The title of Casi Joy’s newest single “Everything’s Fine” may be an understatement right now for the singer/songwriter and The Voice alum. This new release, which she co-wrote with Lauryn Tauber and Justin Klump, coincides with her signing with Vere Music. After dropping her dogs with the sitter back home in Kansas City, she was heading to Florida for the Gulf Coast Jam for what she called a “workation.” With three back-to back-shows in Florida and Georgia, Casi’s family planned to join her there.
“Everything’s Fine” puts an upbeat spin on those days when everything seems to be going wrong.
“I’ve always been drawn to songs that do that,” she said. “You’re dancing and singing along, and then you get to know the words and you think, ‘Oh, I think I want to cry but still dance.’ But I think laughter is the best medicine in those moments when you get a parking ticket or your vacuum cleaner breaks and you’re late for work, but you think, ‘It’s fine! It’s fine! Everything’s fine.’ I just feel that’s the vibe of so many people right now—-just trying to keep pushing through, taking it day to day.”
Casi Joy has experience making the best of a bad situation. In 2020, the band had a lucky break. They had brought her bus-—dubbed the Joy Ride-—to friends’ house when lockdown happened.
“We thought, ‘I guess we’re staying here with you guys.’ We had a pretty enjoyable lockdown experience. I was doing Facebook live every week, still connecting with fans every week, which was so awesome for both sides. I needed them, and they needed to hear about other things in life.”
Once restrictions lifted, Casi Joy and the band took the bus on a camping resort tour. “We actually stayed pretty busy in 2020,” she said. “We were lucky to have that bus and that opportunity to still make anything into a music venue.”
They also took advantage of the solitude on Broadway during the early days of the pandemic.
“I wanted to release a song I’d written during the pandemic called “Poor Angel.” We decided to take advantage of this ghost town on Broadway, and we got to shoot a music video down there. That’s something we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. We’d get run over by a bachelorette party,” she added.
Although Casi Joy caught national attention as a four-chair turn on The Voice in 2017, she was not new to performing. Hers was not a musical family—-other than a grandmother who played piano and sang in the church choir–but they supported her passion from the beginning. She discovered a karaoke version of “Angels Among Us” on an Alabama cassette.
“It was the first time I had heard an instrumental version of a song. I liked hearing myself sing along to a song and begged my parents to let me do the local talent show. It went very poorly,” she confessed. “I had this little, tiny scratchy voice. I don’t believe I was born with the gift, but I was into music and performing, so my mom found any place that would let me perform, even the karaoke bars, whatever kind of stage we could find.”
Casi Joy recognizes that talent can be developed. She said, “So many people are so gifted, as if they came out of the womb doing vocal acrobatics—-Look at Christina Aguilera—-but I want people to know if you have a dream, you might not be there yet, but you can always be a better version of yourself. You can get better at what want to pursue and make into a dream.”
With a strong team supporting her, Casi Joy is working toward her next album, but she is being patient.
“I’ve always had a bad tendency of writing enough songs for a project and then putting it out because I’ve always been impatient. I want to give people new music as quickly as I can. But for the first time, I am writing like crazy, more than enough songs for this next project, so we can finally pick and choose what fits the whole vibe that we’re going for, the story we’re trying to tell. I’m not jumping the gun.”
She knows the importance of singles. “I definitely got caught up in releasing singles as fast as possible. Because people want it now. They want it yesterday really. But it was nice to get back to writing for the first half of the year, slowing down a little bit on touring,” she said, “but now it’s back to the races.
The singles released so far give a good taste of Casi Joy the singer and the songwriter,including “Namaste” with its clever word play and “Senses Fail,” recognizing the strong role senses play in memory.
“I’ve walked in somebody’s garage that smelled like this special wood in my grandma’s old house, and suddenly, I’m five years old, and I’m at Grandma’s for Christmas. Once I smelled a cologne and was popped right back into high school with all these memories I’d forgotten. Senses wake up your brain and put those memories in the forefront of your mind.”
Similarly, she says, music plays a similar role for Casi. “Anytime we have a special moment that I want to remember, I like to play a certain song on repeat that fits the vibe of the moment so that whenever I hear those song years later, I’ll think, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re in Louisiana, and we just played a show.’ Those songs bring me right back.”
For now, Casi Joy is looking forward. She says she is excited about releasing “Everything’s Fine,” and even more, the music video. Shooting in her hometown, Kansas City, she was able to include her family, use local makeup artists and other professionals. “We even have some local pageant girls in the video,” she said. “I like to have a little piece of home in all my videos.”
The summer touring schedule has Casi Joy playing several dates near home, with her band she playfully calls the Joy Boys, but she swings back to Nashville to write and to record for the upcoming album. “We’re everywhere the music takes us,” says Casi Joy. “We book a show, look at the map and gas prices, and we panic after. We’re going wherever the music wants us to be.”