Jobi Riccio joins Music Journeys to chat about her new release, Whiplash. Riccio shares what inspired the songs and explains that even though she wrote some as a teenager, performing them now at the age of 25 gives them a fresh feel. Riccio also delivers some stellar selections in the listener-favorite segment that concludes the show known as the Fast Five. Thanks for listening.
Sweet plays...
In many ways, the song Sweet from Jobi Riccio's Whiplash release serves as the heartbeat of the album. It's an anthemic song Riccio describes as owning life's insecurities, and it's one she wrote a few years before releasing it.
"So lots of the things that I address in the song, I've changed my perspective on," Riccio reflected. "With these insecurities, I was almost having to fake it. Now, I feel it's a bit more genuine when I sing it because I have more faith in myself. I'm really not so insecure about being outspoken, and about not being traditionally feminine, not sweet, and all the things I speak about in the song."
Born in Morrison, Colorado, Riccio began playing guitar and writing songs around the age of 12.
"I feel a strong sense of home and place and connection to the Foothills outside of Denver," Riccio said. "That definitely shows up in my writing with the desert in songs like Green Flash."
Green Flash plays...
"Being away from that is also a part of my music and a big part of what I wrote this album about," Riccio continued. "I left home and moved to Boston when I was 18 and experienced a lot of growth and change. I started college in 2016 and ended in 2020, so I started it with the election of Trump and ended it with Covid."
Lonely Tonight plays...
For Riccio, Whiplash represents a culmination of personal growth against the backdrop of immense cultural change.
"I would describe it as a patchwork of a lot of different influences drawn from a lot of different genres and painting with a lot of different paints," Riccio said of the Whiplash release. "It's really about coming into my own into adulthood and going through these life events. Every generation has their stuff but there's a unique challenge to what people in my generation and younger have experienced in the last few years. It's a huge, untalked-about and undealt-with thing because it's still so fresh."
Whiplash plays...
"I view it as the thesis of the album," Riccio said of the title track. "I'm really proud of this song, and I wrote it three or four years ago. A lot of these songs I wrote a long time ago, and we recorded them in 2020. So, I've been sitting on this material for a long time. I saw my growth as a songwriter, in that song both lyrically and as a guitar player. The song Kinder To Myself is also special to me."
Kinder To Myself plays...
"Everything I'm speaking about in the song, I still struggle with," Riccio said of Kinder To Myself. "I just think that song sounds really interesting and cool. There's woodwinds on it. There's a point where I took a mallet to a water glass and used that as a background percussive element. I was strumming a guitar with a paint brush and used that as one of the layers on this song. Another would be For Me It's You, which is usually one of my songs that grabs people."
For Me, It's You plays...
"I was thinking about how personal songs can be really universal," Riccio said. "As I say in the song - everyone has a person who will never feel the way they do. Sometimes songs stew in my head for months, and then it's like a 30-minute experience and the song comes out."
Homesick plays....
"I wrote that when I was 18, and now I'm 25," Riccio said of the song Homesick. "It's interesting to notice those feelings still come up in me. Playing live is one of my favorite things because I get to reconnect to the song with people who have never heard them before because I'm just starting my music career in a way. That's one of the more beautiful experiences about being a songwriter - how your songs grow and change and how they are different every single night you play them."
Driving plays...
"An emotional experience for me," Riccio recalled of writing Driving. "Sometimes when you're young and writing songs, the most tangible emotions are the most fraught ones. Distilling these feelings that I was having and sometimes do still have, into these moments and vignettes that turn into songs, is a highly vulnerable thing if you're drawing from your own experience which on this album I mostly am. It does feel like a way to revisit the person I was a few years ago and give that person a hug. Just reminding that younger person who wrote these songs about the power of sharing your music. It's uncomfortable at times but so rewarding."
Relief plays...
"I just want to write a song that will feel good to play as a person who is stressed out and strapped for cash," Riccio recalled in crafting the song Relief. "I'm still a person who is strapped for cash. I still feel a little bit of that relief playing that song, and I hope that listeners can vent in a fun way and a way that's joyful. It's so tough out there, so I look to songs like this that I've found in my own life to help me power through."
One Last Time plays...
"This song is a slow burner," Riccio said of One Last Time. "I can picture being in a bar singing this song, and it sends the listener out into the night with all their feelings. I hope to continue to play around with genre and push people's expectations of me and write about different topics. I'm excited to see where I do grow as a songwriter and maybe chronicle other's experiences just as much as some of my own."
