ALBUM PODCAST with Joe Iconis and Jennifer Ashley Tepper

Originally written for a proposed T.V. project, this ode to the complexity of nostalgia is performed by The Jasons: Tam and Veasey. Hear about the origins of the song and the implications of being nostalgic for a time you weren't around for in the first place.

A companion piece to the previous episode "The Song", this one is brings the underlying to the surface. It's about a writer, still definitely not Joe Iconis, who is coming to terms with only being able to write his life versus living it. Joe and Jennifer go deep into the lyrics, music, and arrangement of this deeply-personal-not-at-all-autobiographical rocker.

Upon hearing that multiple people in his life were worried that Joe would write a song about them, he did what any jerk songwriter would do: he wrote a song about it. Is this song about Joe himself? Nope. Definitely not. Is it about Emily? Who can say... all we know is that Emily is a name that doesn't rhyme with anything.

A tragic and hideous tale of an actress navigating a path through a dangerous obstacle course of high-belting and tasteless riffing. Joe's lifelong collaborator Katrina Rose Diderikson expertly acts her way in and out of this epic story-song which is both critical of and complicit in our current musical theater vocal landscape.

A cut song from the Joe Iconis musical "Bloodsong of Love," which itself is a wild musical theater interpretation of the Spaghetti Western film genre, "Play the Princess" is another song about art and theater, this time examining the boxes society places us in and the roles we are assigned. It is performed by Destinee Rea and L Morgan Lee, two beautiful humans who defy categorization.

A song about the history of an actual New York City street, "64' takes us back to the past, before Lincoln Center existed, to explore the less glamorous side of tearing down the past to build the future. Performed by Alan H. Green, George Salazar, Jose Restrepo, if you're anything like the rest of us, you'll be rushing to play this one on repeat as soon as it's done.

Depicting a real-life situation almost every New Yorker can relate to, "Jeff," sung by Jeremy Morse, tells the story of a man seeing a neighbor in the buff in a nearby building and the existential crisis that follows. What happens to him in the end? The world may never know.

This song is one of the most intriguing songs you'll hear. It's a song about... well, it actually takes place in... actually, the best way to describe it is... um. Ok, well we can't exactly describe it because you just need to interpret it for yourself.

Sung by Lauren Marcus, this haunting song was inspired by a certain character in a certain movie featuring a ghost-with-the-most. It wasn't part of the subsequent musical based on the movie, but we're sharing it with you nonetheless nonetheless nonetheless.

One of the oldest songs on ALBUM, "The Answer" is from Joe's first full-length musical, The Black Suits, written as his NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program Senior thesis. Performed by Aaron Tveit, who starred in an early workshop of the show, the song holds a special place in Joe's heart, as it was part of the genesis of Iconis and Family.