MySpace a place for friends

Click to zoom in on my visitor map!

BIO The songwriting project: "Masochist Monkey Circus" was born as a place to plant a series of songs that Stacey saw as becoming a major direction for his music. Around the age of 16, Joe Stacey began writing keyboard/piano based music inspired by dark 19th-century aesthetics and silent film music. At the end of his first year of college (SUNY Potsdam in NY), a friend and fellow keyboardist brought him to the campus open-mic where he played these instrumentals for his first audiences. Although this was an environment of mostly acoustic guitar songwriters, the inclusive and open-minded audience members welcomed him warmly. Open-mic night became his first outlet for his personal expression. This inspired the music to flow out of him. Upon returning for his second year (after a wild summer of self-discovery and makeup experimentation in the adolescent goth scene) he began performing his first songs. Before dropping out of school at the end of that year, he had become active in college theatre and a regular performer at the open-mic night where he played both instrumentals and these new songs. After leaving school, for personal reasons, in the spring of 2000, Joe moved to Rochester, NY with some friends where he played keyboard with a local comedy troupe, performed in a movie theatre "Rocky Horror Picture Show" cast and continued his songwriting. Although he was still branching out into new genres with his instrumentals, they seemed to be becoming less of a focus as he gradually shifted his attention to writing more and more songs. In the summer of 2001, Joe returned to his hometown of Massena, NY where he recorded the first "Masochist Monkey Circus" album on his mother's computer. "Electronic Soul", which included both instrumentals and songs, was highly experimental and lo-fi but its campy and exaggerated form of satire represented a new angle for him. In early 2002, Joe moved to Pittsburgh, PA to live closer to migrated friends and to write/record his 2nd album: "The Vanity Mirror". Due to technical limitations, a lack of discipline/production knowledge and time spent working full-time jobs this process chugged along very slowly. In March of 2007, Joe moved to Ann Arbor, MI and then to Austin, TX in August of 2008 where he now resides. Stacey is currently working on "Masochist Monkey Circus" as well as several other projects including "Pianoforte Joe" (the continuation of his instrumental project), "The Inner Spiral" (an experimental/new age project) and other scoring/commission work.