Interview: Musician Joe Cripe on sound baths, meditation and his new solo album

Indianapolis musician Joe Cripe recently released a solo-album titled "Hideaway."

The singer and guitarist sat down with WFYI's Melissa Davis to talk about his musical roots in the city, playing with bands including The Po’ Boys, his new solo record, and his work in sound baths.

This transcript has been edited for style and clarity.

Melissa Davis: I would like to talk to you about your album that just came out, and it is called "Hideaway." You performed the title track from that album. What inspired you to do a solo project?

Joe Cripe: I'm constantly writing music, and I'm sure other musicians can relate that, if you're writing you're building up a repertoire of a lot of songs, and I found myself to have too many songs at one point, and I was like, ‘Okay, some of these need to be released. So I kind of dialed it down, and I just kind of picked the best 10 songs out of hundreds of songs that I've written, and kind of put that together for this album.

Davis: And I wonder, I don't know if we've talked about this before. Are you from Indianapolis?

Cripe: Yeah, I'm from Broad Ripple. Grew up there, been there for most of my life. And yeah, love it, love it in Indy. Got all my friends here, my family.

Davis: So did you play music as a child, like, did you play in the school band, that kind of thing?

Cripe: Yeah, so with Andrew, Andrew plays keyboards in our band. Andrew played saxophone in our band, in the young elementary school band, and I played trumpet. We actually had a competition, one of those local music competitions, where all the kids get together and everyone gets a gold medal at the end. We played our very first song together in fourth grade, I believe, little brown jug. So that was our first collaboration, yeah?

Davis: And so that's where it all started. And now you're in a band together.

Cripe: Now we play, I don't play trumpet anymore, and Andrew doesn't play saxophone, but, you know, we're still jamming.

Davis: So you're a full time musician now?

Cripe: Yeah, I like to consider myself that, do a couple different things. You know, we have the Po’ Boys. I've got my solo music, which is more like singer-songwriter feel, and then I do some yoga sound baths around town as well. Which you were talking about earlier?

Davis: Yeah, I have heard of sound baths. I have not heard of sound baths with guitar and the yoga element. I mean, it sounds so cool and really unique. Would you like to talk about that a bit?

Cripe: Yeah. So I was in like, a restorative yoga class with my teacher, Robin, and we decided, hey, like, why don't we combine our efforts and take your restorative yoga and take my guitar and put them together into a sound bath. And she had just purchased the singing bowls which you play. Each bowl has a different key to it, and so what I do is I'll match the key of my guitar to whichever bowl she's playing.

We'll guide them through peaceful meditation, and I'll play some soothing tones, kind of ambient sounds, and you'll find yourself in this state between falling asleep and staying awake.

Davis: How is that, as a musician, do you feel restored after these sessions?

Cripe: Yeah, yeah. I always talk to Robin about that after each session, we're like, oh yeah. We wish we could be laying down and listening to ourselves, but it's, pretty much the same thing, except I can't fall asleep. You're working. You know? They get to fall asleep and be at peace. I've gotta remain focused to a degree.

This interview originally aired on the WFYI podcast Small Studio Signal Boost.