The Blue Door

Singer-songwriter and folk musician Joel Rafael has been writing and performing for over 50 years, beginning as a drummer with his first band, a jazz combo, in the 6th grade. After transitioning from jazz to surf music in junior high, Rafael soon found himself swept up by the rise of folk music in the early sixties. He began learning chords on a cheap guitar he picked up in Tijuana, until he was able to afford a more respectable instrument by selling an expensive rifle he'd been given. He soon became the resident folk musician of his high school, performing in hootenannies, benefit shows, and on open stages, polishing his style. He began incorporating his own lyrics and melodies into the folk format, and by his senior year he was gigging in clubs his classmates were too young to enter. Nick Justice hails from the Bronx, NY. He came out west in 1980 and fronted a few bands (Guns for Hire, Nick Justice Band, Chords of Fame) in the emerging cow punk era in southern California. Playing on bills with the Blasters, X, The Plimsouls, The Go Go's, The Beat Farmers and The Bangles who were all going somewhere while he was going nowhere Justice fled to the Northwest living in Seatlle for most of the 90's playing throughout the Northwest as a traveling troubadour for a decade mostly playing coffee houses, house concerts and juke joints.