Meet Joe Astle

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe Astle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joe , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
From the first second I saw Ernie Reyes Jr. in Surf Ninjas sing an altered version of Barbara Ann I knew that I wanted to be a Rockstar. Ernie Reyes Jr.’s character ( I just pretend people in movies are real tho btw) was supposed to do a presentation for the entire school introducing some sort of monk guy named Baba Ram, so he throws together this Barbara Ann cover where he sings Baba Ram rather than Barbara Ann, and the principal is pissed off about it, but Ernie looks awesome and you can tell all the girls think he is cool. So yeah ever since I saw that scene I knew I had to be a rockstar and sing music and make everybody love me. Anyways just look up “surf Ninjas Barbara Ann” on youtube. They sing the song at the end of the movie as well and everybody is all partying and having a great time. That song has got to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest. It is the greatest song ever made.

I saw that movie when I was probably around 4 or 5 so yeah I always knew what my purpose was, my purpose was to skateboard, surf, and rock out. I tried all three but I suck at surfing and skateboarding, I like things I can do while laying down, and you can easily play a guitar while laying down on the floor.

So yeah anyways, I just would listen to music my mom had on like Tom Petty or Squeeze and I would mimic them and I would do impressions of how they would sing, and I remember thinking “I can sing exactly like them” I must have been like 7 or 8 and I really thought I was this sort of master singer. I remember really listening to the beat as well, and thinking “wow all these songs have the same beat, I wanna make my own music”

but yeah to make a short story long, I’ve always wanted to do music even when I was a baby. But watching that scene from Surf Ninjas was like a calling from God, also the scene in Ferris Buellers Day off where he sings “Twist and Shout” I would watch and rewind and watch over and over again the “Twist and Shout” part. My grandpa played the organ, my parent’s were in a band, I was always destined, to be a rock and roll man.

At a very young age I knew that music had magical powers.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I’m a musician in my 30s. I’ve been recording music since about 2002 and I have slowly learned how to make the recordings sound better through failure.

I made music and I am trying to make more music until I am no longer alive. I go by the name Boa Constrictors, and I don’t know why.

I’ve been out of it I feel the past couple years or more, I feel like I am crawling out of some sort of pit of despair I have dug. Trying to get back to recording like I did in my 20s. My main focus right now is trying to get out of my job delivering pizzas and somehow get some major label money but also not changing anything that I do. Continue recording my stuff and touring while a big company pays for it. I think I am just getting older and tired, I feel like some money would get the ball rolling.

Whether anybody cares or not, I am trying to finish my 5th album that I have been working on since about 2017. It’s all I think about, it has to be finished, I’m just not sure how.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Three things I think are helpful in music are:

1. Find a Mentor. I was lucky and I met Jonathan Bree when I was in High School, he was touring America with his band The Brunettes and I met him through my girlfriend at the time. He was the first person I met that was actually doing music for a living and he told me “just never stop recording and eventually someone will probably find it interesting” and he was correct. I often went to him for advice when I felt like I could not go on in music. He also gave me pretty much a whole hard drive of music that changed my life. He gave me all the Jonathan Richman albums, all the velvet Underground, all the Kinks albums, and the Clean. He gave me all the cool stuff that always was impossible to find at record stores in 2006 or so. Jonathan Bree and Princess Chelsea really made me believe in myself in the early days.

2. Listen to the Beatles and do exactly what they did. If you ever wonder what you should do, like “should I go to school today or work?” think, “Would John Lennon or Paul McCartney go to work? The answer is no. Wondering what equipment to buy? Just buy anything that looks like Beatles. BE THE BEATLES

3.Don’t make any slow songs, slow songs are boring. If you have a slow song, make it a fast slow song. If you really wanna make a slow song. You can only have like 2 in your whole career so make it count. Make slow songs when you are old.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
I am trying to make another album, this feels like it will be my last album, but all of my albums have felt like they will be my last, so maybe I am just doomed to feel this way.

But anyways, every album has been harder and harder to complete. This 5th album has been the hardest thing for me to work on. It has to sound just right, and most times I am not sure what I am doing or what I want to say anymore. I feel like it has to be perfect, and it’s hard to do that.

I think I am also getting old and just wanna lay on the floor and die. I think I have depression.

I’m also addicted to youtube.

I just need to make an album as good as The Beatles “Now and Then” song, that should be easy, but it gets hot in Arizona, and all those guitar cables and microphone cables get all tangled. Music sure is a lot of work.

Boa’s 5th is my biggest challenge. I think I need help.

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