Joey Cape

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Photo by: Athena Lonsdale When Joey Cape wrote his 2019 solo album, Let Me Know When You Give Up , he’d come to an important realization. “When I wrote that record,” he says, “I was going through a much-needed phase in my life where I needed to let go of stress and worries. It’s not really something you choose – it just happens. But then that time passed. And I didn’t want it to. Because nothing felt as precious as it did before.” Little did he know that that moment would find its way back to him, and the entire planet, in the form of the pandemic. In February 2020, Cape was on tour in Australia with Lagwagon in support of their newest album, Railer , when the world effectively shut down. The band made it out of the country, he says, “by a hair,” and he immediately quarantined in a hotel when he got back to the States. Sitting alone in his hotel room, Cape had a lot to contemplate. “My father had passed away at the very beginning of 2020,” explains Cape . “Then the pandemic hit, and I had also recently separated from my wife. I was on the phone with my mom one day, telling her how I didn’t know what I was going to do, and how I guessed I was going to live in this hotel until I ran out of money and she just said ‘Come home’. So I moved in with my mom and stepfather. It was just a really wild beginning to 2020 for me – I had things I had never experienced before all happening at once.” The result is A Good Year to Forget , a record that encapsulates all the trials and tribulations of the 12 months that inspired it. “I felt a little strange at my age going to live with my parents again,” he says, “but it just made sense...they’re in their 80s and it was actually quite nice to take care of them and help them, to have that purpose and reacquaint in a deeper sense with my family. It’s actually been lovely.” The time he spent with his parents didn’t just allow Cape to reconnect with them; it also afforded him time to write songs. Because recording studios were shutting dow