Idol Chatter & Voice Views

The photo that graces the cover of Blind Joe’s upcoming album was taken by Season 9 colleague Manny Cabo.

And when the Season 9 standout from The Voice was naming the album, he decided “By the Fans, for the Fans” would be appropriate.

After all, those fans contributed about $7,000 to a GoFundMe campaign and showed up at hometown concerts in Grand Rapids, Minn., where Blind Joe lives and in Fargo, N.D., where he grew up.

That made the new album possible. Along with The Voice, of course.

More on that in a moment. First, about the album, due out May 5.

It will include 12 tracks, nine originals plus new studio versions of the three songs Blind Joe sang on The Voice. Those include “If It Hadn’t Been for Love” from the audition round, “Old Time Rock and Roll” from the battle round and “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” from the knockout round when he went up against eventual finalist Barrett Baber and was eliminated.

“I had so many people at shows and through Facebook and Twitter and email that said, ‘We’d like a full Blind Joe CD with those songs on it. Especially at shows,” Joe explains. “And another reason (for including them) is all three of them are really some of my favorite songs of all time.

“‘Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys’ is one I’d only done a couple of times at shows. Of course now, since the Voice, I do it at all the shows. And every time I play it I kind of look at it as a redemption performance,” he adds with a good-natured laugh.

Among the originals, two have a special place in his heart. Those are “People Like Me” and “Pity Don’t Get You Paid,” on which Joe sings about not using blindness as an excuse for not living life to the fullest, and working hard to do so.

Joe calls “People Like Me” a fun-loving honky tonk song. It’s the song’s connection to his grandfather that makes it special. Joe says his grandfather “was a huge part of how I got into music,” buying him his first guitar and introducing him to the music of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Hank Williams.

“I wrote that song quite a while back,” Joe recalls “I think it was 2006 and he was still alive; he died in 2007. Anyway, I sang that song to him, and he said, ‘Well, I tell you boy, that’s a damn good country music song.’ That to me — my grandpa has always been my inspiration — I thought, that’s solid gold right there.”

“I have a lot of respect for my dad,” Joe says. “He’s a very hard working dude and he raised us right. I just wanted to let him know how much it meant to me that he didn’t shelter me as a blind person and he wasn’t overprotective and that he pretty much let me do what it was I wanted to do, within reason of course.”

The song often elicits a response, whether he’s performing it at shows or at school assemblies on perseverance. Joe has appeared at about 50 of those already this year.

“When I wrote the song, I thought it was just a clever idea and I wanted to write it for my dad,” Joe says. “Now people will come up to me and say, ‘That song is so inspiring to me. It really shows me that no matter what life throws at you, you can’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself because pity don’t get you paid.’

“That’s so cool. That’s something as a songwriter you hope that you can do — help somebody in that way and really inspire them and help them out in life.”

Joe attributes much of the success he’s enjoying now to his time on The Voice. He was 32 when he auditioned and says he’d been trying to make it as a full-time musician for 10 years. He calls the show a “launch pad” for artists like himself.

At the school assemblies, he knows the fact that the students have seen him on TV helps his message of believing in oneself and following dreams resonate more than “if I was just some random blind dude telling kids, ‘Hey, look what I’ve done.'”

“And with my shows, the crowds are five times what they were before The Voice,” Joe says. “And that’s all because of the exposure I got from the show. It’s crazy how your life can change in the span of literally six months.”

You can follow Blind Joe through Facebook. On Twitter, he’s @theblindjoe. And anyone who pre-orders his new album through iTunes gets an instant download of “If It Hadn’t Been for Love.”

For a look back at Blind Joe’s performances on The Voice, head here.

Check out music released so far in 2016 by former contestants on The Voice