Despite the title of his new album, “Mere Survival,” when it comes to his music career, Los Angeles resident Joe Wong isn’t merely surviving, he’s thriving.
He’s a successful film and TV composer, a podcaster and a multi-instrumentalist and singer who is releasing his sophomore album, a 10-song mix of synthesizer music, electric guitars and psychedelia, on Friday, Feb, 2.
But before that, he’s playing a show with his all-star band the Nite Creatures, and a full orchestra on Thursday, Jan. 25 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s Masonic Lodge in Los Angeles.
“It’s going to be probably the most people ever fit on the stage at Hollywood Forever,” said Wong during a recent phone interview. “Maybe that’s emblematic of some larger part of my psyche where I try to fit as much as I can into one place.” .
And he has fit a lot into his career so far.
Born in Wisconsin, Wong began playing drums in 1991 at the age of 11, just as grunge was dominating the musical landscape. So with rock as his first love, Wong quickly got into several bands and even toured nationally at the age of 17.
“We booked our own shows ourselves as teenagers playing basements, halls, whatever we could find and living off Taco Bell burritos,” Wong recalled.
He eventually earned a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass., where he studied jazz performance and music production. He later performed with other bands and artists, most notably as drummer for respected rockers Parts & Labor. He’s also worked with singer-songwriter Marnie Stern, as well as the New York-based New Music collective Wordless Music. He got into his daytime gig as a TV and film composer at the age of 23 when filmmaker friends asked him to write some music for an independent film titled “Yes Men.”
“We had no idea what we were doing really. We didn’t know any of the conventions of film composing, we just kind of figured it out as we went along,” he said.
Wong went on to…
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