LET’S PRETEND (ODE TO AL GREEN)
JOESMITH(REALNAME)
ROCKIN’ RAGGIE MUSIC 2026

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LET’S PRETEND (ODE TO AL GREEN)

Scott Allshouse – Drums
Frank Brocklehurst- Bass
Kevin Beck – Mellotron
Me- Bongos, Guitars, Shakers, Tambourine, Vocals, Mixing

Liner Notes-
LET’S PRETEND (Ode to Al Green) is an ode to Al Green.
I am constantly inspired by Al Green’s songs’ ability to make me optimistic about love, life, and the future of humanity.
When I was super young, I recall a news story about Al Green now being a Reverend. My Mom had to explain it to me while doing a million other things for the 7 of us, so in my memory it went like this:

“A Reverend? The guy used to run around half naked on stage!”

“Ma, what’s a Reverend?”

“Oh, it’s like a Preacher. Like at Church.”

“Like a Priest?”

“Oh God no…they’re just having fun up there singing and dancing.”

I watched the man on the TV, this Al Green, singing and dancing. He was happy. He was being gentle and kind to everyone he was in contact with, and I made the instant adolescent assessment that he was a good man doing good work. 

It was the mid -1980’s. Hair bands. Madonna. Prince. Michael Jackson. Everything was bigger, louder, flashier, and over-commercialized. Even my favorites at the time, the Police, (as irreverent a punk rock band as commercially allowable on the first couple of albums), had become mega-stars and the most recognizable band on the planet.
This Al Green guy wasn’t trying to be young and irreverent. He was taking music and doing something I was unaware could be done with it. I put that information in my back pocket with the comic books and baseball cards and went back outside to ride my bike.
Years later, finally old enough to understand Al Green’s music, that memory snapped back in place. This is the Reverend. The Reverend Al Green. Again, I put it away for a rainy day. (It would eventually pour for years, just like in your world).

The playlist at work in 1999 consisted of a dozen or so CD’s. I recall Jim Croce, Patsy Cline, Helen Reddy, and Al Green’s Greatest Hits. Perfect! I was gonna be here every day for the future, and I relished the opportunity to study his best songs. When you’re young, you see a Greatest Hits collection and just accept it. This was exactly that. I was using this as a Bible of sorts for the Reverend’s music. A couple of years in, I realized there’s ZERO negativity in any of his songs. My Mother made it sound like this man made Prince look like a Mormon. Not even close. His songs were about Love. Happiness.
Some say his best song?
“Love and Happiness”.
See?

A few years later, the owner bought a beautiful Jukebox that was designed to play CD’s. We loaded it up with 100 of the best we had in our collections. Like all machines and robots and androids, they eventually go rogue and try to kill us. Fast forward to the day a customer yelled across the room to me that something bad was happening with the jukebox. The mechanical robot arm that grabbed the CD’s and rotated them into place on the platform had gone insane. It was firing CD’s around the inside of the machine. The normally serene picture window that displayed the CD currently airing was now a horror movie for a guy like me. I pulled the plug from the wall and hurried to open the front of the case on its archaic hinges. Shards of sharp broken plastic CD’s everywhere. Some irreplaceable at the time. Some of my own original music, even. I began looking through the wreckage for signs of life. There!!! There it is!!!
It was a miracle.
I grabbed the intact AL GREEN’S GREATEST HITS and brought it straight to the office and put it in the CD drive and copied it to the hard drive. Screw that. That’s not happening. We had a whole future together, me and the Reverend. I made sure of it.

So, you see, LET’S PRETEND (Ode to Al Green) is a personal journey that I’ve now set a-sailing. It’s a thank you to the man, and to the legacy he’s left us in music. 

I wanted to ask people what they thought the song was about, but I hate giving out homework assignments. Then, if you say “I’ll pay you?”, you feel like you’ll never get an honest answer, even if they say they’re being honest. So, of course, I asked my computer.

-Love elevates reality into something magical, creating a vital, binding energy that sustains a relationship through highs and lows, hopefully culminating in a love that feels permanent and miraculous.-

Yes. 

I just couldn’t figure out how to say that….I had to translate it through music and my own poetry.

Thank the Reverend.

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Yes. Joe Smith is my real name.

I’m the happy-go-lucky type person who likes to dabble in everything that comes within sight.

I like to draw…

I also bake things….

My Mother was a baker her whole life, but, she never really taught me HOW to bake. What she taught me was how to get up and going EVERY DAY and never stop. 4 Kids. A Dad that was as dedicated as he was self-distructive (he lit himself on fire twice in two years doing the same thing….fixing my car. Fell out of a tree and broke his leg even though at his size (6’0″ 300 lbs) he shouldn’t EVER have been IN THE TREE to being with, fixing a cable wire so Mrs. Johnson down the road could watch her ‘stories’; Got stabbed breaking up a heroin dealer’s sale in our neighborhood. You should’ve seen the other guy.)

I’m a product of those two, so, it’s not pretty, but, it’s a life, and I’m grateful for every second of it.

I may have been a singer in a band once, but don’t hold it against me. Those were different times, and I learned my lesson. I still write music, but unlike the past century I don’t think there’s a market for my music, I really DO just make it for myself.

Take this song for example. I wrote it in about 5 minutes and went over to my friend Tim Mayock’s house to record it with he and his brother John and Chris Eddy. I listen to it all the time. It cracks me up. You….maybe not so much. But I hear the joy in the kazoo that you might not. Hey….I didn’t like LA LA LAND. It won an Oscar. I get it, man. I get it.