most went to Century Media, a worldwide metal label based in Germany with offices on almost every continent. Although Century expressed interest in Brand New Sin, the band instead shifted to a subsidiary of Sony called Bardic Records. Then, in March 2004, Slider was asked to leave the group, leaving Altier without a songwriting partner and a best friend.

Studio Blues

The label was looking for a hit and despite the 60 or 70 tunes BNS wrote and demo’d, none met Bardic’s standards even after months of trying. Label executives kept prom-ising band members that they’d get in the studio, keeping them out of steady jobs and without steady income.

Altier was married, although he was later divorced in 2004, and others in the group had significant others who helped them navigate the stressful months with Bardic. “We basically scrimped and saved and tried to get every bit of scratch we could,” Altier says. “If I needed a pair of sneakers, my mom would look at them and be like, ‘You need a new pair of sneakers. . . badly.’ I didn’t have $30 to throw at something like that. But I was living my dream.”

After a year passed, the band called up an old manager from Now or Never to check in and see if Century Media might still be interested. Luckily, they were and the ball once again started rolling.

The band spent most of the years from 2005 to 2008 on the road. They released two records and an EP, but returned to Syracuse with little to show for it financially. “When you come home after two to three months on the road, six weeks, seven weeks, whatever it was, we had enough money to get from town to town, but when we came home there wasn’t any money to go around between the five of us,” Altier says. “Plus our road crew we had to pay. We were the last ones to get paid. Managers and labels, they all get paid first.”

Although they came back poor, the band did come back accomplished. They were asked by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to record wrestler The Big Show’s theme song, which still plays every time he comes into the ring. They also landed a small background role in the 2003 movie School of Rock with Jack Black and had songs and music videos featured on cable TV channels MTV and Fuse.

Still, the stress far outweighed the benefits.

Families, wives and girlfriends were waiting for a payoff after the band spent months away and came back empty-handed. Altier wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye with his bandmates and knew the way he was living couldn’t continue. Although the rock’n’roll lifestyle certainly had its charms, many demons came along for the ride.

Altier claims he could drink a 30-pack of beer and a half-bottle of Jack Daniels and still function, but a 70-pound weight gain betrayed his bravado. Not surprisingly, the alcohol and drug problems became overwhelming. Soon after he began facing the severity of his future with the band, other tragedies caught up with him and in 2008, they came to a head.

“I looked at the table of my life,” he says.

“I lost my dad, quit the band, broke up with my girlfriend, everything just exploded and I threw everything off the table. I was very bitter at how things ended with Brand New Sin. I was bitter that it didn’t work for us. I was bitter at the industry. I was bitter at a lot of things, bitter at life. It got to the point where I was like, ‘I need to fall in love again.’ And the best way to do that was to go back to where it all started: my piano.”

Key Master

Altier had been performing cover songs under the moniker Brand New Joe on and off since 2004. People recognized the name from BNS and it was something to keep him occupied until the next time the group went on the road. But once he left his bandmates, he started playing piano more frequently at area bars including Downtown Manhattan’s and Station 58. He started getting more offers and then was asked to manage and book acts at the Lost Horizon while it was still under the ownership of the now-deceased Greg Italiano.

Since Altier knew all the musicians in town, it was a logical step. During that summer of 2008, longtime friend Stacey Waterman of the DMR Booking Agency also started helping out Altier, throwing him gigs at the Inner Harbor Block Party series and bars here and there and soon enough Altier realized he could make a living doing what he loved most. He switched his performance name to Just Joe, finally releasing himself from the ties of Brand New Sin.

“It got to the point at the end of 2008 that I was like, I think I know what I really want to do now,” Altier says. “I think I spent that whole year kinda sorting my shit out and Just Joe had taken off. So I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna dive right into this. I’m gonna see if I can make a living doing this,’ and I did. 2008 to 2009 was the birth of that to where I am now.”

As he started playing out more often, landing regular bar gigs and performing a rotation of more than 1,500 songs covering everything from Frank Sinatra to Metallica, he started catching some attention from the music community and public, as well as longtime acquaintance Conan Fioramonti, who had first learned of Altier when he was still in BNS. Fioramonti had been asked to sing backup vocals on a song, “My World,” but passed on it as the heavier music genre didn’t interest him.

Fioramonti, 42, who has been active in the Syracuse music scene as a musician, producer and production/tour manager since he was 15, admits he didn’t pay much attention to the bearded, rough, tough rockers. “I’ve been doing this so long that I have a little bit of arrogance to me,” he confesses. “I was like, ‘Who are these new kids on the block?’ I didn’t pay a lot of attention because I wasn’t really into that type of music. But I remember being more interested when I realized he played piano. Like, ‘What’s this tattooed metal freak doing playing piano? What could he possibly be doing?’” But that tattooed metal freak, Altier, impressed Fioramonti and the two became increasingly good friends to the point where they would invite each other to sing and play when they gigged. Eventually, Altier really opened up and quietly mentioned to Fioramonti that he wrote his own material.

