Day Job

Still June 16.

Release Day Number Two in June! This time it’s “Day Job” by Roe’s Garden. Woohoo!

I probably won’t be too long winded here because it’s late and I’ve been talking about Day Job all week. We hired a PR firm to try to help raise the floor of all the acts on our label, so they run a playlisting and a press campaign for one release for each of the four acts and Day Job is the focus track for Roe’s Garden. Here’s to hoping the plan works!

Anyway, Day Job is the first song I wrote for Erica to sing. I wrote it pretty soon after she moved to Los Angeles from New York, so that makes it late 2021 I believe. The earliest demos we have for the track sound nothing like the record and they date back to January 2022, before we knew what our thing was going to be. If I remember correctly she wasn’t a huge fan of singing the song because the range is definitely out of her comfort zone, but I believe one of my purposes here is to help push my friends to new heights - to challenge them to grow and exceed their own expectations of themselves, because I believe in them.

That’s the essence of the song too in this case. Day Job came at a time of pretty massive change in everybody’s lives. Understanding and I were entering into what we knew would be the final year working on the Wu-Tang show and had to start planning for the future. Erica was switching coasts and starting to pursue music for the first time. The lyrics came to embody the natural doubt that comes before you try something new and the reassurance we need to trust in the unknown. When you quit your Day Job you step into a world of uncertainty, but that’s the nature of the world, and we have to find a way to not only accept but thrive in that uncertainty. I’ll put the quote I gave for the press release here, too. Though it sounds a little dramatic, I really believe that it’s the way we should strive to be.

Believe in yourself and take the leap. Follow the thing that sets your heart on fire.

- Joe Picard, Roe’s Garden

Seriously, as far as I know, we only get one chance to live our dreams. Never sell yourself short. Hope you enjoy Day Job, by Roe’s Garden.

P.S. - Bryana helped with this release in a bunch of ways. She made the collage for the cover art and she filmed a lot of the Camcorder footage I’ve been using for the video content I’ve posted on social media for the song. (Thank you Bryana!! Very fun to work with you, and sorry for giving you work to do immediately after you actually quit your Day Job.)

-J.P.