Long before Rochester band Joywave signed to a Disney-owned record label, vocalist Daniel Armbruster was stuck in a part-time job at Staples. “Life is not working out how I thought,” he recalled. “I [was] still living at home with my parents and working this dead-end job.”
He had little delights, like watching “The Colbert Report.” When Joywave performed on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” show years later, in 2018, it only felt right to sing “Doubt,” a song that called back to that time in Armbruster’s early twenties.
“The song is kind of about wondering if ‘this is it,’” he said.
Armbruster, drummer Paul Brenner and guitarist Joseph Morinelli had to give it their all — who knows if they would ever get another shot on national television?
This line of thinking about legacy leads off “Permanent Pleasure,” Joywave’s fifth album, released in May 2024. Opening track “Graffiti Planet” presents the idea that the bold colors of our lives will soon be painted over by the next crop of spray-can taggers.
But there’s hope, too. Preceding that song is a message from former Rochester mayor Tom Ryan, welcoming listeners to the city’s sesquicentennial celebration from 1984:
“Rochester has a unique and varied cultural history. What better way to celebrate it than by listening to the music written, performed and published by Rochester musicians?”
Ryan was speaking about the local players who’d then recorded old tunes like “Put Me Down at Kodak Town” to commemorate the city’s 150th anniversary. But the message doubles as an evergreen introduction to Joywave, one of Rochester’s most visible contemporary cultural exports.
Armbruster found a vinyl copy of those songs on an old LP, “The Rochester Sesquicentennial,” at a local Goodwill for $1 during the pandemic. “It was released the year that I was born,” he said. The significance spoke to him.
He began the process of locating the rights holders to incorporate the audio into “Permanent Pleasure.” The locality of the material helped; a clerk at Stutzman’s Guitar Center in Greece offered an in with someone who played on the LP. The band’s manager worked out an arrangement with the original album’s producer, Jim Riley.
In the streaming age, artist royalties depend on users listening to songs past the 30-second mark. Devoting the first 41 seconds of any song, let alone an album opener, to an extended sample is risky, if not downright dangerous. The band faced some pushback, including people who asked for a release of “Graffiti Planet” without the mayor.
“We grew up really enjoying albums with good transitions and cool interludes,” said Armbruster. “We think about that as part of the process.”
Thus, “Permanent Pleasure” taps into Rochester history both explicit and implicit. “On a national or international scale, it’s really difficult to be a band from Rochester,” Armbruster said, citing the lack of a music industry here.
But over time, as Joywave’s stature grew, being from Rochester became a defining characteristic, perhaps even a curiosity.
“Everyone would always be like, ‘What’s that like?’” Morinelli said.
The group’s roots play out on “Brain Damage,” a slow-burning stomp featuring a trombone performance from the members’ former band teacher at Greece Olympia. (Their high school band instruments, for the record — Armbruster: flute and bassoon; Brenner: percussion; and Morinelli: alto saxophone.)
Joywave’s album ends with a recording of “Rochester Is a Grand Old City” from the vintage LP. It follows their own cleverly titled closer, “Here to Perform the Final Song from Their Album ‘Permanent Pleasure,’ Please Welcome… Joywave,” which calls back to their experience playing for Colbert in 2018.
“Is this the last time that I get to talk to the audience? Maybe. You never know, right?” Armbruster said. “I loved the bookends of starting in Rochester, and then our 10 [songs] are various observations or feelings, and then we end it by going home.”
Joywave will live this trajectory via a pair of tours this fall. The latter routes through Europe; the former kicks off September 11 in Toronto and culminates with a gig at Buffalo’s Town Ballroom on October 18. Notably, the group will skip Rochester this time around.
The short explanation for this involves venue sizes. Buffalo’s 1,000-capacity club can hold a few hundred more than Essex, where Joywave played last December. Brenner chalks it up to presentation as well.
“It’s kind of us wanting to do something cool and unique instead of just another show,” he said.
Yet wherever Joywave goes, there Rochester is. On tour, the members hear from Flower City fans who’ve since moved away, as well as folks who’ve visited and feel compelled to share memories.
“The Rochester Sesquicentennial” prompted the band to ponder its own local history. Armbruster, Brenner and Morinelli have all considered leaving at some point.
So why have they stuck around?
“It just never really happened,” Brenner said. “We’d take a lot of trips [instead].”
They’d see the world. Then they’d see Eastman Business Park back on the horizon.
“The end of the record is ‘Rochester Is a Grand Old City,’ which I think really sums it up,” Armbruster said. “I’ve been to New York City, Chicago, Boston, right? But no place is like Rochester. That’s home.”
Patrick Hosken is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
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This article appears in Aug 1-31, 2024.