“I’m thinking, ‘Obviously Brand New Sin stuff.’” Fioramonti says. “‘What am I gonna do with that?’” Instead Altier hinted at something softer, but Fioramonti still didn’t catch his drift. “Joe goes, ‘Well, it’s not Brand New Sin.’ And I say, ‘I don’t like Brand New Sin, dude, so what do ya got?’” Altier came to Fioramonti’s home studio and played three songs. Fioramonti had his back turned the whole time to avoid eye contact with Altier.

“I just couldn’t turn around,” he says.

“Probably just because I was so surprised. The core of the songs were really great songs, bottom line. I turned around and kinda smiled and he goes, ‘Oh, what?’ And I go, ‘Those were great, man.’” From then on Altier came to the studio nearly every week and they began writing songs, recording demos and building Altier’s original catalog. Free of the burdens of BNS and the corresponding lifestyle, Altier’s creativity exploded and other projects soon fell in line, including one with a long-lost friend.

Back in the Saddle

Shortly after Altier’s father, Anthony, passed away, Slider’s did as well. Although they hadn’t spoken significantly since they had parted ways in BNS, the two bonded again over their grief. The renewed friendship led to the beginning of a new band.

When mutual friend John Hanus, owner of the Armory Square venue Bar, heard that Slider and Altier were speaking again, he suggested to each of them that they start a group together. So in the winter of 2009 Altier, Slider, Hanus, Lewk Detor and Dave Hoyt started jamming as Elephant Mountain, now with the addition of Lou Segreti, keyboardist of the longtime local rock outfit Kane. In September 2010, they released the independent fulllength album, The Last Days of Planet Earth.

“Once Elephant Mountain started and I was sittin’ at home and playing four and five nights a week, I had all this free time to just do my thing. I wrote a whole album with Elephant Mountain and I realized that over all these years with all I was writing, I was sitting on 25 songs of my own. Like, ‘OK, time to do a solo record.’” Altier approached Fioramonti about the idea and they whittled the songs down to 10 for the album. But Altier wanted something sooner. He designed an EP to be released before Christmas. Fioramonti didn’t like the idea.

“He kept trying to talk me out of it,” Altier says. “He’s like, ‘You’re gonna record two songs that are gonna be on the record, maybe one that’s not.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, trust me.’ We recorded it in one day, he did a couple things, got it out by Dec. 15 and from that first day until now I’ve sold about 600 hard copies in Syracuse. I sold the first 100 copies in the first 24 hours I had it.”

Again, the spring of confidence and creativity spurred Altier forward and he brought the members of Kane together to become his backing band, forming Just Joe and the Janglers, who first performed at Taste of Syracuse on June 4. He kept up his regular weekly gigs, but also put his energy more seriously toward the full-length record. Beyond that, he markets himself through online and social networking and keeps informed on all areas of the music industry.

“He lives and breathes music,” Fioramonti says. “The one thing I admire most about Joe is for him, it’s always about the music. Most people when it’s really truly about the music, they stumble and fall and become nothing because ‘I don’t care about the charge at the door, I don’t care….’ You have to. For him, it’s about the music, but he knows that he needs to do this and this and this. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to be around him and see it.”

Altier released his full-length album My Demons, My Burden, My Life (independent) in May. Altier expects to surpass 600 copies sold by the end of the summer, easily eclipsing the success of the EP. The album is currently available at several online stores including CDBaby, iTunes and Amazon, locally at Altier’s shows and at Armory Square’s Sound Garden.

And on June 18, things fully fell in line when he became engaged to Kristina Camardella.

It’s been a rocky road for Altier, but things look smoother ahead. And musically, he’s finally found his freedom. “When he was in Brand New Sin he was a big, tattooed guy screamin’ up front, yellin’, spittin’, throwin’ beer, but deep inside he had some other stuff he wanted to say,” Fioramonti says. “I think he always said them musically. He always had an outlet at least, but the outlet never went past him.”

Today, he totals more than 250 shows a year between his three projects. Often he jumps from an afternoon show to an evening performance, with regular gigs at Empire Brewing Company and Jake’s Grub and Grog during the week. His next show with Elephant Mountain is slated for Friday, Aug. 12 at Watkins Glen Speedway and his next with the Janglers will be Sunday, Sept. 18, Upstairs at the Dinosaur. You can see him at festivals, follow him online and now you can hear him on his EP, solo full-length and Elephant Mountain album all the time.

“I think he’s one of the few people that was standing at those crossroads and went the right way,” Fioramonti says. “I’m very proud to have been through that with him really and see that change. It’s ridiculous, but amazing. Is he changing the world? No. Is he saving lives? No. But to see a guy that had the world by the balls there for a while and walk away from it, and not walk away from the whole business, but just from that in pursuit of something else, and he did it. There were a lot of people rootin’ for him, but still—he did this on his own. It’s pretty amazing.”