There are some nights where you just get more than you bargained for. After locking myself out of my house and making myself late, I scurried to the venue in a half hop-run in the desperate hope I wouldn’t be late for this interview. I took a shortcut I had never taken before only to be greeted by a woman standing longingly outside a house needing assistance to get in and get to her brother, whom she feared was lying dead from an overdose on the other side of the door. Thankfully, this situation rectified itself shortly after, but it was an unnerving start to an evening that itself would prove full of emotional admissions and outpourings, much like this helpless women herself declared.
The association of Texans and gentlemanly behaviour is now long established and, as I shake Josh’s hand and sit down, he looks down at his vaguely scuffed cowboy boots, “do you think they need polishing up?” he asks. He then excuses himself as he pulls out a white gym sock covered in an oily black smudge. He pulls the sock up to arms length and begins to polish his boots, if he didn’t seem so genuine in every conceivable way you’d almost think he was living up to a Texan stereotype. He later adds, “This isn’t rude, is it?”. The shoe polishing, I soon find, acts as a giant deflection tool - a means of escaping the lingering possibility of some of the questions I ask. Josh’s latest album ‘The Last Of the Country Gentleman’, is an anomaly in many senses, it breaks convention structurally by being only seven tracks long and compromising of songs rarely below ten minutes. It is in may senses a lobotomy put to tape, and the end result can only be down to the brain in question itself.
As I plonk down my dictaphone on the dressing room table ready to commence, the first thing Josh does is pull out his dictaphone, turns it on and places it next to mine. “Been stung in the past?” I enquire. “Not no more” he instantly replies, in his soft Texan mumble. What instantly struck me as a cagey and peculiar thing to do soon reveals itself as as much of a deterrent for Josh as it is a means to keep me in line. Within minutes Josh will be telling me of his “suicidal tendencies” whilst making this record, so then it becomes clear. The tape is almost to keep him in check, to make sure he doesn’t reveal too much. Although from our brief encounter and the content of his record, what there is left to reveal must be buried deep in his soul.
The record has been lavished with praise; five star reviews and perfect ten accolades here, there and everywhere. So how has Josh taken to having such a deeply personal record connect with so many people? “I haven’t really had time to think about it, if people have been kind about it then I appreciate that, it’s an honest record.” Is it weird having your feelings out there under scrutiny? “Yeah, but I knew that going into it. I’m just glad people are treating it with respect. That’s all you could ask for.” He contemplates further and strains deep as he stops polishing his boot for a moment, “I don’t really know how I feel about it, I guess you’re the first person to really ask me that. I guess there must be a lot of sadness in the world for it to strike a chord with so many people”. There is a plaintive, sombre tone to Josh when he speaks tonight; I sometimes find it difficult to work out whether he is in a depressed state of mind, or whether he is just always deep in thought. These two sides of him I find constantly conflict through our conversation, at times I feel like he’s lying on a psychiatrist’s couch spilling all, other times I feel like he is the wise professor bestowing his knowledge and life experience on me in a concentrated and thoughtful manner. What is clear however, is that Josh has been through a bewildering and cathartic period in his life that even he is still only coming to terms with.
The recording of ‘The Last Of the Country Gentleman’ is a strange tale, one that is uncommon in today’s frantic and fast paced world of MP3s, blogs and bands being signed and thrown all over the world in minutes. Not only is the album ten years since Josh’s last project (Lift to Experience), but also the album itself was recorded live, unrehearsed in just two days. However, there was a gap “I recorded one day, recovered for two weeks and then did the second day,” says Josh, before joking, “Wait ten years to make a record and then record in two days.” What was the recovery process, I enquire, emotional exhaustion? “Sure,” he drawls, “when your trying to maintain that head space for ten to thirteen minutes, with a few takes for each song… it took a lot of effort and concentration on my part.” So was there a time in which it looked like that second day in the studio may never come, during the two-week gap? “Pretty much the whole two weeks,” he replies. During this period, Josh struggled to get out of bed and suffered these suicidal tendencies, such was the emotional strain of living within these songs and expelling them had caused him. Josh went into deeper, darker detail of this period, but sadly the recording isn’t crystal clear and I don’t want to risk misquoting him on such a fragile subject matter. The way Josh speaks about the record is almost as though he didn’t want to make it? “I didn’t wanna make it at all, I didn’t want to go through the shit I had to to do it… but I had a change of heart. There were a couple of instances (playing live) in which it really seemed to change a couple of people and that served to change my mind.”
As our conversation continued and then eventually came to a halt, it had been a thirty-minute window into somebody’s mind and heart. As he scrubbed away at his black cowboy boots, it really was as though they served a function in order to stop his brain going completely into contemplation. Josh felt like a very fragile man, but humble, gracious and funny and we shared as many a chuckle as we did long, strained, contemplative pauses. He thanked me for doing my homework on multiple occasions, which perhaps explains the dictaphone a little more; there are too many unprepared journalists who are interviewing due to obligation rather than genuine intrigue and interest. When Josh steps on stage tonight he stands alone, armed only with an acoustic guitar and a voice, one which sails through the hall mandating silence. The strain and emotional stamina these songs require is evident, and Josh’s uneasiness about the whole situation becomes even clearer. ‘The Last Of The Country Gentleman’ offered you tales of heartbreak for your ears to engulf, and tonight, live, he served it up on a plate for us all to feast, and it was a pleasure to tuck in.