PRESS KIT : Days Of Surrender

Joseph Arthur Announces New Album Days of Surrender, out May 26 on Lonely Astronaut Records

Available Initially on USB Drive with Limited Edition Art Prints & Original Paintings from the Days of Surrender Series

Only One CD Copy from Mastering Plant to Be Sold with the Purchase of Touring Van ($14,999)

US Tour Dates Confirmed

“This is a living, breathing artifact of my own little journey through the bizarre contours of rock ‘n’ roll,” says Joseph Arthur, as he combines his success in the art world with his latest album, Days of Surrender. The album will only be available on a USB drive that comes with a limited edition packaging paired with signed art prints and original paintings.

One single CD of Days of Surrender from the mastering plant will be available, and can only be bought with the purchase of Arthur’s touring van, recently painted as an art piece. This is the same van that was seized and auctioned by the City of New York, as reported in The New York Times.

For over a decade, Joseph has been exhibiting his artwork worldwide and online at the Museum of Modern Arthur.

“I celebrate this road I’ve taken by turning the vehicle into a holy roller,” adds Joseph. “And beyond that, to package the last album I make in this style in its player (which still works great).”

“I was struck by the strength and visceral quality of Jo’s paintings. They seem to connect to Expressionism, Art Brut, Basquiat and the Graffiti movement,” says Peter Gabriel, who first signed Joseph in America. “I remember encouraging him to take the painting seriously and it has been great to watch its evolution. Jo is a really unusual, interesting and talented artist in music and art.”

“A vigorous, layered, expressionistic abstract sprawl, with a Basquiat-like, graffiti-esque urban edge and wild lashings of outsider primitivism,” adds The London Telegraph.

I’m honoring it

I’m celebrating it

Taking me all those places

Giving me a little dressing room in parking lots outside of dives

In northern Canada

Or down south

I remember the first time it rolled down Sunset Blvd.

or drove over bumps in Times Square

I remember it careening through snow banks in Vermont

or driving low and dark in New Orleans.

I remember putting a bed in it and using it as my place to live for a time.

It took me all over the country and beyond

Through different bands

Solo and otherwise

The Lonely Astronauts watched endless bad movies in the back

Dreaming big things about where rock n roll might take us

Never knowing that we were already there

Already living the dream.

This is a living, breathing artifact of my own little journey through the bizarre contours of rock n roll.

I picked it up in Detroit

It seemed ridiculously fancy at the time.

I felt like I was going to prom every time I took it anywhere

Only I didn’t have a date or a corsage

Eventually I got used to it

And soon we were friends

Certain stories you only tell the wheel of the car you drive

Alone on long lonely nights tracking from one middle of nowhere to the next.

Delusion fuels all of us and maybe it was delusional but I always had the sense that I’m on a mission.

This van for me embodied the spirit of that mission

What good is life if we can’t celebrate it as we go

Most of us don’t get retirement parties

Or award ceremonies to mark our ascension or declension into oblivion

So for types like us we need to

Invent our own

Our own markers in time which signify the lookout points of our transformation

And beyond that

We must embrace insanity

And celebrate the will to color our lives out of normalcy

Celebrate freedom

And the road which finally takes us off the road

Or beyond the road

Or from the real road

To the painted road

The road of black ice

And death

To the road of new dreams

And endless possibilities

I celebrate this road I’ve taken by turning the vehicle into a holy roller

And beyond that

To package the last album I make in this style in its player (which still works great)

That’s right

I’m only making one copy of my new album

And if anyone is interested in buying it

They will have to have a spare driveway to house the cd package.

But it’s the only cd package in the history of cd packages that you can take a road trip in.

It’s also the vehicle which lead me thru to garner the experience I used to make the music

The music and the van are one

Let them be one

Only one.

Only one

And gone.

– Joseph Arthur, 2015