Daily Inspiration: Meet Joe & Jodi Passey

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe & Jodi Passey

Joe & Jodi , we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We were fortunate to have found a half-acre of land that we could afford on the shores of Lake Huron in beautiful Port Hope in 2020.
It was the perfect place to build a home in the tip of the Thumb so we began preparing our property to build a new home just as Covid hit. We really dug into our music during quarantine as well as teaching music to students around the world. Once the quarantine was lifted, we hit the ground running as “Huron Out”.

As we made our new home in Port Hope, we said we were going to make people smile with music from “Huron Out”, and that is exactly what we have done!

The next two years were spent marketing our duo to local restaurants, farmer’s markets, and other places like the county fair in our area. We play approximately 100 shows a year and also book over 75 other musical acts for other venues throughout the Thumb. We enjoy helping other musicians do what they love too.

We joined the local Chamber of Commerce in Port Hope, as well as Bad Axe, the county seat. We are on the event committee and help to organize festivals within the community. Joe is now the President of the Port Hope Chamber and we love where we live, helping to build the community, including the music community.

This is our 5th year and our hard work has been well worth it, as we now also have a 5-piece band with 3 amazing and experienced musicians. Now we are able to book for “Huron Further Out” as well as the original duo, “Huron Out”.

It is exciting to think about the future and what lies on the horizon.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been a wild ride, to say the least, but we are so happy that we are where we are now doing what we love for a living.

We’re full-time musicians and teachers. It can be a challenge to rely on the weather or other circumstances when it comes to venues, so we have to be resilient and creative in how we adapt. For instance, we recently started to book more nursing facilities during the weekdays when we are not teaching and we very much enjoy our time spent playing for the residents.

It is amazing how much time goes into everything and that can be challenging, but when we are playing and people are singing along or come up to us and ask us to play a very personal song for them, it touches us deeply and that is always a big payoff.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We are musicians who specialize in providing venues with a professional duo, a vastly experienced 5-piece band, or both!

We are known for our music and how we harmonize together and play soulful sounds while tailoring the set list to the crowd.

Marketing of the venues and helping to promote not only us, but the location or event we are providing music for is also one of our specialties.

It is important to us to cultivate a music community by hosting festivals and open-mic nights with other musicians. Huron Out also books other musicians at various places throughout the Thumb.

As booking agents, we facilitated April Wine coming to the small town of Bad Axe and played an excellent show for the community, so that might be one of our proudest moments! Volunteering and playing certain special events throughout the year as a courtesy, such as the Memorial Day Ceremony in Port Austin, is also very dear to our hearts.

Our ability to create avenues for other musicians to acquire bookings throughout the year at no cost to them is one of the things that sets us apart from others.

We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Most people probably don’t know that Joe was a chef and restaurant owner in his life before becoming a full-time musician and teacher. He worked for a well-known celebrity chef at one point and went on to own two 2-location restaurants of his own.

Jodi worked as a Department Head at a Skilled Nursing Facility for many years after college as the Human Resources Director and then the Accounts Coordinator and never-ever thought she would be up on stage or in a band!

This proves that you never know where life will take you, and you can do anything you decide to do!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://huronout.com
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/huronoutmusic

Image Credits
Photography by Julie Major from The Highway Drifters and Vantastic Journey.