Joe Pernice Celebrates New Album With Free At Noon Performance
Prolific indie rock, alt-country artist Joe Pernice dropped his new album, Sunny, I Was Wrong, Friday and he stopped by WXPN to play some tracks from it for his first-ever Free At Noon.
Joe Pernice | photo by Max Bennett for WXPN
Joe Pernice played away the fog and rain Friday afternoon in Philadelphia at his first Free At Noon show on the same day his new album released.
The indie rock, alt-country artist’s new album Sunny, I Was Wrong, is out now and he treated Friday’s crowd to mostly new tracks from the record. Sunny is Pernice’s “18th or 19th” album. “I don’t even remember,” he said, joking about how many albums he’s put out before introducing Pete Mancini, who accompanied Pernice on lead guitar and backing vocals for the eight-song set.
They opened with the most recent single from Sunny, “I’d Rather Look Away,” which marked the first time Pernice and Mancini performed live together. Mancini complemented Pernice’s relaxed feel with some wonderfully soft, yet impactful, guitar leads and harmonized along at key moments to round out the sound through the gig.
“Deep into the Dawn” was up next. Pernice said he wrote the track with another iconic singer-songwriter in mind: Aimee Mann. “I have to somehow get Aimee Mann to sing on this song,” he recalled thinking while discussing the song’s inception. “I just heard her voice, and it was one of those things where I was like, ‘I must die trying.’ But it didn’t take that.”
Mann is featured on the track, and Mancini adopted a falsetto to hit her notes and nailed the parts laid down by the former ‘Til Tuesday vocalist.
Sunny‘s first single, “The Black and the Blue” came next. The album version is a driving Americana tune with electric guitar leads, soft organ, and foot-tapping drum beat. Friday’s live rendition kept that spirit, but was a bit more subdued being just the two on stage.
Mancini has been playing guitar in the highly lauded band of singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb. Pernice recalled including a line from Webb’s iconic “Wichita Lineman” in the song “It Got Away from Me.” He played the song for Mancini, who played a demo for Webb. Webb liked the song, so Pernice, via Mancini, asked Webb to perform on the album version. Webb agreed and his piano work can be heard on the track.
“Meeting [Webb] and playing, and getting to talk to him has been the musical thrill of my life,” Pernice said before launching into the song.
They then played “It Won’t Be Me,” which features country singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell on the record. Mancini once again picked up the guest vocals.
“Amazing Glow” was the sixth song in the set, and Pernice recalled playing the song on an episode of the hit TV series “Gilmore Girls,” which also featured artists such as Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Grant Lee Phillips, Ira Kaplan, and other notable musicians.
Pernice threw it back to 2000 with “Prince Valium” off the album Big Tobacco before ending the show with “How Will We Sleep” from 2024’s Who Will You Believe.
The track is anti-war, he said, and it’s lyrics could be applicable to nearly any year from the past two decades: “What comes in on a temper / Goes out on a chill / Do we learn from our past or just say that we will?” The audience gave Pernice and Mancini a hearty applause that seemed celebratory of the performance, yet dismayed at the song’s tragic poignance.
If you missed the show, catch Pernice and Mancini at 118 North in Wayne on May 10