Jo The Man The Music – Skinny Dipping

“Doch” – those four letters perhaps tell more about JO THE MAN THE MUSIC than extensively cobbled-together biographies. They are tattooed on Jo’s upper arm, seemingly modest yet confident, and are both a life motto and a statement. 
The English language indeed lacks of a word that fits the exact meaning of this german term; it might be best described as insisting to do things anyway. Therefore, the tattoo underlines a certain courage; speaks of gentle, nonetheless emphatic resistance. Of the power of carefreeness and letting go. 
It’s no coincidence that all of this is also what Jo The Man The Music’s first single, “Skinny Dipping” (Ink Music, July 4), is about. The acoustic “doch” here is a casually emphatic “Huh!” that suddenly throws crashing rock guitars at the song’s delicate singer/songwriter character. 

“Skinny Dipping” means the proverbial “dip your toes in the deep end.” A bit self-fulfilling for Jo’s first public outing, but true to the motto mentioned at the beginning, it’s also more of a firm “close your eyes and go for it”: always intuitively going one step further than your own comfort zone allows – even despite your own doubts. 
“I write fresh from the soul and often don’t understand the meaning of the things that emerge in the process until two weeks later. It always feels most honest to me when the result is something you almost don’t dare to say.” 
In this particular case, people like Nastasja Ronck (from multi-award-winning My Ugly Clementine; as co-composer) and studio guru Nikodem Milewski, whose credits range from ESC-Winners to EDM-heroes like Felix Jaehn, and who took over mixing and mastering here, also helped.