Africa Is Out Now
On Saturday 28th November, Joe released another full band collaboration covering one of the world’s most popular and well known songs, Africa originally by Toto. Directing the whole project himself, Joe and seven other professional freelance musicians came together over a three month period and worked together to the best of their ability to produce a masterful performance all done online through recording software and video editing.
Working together with Ben Lewis, Vincent Way, Josh Knapton, Joel Felix, Harry Lehane, Chloe Payne, and Charlotte Neal every musician clearly demonstrated their own talent and ability in different parts of the songs. An incredible Keyboard solo performed by Ben, a brilliant lead guitar riff from Josh, consistent time keeping and rhythmic playing from both Vincent and Joel on the guitar and bass respectively and some fantastic vocal ability demonstrated by Harry, Chloe and Charlotte throughout.
The collaboration soon received critical acclaim and many positive reviews from many other freelance musicians and the general public who follow Joe’s work and are closely associated to ACM, the university where Joe recently graduated. Musicians such as John Roberts, Kenny Jobson, Darren Beckett and Paul Cooper all gave the performance plenty of praise and positivity, all of them particularly highlighting how the performance was all conducted in isolation due to the current coronavirus pandemic.
Joe later commented: “This has to be one of the biggest projects I have ever put together. The JD Experience as a whole has received so much positivity and I never expected things to get this big. This project as a whole has taken three months to work on from the day I decided to cover this song, but it has definitely been worth every single minute we have all spent on making it to be as good as it is now, this song is not an easy one to cover but I am so proud of the team for all working together as one. Moving forward, I expect to be releasing even more collaborations over the next few months with many musicians asking if they can be a part of it, this is only the beginning and if we can start here, this is only going to get bigger.”
Expect to see more collaborations from The JD Experience over the next few months as the current coronavirus pandemic continues and musicians all come together to work on some new exciting opportunities with Joe.