Joe Iconis & Family
Meditations in an Emergency
54 Below, NYC, August 18, 2025
Reviewed by Alix Cohen
Photos by Alix Cohen and Stephen Hanks
“We need a nation of…kindhearted landlords…sex without shame, love without hate…growth without greed… cops without guns…It gets better and worse/Better and worse and better.” Joe Iconis’ “Wavesong” (from The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, whose successful run was recently completed in Washington, D.C.) is an anthemic wish list for the era, a rocking imperative. “Whoosh! Crash!” backup vocals resounded. Attending a Joe Iconis & Family show is like riding a big wave or slaloming downhill. In quick succession, the numbers left us exhilarated, breathless. Artist after artist, all actors as well as vocalists, inhabited the songwriter’s widely varied characters with galvanic commitment. The material, past and present, consisted of stand-alone songs and excerpts from musicals.
“I Was Born This Morning” was reminiscent of Jimmy Rodgers’ “Mule Skinner Blues.” Seth Eliser delivered the hard-driving rhythm and gospel-flavored lyrics down on his knees, punched out, and raising a fist. Fourteen members of the Family offered back-up vocal from chest and soul.
“Andy’s Song,” inspired by the film The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, began with Jeremy Morse bent at the waist, grasping handlebars, running in place, and tap dancing! “I don’t need a lot to feel totally alive…I’m this way by choice/And I keep moving forward/The opposite of stalled” he sang, personifying the sweet nerd. Playing a despondent housewife, Lorinda Lisitza packed as much theatrical wallop into the arc of “Ammonia” as might be found in Greek tragedy. We saw and heard her complain as she got high on whiffs of a cleaning product, grew unrecognizably loose, and snapped back when her husband and child returned home. Lisitza delivered the tune’s wrenching credibility with vocal power and precision. The scene-in-one was a vividly written trauma. “No ammonia can take the stain away/It doesn’t really take the pain away.”
Lauren Marcus (Iconis’ wife) represented much of the single population with “Everybody’s at the Bar (Without Me).” In a musically bracing denial of why she was alone, as the character, she proactively wound her way through 54 Below into its bar area where the rest of the Family was carousing. (The staging of Iconis’ shows effectively uses the club’s entire space.) We watched as drinkers turned their backs on her or exited. “They’re all losers,” Marcus declared with a meaty wail.
The title song “Meditations in an Emergency” was performed by Iconis (with back-up vocalists). A “love song to the life always wanted and obtained,” the lyric described the push/pull of the art and business he loves and hates. “The things that make him happy/Are the things that break his heart.” There’s (ostensibly) no money to pay the band, but oh the joy of seeing one’s work performed! “Ok, by now you’ve guessed it’s mostly about me. Don’t worry I’m on Pharmapsyeudicals,” he quipped. One wonders why the lyric is not candidly “I”.
Liz Lark Brown’s “Headshot” sympathetically depicted every aspiring actor who searches for the reason he/she is out of work. Of course—she needed a better headshot! The artist proffered her old ones (at the least hair color changed), finding them unrecognizable. “The girl in the picture was scared/Not me.” The Family gamboled throughout the club and displayed their own glossy 8 x 10s. The song ended with Iconis’ signature irony.
“The Nurse and the Addict” was inspired by Stephen King’s Misery, in which an uber-fan brutally disabled a famous author’s legs in order to keep him helpless in her home. Iconis told us it was a metaphor for addiction. “She’s just a nurse I use/I could leave her if I choose” sang Eric William Morris (star of Hunter Thompson). Morris has Brando-ish charisma; he moved like a swaggering dream, and (here) sang from a bruised (though still muscular) soul. He descended into the audience, challenging strangers to dispute his denial. “This is my curse/This is my nurse” he sang, and he hypnotically repeated the mantra “again and again and again” with increasingly wild-eyed paranoia.
Will Roland and Danielle Gimbal, as the hero and his cat, offered an endearing “Party Hat.” A lonely man decides to “put a party hat on my cat/We’ll dance around and pretend.” The cat was definitely not onboard. “I just finished eating some Friskies and he comes at me.” Remembering the good times, however, she came around. It was tender and charming.
The show ended with “The Goodbye Song” performed by Jason SweetTooth Williams and the cast. The family stood and sat all over the stage as if they were taking a class picture. “Though I’ll be out of sight, dear/Know I’ll be right here,” Williams sang, and his heart cracked open. I interpreted it as a parent saying goodbye to a child; or maybe about divorce or death? My companion was sure it was sparked by E.T. Joe.
Also featured in the show was Morgan Siobhan Green’s empathetic “Dodge Ball”; she dispalyed subtle acting and superb vocal clarity (and a great vamp). Jason SweetTooth Williams’ “52” was about Alvin and Virginia—ordinary people who nonetheless left a legacy. (The banjo added a homey dimension.) In the edgy “Song of the Brown Buffalo” (from Hunter Thompson) in which John El-Jor blisteringly touted drugs and politics. In Jared Weiss’s rueful “Haddonfield, 15 Years Late,r” going home again turned out to be a haunted dead-end road.
In addition to Iconis on piano, the band consisted of Max Wagner (electric guitar), Ian Kagey (bass), Brent Stranathan (drums), Jaz Kroft (synth), Eric William Morris (acoustic guitar), and Jared Weiss (acoustic guitar)
Daredevil artist Joe Iconis has a wingspan as big as his talent. Pound for pound, his Family has some of the most talented (and sometimes under-the-radar) people in the business.
