Joe was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the funiture city, where he grew up riding on the shoulders of his dad dancing around an unfinished basement to the sounds of Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Woody Guthrie, The Guess Who, Buddy Holly, Willie Nelson, Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal and Beethoven. He started playing clarinet in fourth grade, taking lessons from Michigan jazz maestro Ray Gill through high school when Joe started fooling around with any other instrument he could find lying around: alto and baritone sax, bass, guitar, harmonica, recorder...He started a rock band, Implements of Husbandry, with a few classmates, played the occasional show and started writing songs and singing.
The Jayhawks, Golden Smog, Wilco, Jim White, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Black Crowes pretty much lived in his newfangled cd player.
While attending Western Michigan University as a theatre major, Jung played regular open mics at local pubs, testing out his new songs and improving his guitar skills after being introduced to the musical stylings of Nick Drake, Burt Jansch, Dave van Ronk and Jackson C. Frank. Music became a part of his everyday life, stories of people and places wrote themselves between the hours of 1-4am and he would play the newly discovered songs while walking on train tracks on the way to classes. He started recording his music on a four-track cassette porta-studio with one microphone. A collection of early songs entitled "Old Lauds" came from these recordings. Later he purchased a digital 8 track console, a few slightly better mics and a hurdy gurdy.
After graduation and a year of doing theatre and music in Kalamazoo, Jung packed up his ever-growing instrument and recording arsenal to the Nutmeg State of Connecticut where he continued his acting studies and recorded "Ever Since Tomorrow", his first solo cd and formed the CT rock phenomenon Eric Piper and the Meltdowns with a motley trio of ear-splitters (now residing in the Windy City of Chicago under the name Guns for the Good Guys). After EPATM recorded the well-praised "Tonight was a Total Disaster" and the rock-your-socks-off "The Sun and TV", Jung moved to Astoria, NY and laid down the tracks that would become his second solo album, "Now that the Curtains are Drawn".
While greatly admiring fantastically inspirational bands such as The Avett Brothers, The Josh Dion Band and Robbie Gil, Joe Jung continues to explore his own unique brand of songwriting and instrumentation, ever exploring the stories that emerge from late night silence, big city bustle and the search for balance, connection, hope and honesty.