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Joe Jack Talcom (from The Dead Milkmen)

the Living Room At 35 East
Ardmore, PA

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Joe Jack Talcom (from The Dead Milkmen)

Joseph Genaro (Joe Jack Talcum) founded The Dead Milkmen in 1980, initially establishing the group as a bedroom-based home-recording project with a mythological back-story prior to their evolution into a traditional four-piece band by the summer of 1983 based in the city of Philadelphia. The members of the group regularly employed pseudonyms, and Genaro most frequently called himself "Joe Jack Talcum" (stemming from the character of Jack Talcum that Genaro had imagined as the leader of the band in their mythology) in the context of the group, although he also used the pseudonyms "Butterfly Fairweather" and "Jasper Thread" on certain records. Joe Jack Talcum has consistently recorded solo material since the early 1980s. Between 1984 and 1999, he self-released eight cassette tapes composed of home recorded songs. A four-piece group calling itself Butterfly Joe (after one of Genaro's pseudonyms, and featuring Dead Milkmen drummer Dean Sabatino) assembled to perform Joe Jack's solo material and released a self-titled, full-length album in 1999. The group went on indefinite hiatus in 2001.

In 2004 Joe Jack Talcum began performing solo shows using acoustic guitar and harmonica as accompaniment. Since then, he has toured the United States several times, sometimes with the backing of musicians in the form of a trio or quartet and other times as the sole performer. Also in 2004 a collection of his earlier home-recorded songs were released on compact disc by the now-defunct Valiant Death label which was later released as two vinyl volumes by HHBTM Records. Within the next decade he released new material on split albums with artists such as Mischief Brew ("Songs from the Shoebox"), Ratboy ("Talcum Brand Powder") and Samuel Locke-Ward and the Boo-hoos ("Just Add Tears"). In 2008 he rejoined a reformed version of The Dead Milkmen who continue to occasionally record new material and perform.