LoveSeat is a husband/wife duo including longtime songwriter and performer Bill ‘Poss’ Passalacqua and his wife, JJ Passalacqua, who is new to music. Their upcoming debut album, Our Way, will arrive on April 25th, 2025. Our Way features eight songs written or co-written by Bill and JJ Passalacqua, plus one song written by Kirsty MacColl and Peter Glenister. The album was produced and engineered by Ezra Idlet in his Fayetteville, Arizona Trout Studios.
Bill has previously released 5 studio albums and one streaming-only live album. After graduating from law school, Bill pursued a music career and joined forces with the Ginn Sisters, then with the Fred Eaglesmith Traveling Steam Show. He landed back in his home town of Effingham, IL in 2013 where he started the Moccasin Creek Festival, and where he and his wife met and married.
JJ has been a full time nurse for 30 years, coming to the music business later. After she met Bill, the two started singing together, and eventually they began writing songs together, leading to the creation of LoveSeat.
Today, we’re very pleased to premier the track “Our Way Instead” from Bill and JJ’s upcoming album. The track will arrive digitally this week on April 18th, 2025, and stems from a song that Bill had promised to write for the couple’s wedding which received a new injection of life from JJ.
The engaging duet “Our Way Instead” provides dual perspectives on a relationship, zooming in on the peculiarities of each party in a loving, accepting way. Use of poetic, elemental comparisons lifts the relationship to a universal level, perhaps suggesting the elevated feelings of a new relationship moving towards greater commitment. The song illustrates that what we may have most in common with a potential mate is a sense of outsiderness or difference, and a certain shared attitude towards that difference. Overall, that actually recommends a more accepting attitude towards the foibles and traits of those we love since we also ask for acceptance in return. The personalized references to musical genres, songwriters, and vinyl will be particularly appealing to music-lovers.
Musically, vocals take the lead, but with strong grounding elements in the instrumentation, “Our Way Instead” becomes as forthright a statement as a composition as it does in the lyrics. The use of harmonica and mandolin add charm and wistfulness, building up a reflective feeling that adds to the sense of acceptance, and even contentment throughout the track. There’s an interesting irony in the lyrical statement of the song–that the duo are outsiders in some way–and the approachable, energetic, but unfussy presentation of the music which seems to welcome all comers.
Bill and JJ say about the new track:
The beginning of our co-writing adventure! Bill was writing his first song for JJ. She got excited! Then impatient…And she intervened, writing the second verse, creating LoveSeat’s first co-write and duet!
The track “Our Way Instead” features Keith Grimwood on electric bass, Bill Passalacqua on acoustic guitar and vocals, Kelly Mulholland on mandolin and harmonica, and JJ Passalacqua on vocals. It was Produced by Ezra Idlet.
The upcoming album Our Way intentionally crosses over between several genres, from Folk to Rock and Roll, even including Country and Bluegrass at times. Some of the songs are stripped down, while others include full band instrumentation, running the gamut.
Bill and JJ live in Effingham, IL, where Bill is Executive Director of Poss Music Works NFP and JJ is a pre-op nurse at the Effingham Ambulatory Surgery Center. They tour mostly in the Midwest and Texas, playing around 30 festivals, listening rooms and house concerts per year.
