hometown: Salina, KS
current town: Austin, TX
music icon: Leon Russell, Randy Newman, Elton John
fun fact/secret: He plays a Ship's Piano - It has only 68 Notes rather than the normal 88.

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BIO:
Raised on a farm outside Salina, Kansas, the band leader Joe Sparacino spent his early childhood learning piano from a southern gospel choir matron and listening to his family’s old vinyl collection of Ray Charles, Leon Russell and James Booker.

Their debut single “Tell Your Mother" was produced by six-time Grammy Award winning record producer Vance Powell (Jack White, The White Stripes, Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys, Chris Stapleton) and recorded at his famed Sputnik Studio in East Nashville. It has already been streamed over a million times. The subsequent singles have been produced by Grammy Winners Niles City Sound (Leon Bridges, Kacey Musgraves) and Adrian Quesada (of Black Pumas).

Joe says, “I was brought up on those big gospel chord movements and the energy of 60’s rock and roll. I call it FUZZ GOSPEL – because the songs have those wide handed gospel chords and vocal harmonies – but instead of sounding clean and sweet – we cooked them so they sound crunchy, distorted and overdriven. I run a 100-year-old piano through a guitar amp and it sounds huge. Joe built a band around this GOSPEL FUZZ sound with fellow Austin musicians Pierson Saxon, Brennan Howell and Patrick Young, and started touring. Dr. JOE have become renowned around the USA for delivering a potent mix of psyche, boogie and southern soul whipped up into an incendiary riot of chaos and fun - all without the aid of any guitars - and always traveling with their very own ‘Ships’ piano – a battle hardened, stripped bare 1922 gem of an instrument with 5 Octaves and 68 Notes (as opposed to grand piano’s 88 notes and 7 Octaves - with a minor third).