Song #39: Steve Azar - "Waitin' on Joe"

Song #39: Steve Azar - "Waitin' on Joe" (2002)

Waitin' on Joe

"Well I'm not one to worry, but I got a real bad feeling this time..."

It didn't dawn on me until yesterday that I haven't really put up a song on "The One-Hundred Songs of Steve Pulaski" (as of now) that was a sad, upsetting song and have stuck to upbeat ballads, quirky novelty songs, or raucous country songs. That's an accurately summation of my person. While I often admire and invest in songs that are sad, I need to be in a special mood for them, embracing myself for what they bear because I know, if they are well-written, have great instrumentation, and have a relatable story, or one that's just interesting, I'll begin to cry. Sad songs have been my Achilles heal since the kindergarten country music days.

Steve Azar's "Waitin' on Joe," to this date, is one of the saddest songs I know by an artist too few know. If Azar's "I Don't Have to Be Me ('Til Monday)" (number ninety-nine on "The One-Hundred Songs of Steve Pulaski") was his carefree, "have fun" anthem, then "Waitin' on Joe" is his more somber, sadder melody about appreciating what we have in life before it is taken away from us in circumstances we can't control.

Unfortunately, because Morgan Freeman makes an appearance in the video, he has unintentionally sucked up all of a person's attention about the song. I'd recommend the video to people and all they'd come back to me and say was that Morgan Freeman was cool. This is one of the few cases where star-power in a music video has done little to help the song further its message or ideas. 

The song concerns Azar, who, along with his brother, is supposed to start working on the river bay, but is stuck waiting for his frequently-tardy siblings as he almost always is. He can't get on the boat because he must wait for his brother, so, as usual, Azar's schedule is sacrificed because his brother won't hurry up. It isn't until the second/third verse that he realizes what has happened in a set of circumstances I'll leave you to hear on the song.

Azar's calm, breezy vocals make the song bear a more tranquil mood than the theme would suggest, and the song has a beautiful and passionate idea about how we naturally get caught up in waiting for things to happen that we forgot to appreciate what we have. In times that are growing more and more tumultuous, schedule-heavy, and organized, it's a wonder we can even have time to appreciate anything. But "Waitin' on Joe" slows it down for us in Azar's tour-de-force song that has grown to have some kind of a magical impact on me - I've heard this song over fifty times in my life, even as a young kid when I shunned it because it made me sad - and it still doesn't fail to make me cry.

Give "Waitin' on Joe" a listen (I've provided you guys with just the audio, so you won't be distracted by an A-list celebrity), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJqKwhHljwA