I'm <a href="http://andrewmcmillen.com/">Andrew McMillen</a>, a journalist and author based in Brisbane, Australia. This is an interview with singer and songwriter Josh Homme conducted on 4 October 2019, ahead of the release of 'Desert Sessions Volumes 11 and 12'.
Excerpt of the story I wrote for <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/Andrew+McMillen">The Australian</a>:
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<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/return-to-the-desert-for-josh-homme-and-motley-crew/news-story/dddcfc7dce4045d73a4ffc484b37f099"><strong>Sands of Inspiration</strong></a>
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<em>When Josh Homme calls fellow musicians for a get-together in the Californian desert, the aim is to achieve innocence and inspiration, as he tells Andrew McMillen</em>
<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/return-to-the-desert-for-josh-homme-and-motley-crew/news-story/dddcfc7dce4045d73a4ffc484b37f099"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5707" src="http://andrewmcmillen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/josh_homme.jpg" alt="A Conversation with Josh Homme of Desert Sessions and Queens of the Stone Age, by Andrew McMillen for The Australian newspaper, October 2019. Photograph by Andreas Neumann" width="800" height="450" /></a>
Just before Christmas last year, in a recording studio far off the beaten path, Josh Homme blew the dust off a musical project that had lain dormant for 15 years. Having spent more than a year touring the world with Californian rock band Queens of the Stone Age, the frontman saw a gap in his schedule and began asking friends and fellow musicians whether they’d like to join him at Rancho De La Luna, situated near Joshua Tree, 205km east of Los Angeles.
Their mission, should they choose to accept it, would be to move at the speed of inspiration by writing and recording new songs from scratch under a storied name: Desert Sessions. When Homme put out the call last time, in 2003, it was answered by the likes of PJ Harvey and members of Ween and Marilyn Manson.
This time, Homme’s invitation was accepted by members of ZZ Top, Primus, Scissor Sisters, Warpaint and Royal Blood, among others. Many of these musicians had not met before, nor had they spent much time in the western desert of the US.
For the man who brought everyone together, its remote location is part of the appeal. Without the distractions of living in big cities, the idea is to slow down and, hopefully, tune in to the frequencies that spurred each of them to begin playing music in the first place.
“I like that, because the landscape is so large, you’re rendered a little bit unimportant,” Homme tells Review. “But the ironic thing is that, in feeling a little small and unimportant, that’s the perfect time to take a chance. You feel like you can take a risk, take a chance and make some mistakes, and then find the right thing. It’s also the right time to collaborate because you’re out there in secret. No one knows you’re there. No one’s paying attention. You’re not up your own butt. You have the chance to just take it as it comes out there.”
Having grown up in Palm Desert, and been a key member of a unique scene whose “generator parties” in the 1990s have become part of US rock folklore, Homme is completely at home in wide-open spaces.
“I also think there’s a certain perversity of people out there,” he says. “Oftentimes when you’re a musician, you are the strangest person in the room, in your own way. But out in the desert, there are people far weirder than you are, on a grand level, and there’s something comfortable about saying: ‘Boy, compared to everyone here, I’m normal’.”
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To read the full story, visit <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/return-to-the-desert-for-josh-homme-and-motley-crew/news-story/dddcfc7dce4045d73a4ffc484b37f099">The Australian</a>. Above photo credit: Andreas Neumann.
The full transcript of my interview with Josh Homme appears below.
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<strong>Andrew: You seem to be fond of bringing people together; you seem to get a kick out of it. Have you always been a connector in that way, Josh? Or is it something you’ve become more attracted to over time?</strong>
Josh: You know, I've always gotten along with different groups of people, and some of those groups don’t always get along. And it’s nice to play cupid, because I guess I enjoy watching… just being present when something happens, even if I have nothing to do with it, other than introducing, you know? And I also, I guess I always have a little protective streak, too, so I always want to… Sometimes I feel like it’s exciting just to make sure something isn't being affected by the outside world, you know? Like, if maybe there's a bit of a nurturing side to that that I enjoy. Yeah, so I enjoyed those elements of that. I also really like collaboration. I always have. So I enjoy the uncomfortable beginnings of that, when you're breaking the ice, and I like the comfort of getting through that, and moving at the speed of inspiration.
<strong>Well, Stella [Mozgawa, drums] told me that she describes you as the glue in this project. And I asked if because you had brought everyone together, she found that people were deferring to you in the studio, and she said ‘Not really’. You made it clear that it wasn't your thing; it was everyone's thing. Is that something that you’ve learn from the past experiences with the Desert Sessions?</strong>
Well, I think it’s not necessary in those situations to articulate who’s in charge, you know what I mean? Because I think I'm pushing for no-one to be in charge in those moments. There’s a certain sequence of events that I think it's important for me to undertake to get it going. I guess I always considered that I start the first thing, in order to take on that responsibility. I've asked everyone to be there. I've invited everyone to be there, so that seems like a necessary responsibility to take that first piece of music. And in a way, I almost take a step forward, and I don't turn around and hope that everyone will past me creatively, so to speak. And then I can sort of walk behind them, with my arms out. When I’m out there, I feel like once you've got the creative ball rolling, it's more important for me to record people's ideas than it is to record my own, because a little part of me knows that if I really have something to put in the mix, I can lay down one of my parts last. If there’s gonna be a part that doesn’t get got at the time, it should be mine.
<strong>Am I correct in understanding that ‘Noses in Roses, Forever’ was the first track that you guys laid down?</strong>
That was the first track, and the funny thing is, having not done one of these for a long time, there are a few things that I had sort of forgotten that are important. Like perhaps that’s not the greatest song to start with [laughs] Because it’s essentially an experiment in: can you take a song and then inject two other songs right in the middle of it? Is that possible? In a way, that’s sort of an esoteric question: can you take a song and jam two other songs in there? And I think it comes from me listening to ‘We Are the Champions’ and ‘We Will Rock You’, and believing they’re the same… I didn’t realise they were two separate songs until recently [laughs] Because I always heard them together, you know? They are definitely two songs that are always connected, to me, by this really hard left turn. There’s other examples of that, where a song just goes, ‘Whoop! We’re over here now!’ That’s actually kind of an easy question, but it’s a hard thing to put together. It worked out good, but I probably could have chosen a better first tune, that’s not such a monster of a song.
<strong>Did you have the bones of that sketched out, or the guitar parts already in mind before people arrived, with that one?</strong>
Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is something that… it should be something that you have a decent amount of that sketch, so that people can add onto a framework that has a little bit of sturdiness to it. What’s great is, lots of the ideas that I kind of had from… that was something I had a long time ago, you know, the very beginning of ‘Like Clockwork’, and writing for what became that [album]. What was great is that, I really ended up keeping just the main guitar part, and these other parts in the main body of the song were the ones that other people came up with. It allowed me to subtract my stuff.
<strong>I spoke with Mark Ronson a few months ago and I asked him about ‘Villains’. And he said that one of his favourite moments from working on that album with you was figuring out that bit toward the end of ‘Un-Reborn Again’, where most of the instruments fall away and the strings kick in. And I was reminded of that bit in ‘Noses In Roses’, because it does that kind of big, lateral shift. Is there a link between those two songs, or am I imagining that?</strong>
Absolutely, because when we were looking for a way, in ‘Un-Reborn Again’, to get to the strings in a manner which we hadn't done before; not simply to fade out, or things of that nature, because I didn’t want to do something the same, where we tried it again. You know, when you’re trying to meld extremes of the dynamics together. There’s a way to do all things, and it was actually Ronson that was like, ‘Why don’t we take the filter and get to that?’ And that concept of using a filter in order to slam on the brake and introduce something else was a really cool thing that was a new idea for me. Because it really is like slamming on the brakes, and I think there’s versions and there’s a few different ways to utilise that type of slamming on the brakes. Since it was a new concept for me, I tried it on this record, twice, in different ways.
<strong>What’s the other one?</strong>
It’s in the next tune, ‘Far East For the Trees’. An instrumental is a really great way to… I mean, an instrumental that vocalises as if there were a vocal. When you’re doing an instrumental, you need to vocalise. If you’re always chasing down a melody that is not unlike a vocal lead, but also, by the third round you’ve heard that, so it's about crafting the dynamic. How do I introduce something new each time, in order to, once you’ve got accustomed to hearing this progression, then I can introduce another layer to it? And by that third time, it was like, ‘I need something to jar the senses.’ That being said, not every song needs to take a hard left turn, and have another song shoved into it [laughs] It doesn’t always need to get completely weird and out of control. So these little exercises in trying to figure out the right thing to do, especially so that you're not doing the same thing across songs, you know?
<strong>‘Far East For The Trees’ is a fascinating piece of music. Was it always intended as an instrumental, or did you try writing to it before deciding it was better off without words?</strong>
I personally never attempted to sing to it, nor did I ask anyone else sing to it, nor did anyone else say, ‘Hey, I have a vocal for this’ in that moment. I'm somebody that, if you track through Queens records and other Desert Sessions records, there’s instrumentals all the way back to the beginning. I think when you get out in that landscape, sometimes instrumentals are vocalising enough, and singing over them seems unnecessary. And also, they make sense for the landscape. It's almost like, instead of playing the soundtrack to a film, you're playing the soundtrack to what you're looking at, visually. And so, things like that make sense to me, where that sounds quintessentially like something from the desert - or the Desert Sessions, moreover.
<strong>Yeah. Definitely.</strong>
And it came together so fast. It came together… we played that by the fire at night, outside.
<strong>Acoustically?</strong>
Yeah, Carla [Azar, drums] was playing outside. I brought this tiny little drum kit that’s actually my son’s, because it sounds so good. I set it up outside, and it’s only miked with two mics, those drums. And she started playing that beat. And that acoustic guitar part all of a sudden showed up in my brain. And Les [Claypool, bass] was inside, we’re looking at each other through the window, he’s playing bass. And Stella was sitting next to Les, and [guitarist, Matt] Sweeney was next to me by the fire.
<strong>Wow, that's great. Have you done much of that sort of inside/outside work at that studio?</strong>
I’ve played drums on the roof [laughs] I’ve done drums in the bathroom. I sang on the roof. There was lot of doing vocals outside. I think there’s something really beautiful about… it’s an exercise in singing outside there [at Rancho]. You pick up dogs barking, or a car driving by. I think in other environments, you are conditioned to say, ‘The vocals need to be pristine, and have no background noise.’ But that's not true. I think, you know, the goal is not to… how should I put it? Perfection is like truth or justice or fairness; it’s something you strive for, but not something you actually expect yourself to do. I don’t think that something needs to be perfect. Actually, when there's mistakes or when there’s these outside factors bleeding into it, it gets more human, you know? It’s in the imperfection that something sounds more human. And so, doing vocals outside, and someone says, ‘What about the bleeding?’ You say, ‘Exactly: what about it?’ It’s a great way to intimate what’s important, and what is not important.
<strong>Other than its location, is there a particular attraction that you feel toward Rancho? You’ve worked there a lot over the years.</strong>
I think for me - I can only speak for myself, because I'm born there - it feels comfortable to me and it feels like home. So everything that comes along with the safety of home, you know. And also I like that, because the landscape is so large, you’re kind of rendered a little bit unimportant. But the ironic thing is that, in feeling a little small and unimportant, that’s the perfect time to take a chance. You feel like you can take a risk, take a chance, and make some mistakes, and then find the right thing. It’s also the right time to collaborate, because you're out there in secret. No-one knows you're there. No-one's paying attention. You’re not up your own butt. You have the chance to just take it as it comes out there. And I also think there’s a certain perversity of people out there. Oftentimes when you’re a musician, you are the strangest person in the room, in your own way. But out in the desert, there are people far weirder than you are, on a grand level. And there's something comfortable about saying, ‘Boy, compared to everyone here, I’m normal.’
<strong>I'm just thinking: I saw you and Queens play in Brisbane about a year ago [in August 2018]. And that was a typical sort of situation for you, where you're playing for 9000 people, or whatever it was, and they're all looking at you and the band. The focus is very much on what you're doing up there on stage. And then, throughout your life, as I understand it, you've returned to the desert. And I'm interested in what you were just saying about how it reminds you of how small you are. Is that something that's worked as a reset for you, to go from the intense focus of being a rock'n'roll musician to going back to just being a guy in the desert?</strong>
My belief and how I feel about what I get to do for a living is much different than the things that come with it as a byproduct. I know that what I get to do is a luxury thing. I also know that the way I feel about being able to play music is that I enjoy romanticising and idealising being an idealist with music. Because I kind of treat it like a religion, you know? That's why I'm willing to provoke you, which is part of being a provocateur: just to provoke and take chances, take risks. My goal isn’t to be a big star, you know. To me, that’s a negative byproduct of what you do. I mean, I want people to like the music, but I don’t always enjoy the pressure that comes along with… some of the successes of this. What I really like is to collaborate with people. I like to humble yourself. It's not about you, it's about…
Johnny Cash has a great quote: ‘I’m not the creator of the music; I’m its deliverer’. And I like the idea of feeling blessed enough to be a conduit for something that's beyond you. I also know that, when words fail, and I don't know what to say about how I feel, I can always play how I feel. And that's kind of a transcendent moment. And I also know that when I’ve had troubles in my life, that music has been a great way to take whatever kind of PTSD, shell-shock of life, and be honest with it, and be able to release that baggage, and not carry it around anymore. I do think that if you really throw yourself into the music you make, with honesty, you can become a better person.
So success for me is different than what success equals on an entertainment show. I mean, I know this record comes out, right, and that’s how I get people to come there: ‘Hey, we’ll make this music and it will be released’. But for me - and ideally for the people that are there - the process of doing it, it's greater than just releasing it. And the success, you know if it was a success way before it ever… you’re releasing it to the world saying, ‘It’s not mine - here, take it’. If you can use it for the same benefits that we got from it, that I get from it, that’s great. But also, if you want to use it as a coaster, it’s a great coaster.
<strong>Well, in line with what you were just saying about putting it out there, and the process somewhat being as important, if not more important than the product at the end of it - could you possibly write and record the greatest album of all time, and then bury it in the desert, so that no-one ever hears it, and still be satisfied?</strong>
I told Iggy when we were making the record together [‘Post Pop Depression<strong>’</strong>, 2016]: if you say, I will take it and I will dig a hole and I will put it in the hole and bury it. Because what’s important to me is a display of willingness to do right by each other, and to… I told Iggy, ‘I'm not going to hold back anything. I'm going to give you everything that I have to give in this moment. And I will treat it with respect’, you know? And also: I'll be honest. So if I don’t like something, I'll be honest. I know that if that's what we do, I will get and I'll get everything you could get from this, and no-one needs to hear it. And for a second, we actually talked about not putting it out, because we loved the record so much. Now, that seems like a strange conversation, but I think he understood that I was serious: I’ll go get a shovel, and I’ll dig the hole myself.
<strong>Well, I'm glad you didn't do that, because I love that album.</strong>
That can read like fantasy to someone else, but again, I'm not going try to attempt to do anything about that. That’s just something that outsiders say, you know? I'm sure that there's people in the world that are like, ‘You’re taking people out to the desert? It sounds like the most pretentious thing of all time.’ But that would never bother me. I think also, doing songs like ‘Chic Tweetz’ are complete… I call it a smart bomb. That lets the air out of taking yourself too seriously. And also, I think it takes guts to do something willfully stupid, and say, ‘Let’s make it really catchy. Let’s make it catchy and stupid’. It’s like a catchy children’s song, without the - I’m sorry to say this about Toornst [Hulpft, vocals] - but it’s like, without any self-awareness. In a way, I’m not sure if he’s serious or not. But also: that's fine.
<strong>Is part of the attraction of Desert Sessions attached to the fact that this is an outfit that does not tour?</strong>
Well, I think on the list of priorities, that certainly is on there. Because I think in order to… higher up on the priority list is simply asking, ‘Do you remember why you started playing?’ And the second most important thing is to recharge your artistic battery by collaborating with people, and honestly representing yourself and realising that, if something’s no good, it's not your fault. You're a part of the gestalt; you’re the sum of the parts. And then if something’s great, it’s everyone’s fault. So it’s not exactly just because of you, you know? You understand you're part of something, and I think part of the way to say, ‘This is not a normal release, it’s not a normal situation you’re in. Let’s not make the promotion and the marketing of this, and the touring of it, just like another album you’re on’, you know what I mean? It should end how it began, with the same ease, and casual nature. You don’t have to do anything to put this out. And that goes down to even, we all own the songs. I licensed it to Matador [Records] and Beggars [Group], but everyone that wrote the songs owns the songs, because to me, that’s how it should be. And so it needs to end how it started, or it kind of betrays itself.
<strong>Your vocals on ‘Easier Said Than Done’ are incredible. I think they’re some of the best you've ever laid down. Are you happy with how your voice has developed across your career?</strong>
Oh, thank you. When I first started, I didn’t want to sing. Nor did I believe that I could, and nor did I actually completely enjoy it. But I think as the years go on, you start to understand that, in some ways, it’s the most accurate expression of yourself - who you are - and it’s something that benefits from you not trying too hard. It’s the equivalent of: could you try to be cool? You ever watch someone try to be cool? The minute they start, you’re like, ‘It’s too late.’ And so I think singing is very aligned with this idea where really all you have to be is yourself: that’s the coolest thing you could ever be, is comfortable being yourself. And as the years go on, the need to try too hard to do anything more than be yourself seems silly to me. So singing has gotten more natural, instead of more contrived, you know?
<strong>The experience of putting this album together - did that make you enthused to try and plan another one? Or are you happy just to leave it for whenever time allows?</strong>
Well, I think for me, I love mystery, and I love surprise, because I find that to be one of the fun parts about… if I’m going to enjoy the business side of this, that I enjoy incorporating that type of strategical fun into it. I will say that I wouldn't start this again unless I felt I could truly reinvigorate this with a certain amount of consistency. And I do see the Desert Sessions as… I think of it as a genre-busting mixtape that could go on longer than any band I’ve ever been in, because it doesn't require anything but inviting people to come be themselves, in an environment that’s unusual. Ideally it’s an environment that should be happening more often than not, so when I think of the Desert Sessions, I think, yeah, I could picture myself doing this up until minutes before I will die. Because it doesn’t have to obey anything.
<strong>I can see the attraction in that. And you said earlier that one of the points of the project is to try to remember why you started playing music. That's a great line to tell to other people, but do you find that’s been true for you, as well, as the person bringing people together for that reason?</strong>
Well, there's a certain amount of logistics that are required by me to create an environment that feels natural and distant from what you normally would do. But in creating that for other people, once it’s created, I’m allowed to slip into that as well. I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t remind me of that every time. And also, I would say that there are these moments that have nothing to do with me, where I’m just standing there, watching somebody else find something in themselves, or find something in a collaboration with other people, that is surprising for them. Just to watch that… probably the best example is when PJ Harvey, when Polly and Chris Goss did a song on the last two [albums], 9 and 10, called ‘There Will Never Be A Better Time’. They were rehearsing pieces of it outside, and I said, ‘OK, let’s come in and do this’. We set up the sound, and they did that song one time. That’s it. There’s no need to do more, because that is capturing a sonic photograph and stealing it out of the timeline of life, you know? And I got to see that. And seeing that? I would make tea for that. I would clean up the trash for that, to be there, to be part of that. And you don’t always need to perform and be that deep in the mix to get something from this. Sometimes just witnessing something incredible… it’s not just enough, it’s enough to answer the question, ‘Do you remember why you started playing?’ And to recharge your artistic battery, where the charge lasts a long time.
<strong>Man, I'm really pleased to hear that, because I've followed your music for a long time, in various forms. And just as a listener, it pleases me to know that this thing does that for you, to then allow you to put more energy into other things. It's great that you have something like that in your life, I think.</strong>
Yeah, I really, you know… this isn't something that generates money, if you know what I mean. And no-one’s going to get famous doing this. This has this reason that is about allowing yourself to be honest about who you are, and then try to see if you can smash that positive friction off someone else doing the same thing. And the sparks that occur in that collision, that collaboration of sounds - I don't know if there's anything more valuable to get from all this. Even though there’s some logistical things that are difficult for me, I don't care about that, because a scenario gets set up that allows all of this to occur. I think I do this because I wish someone would ask me to do this, and no one did, so I’ll do it myself. I’m not someone that would ever advise someone else to wait; ‘Well, just wait and see…’ I think it's good to take the extra five minutes, and not be in a hurry. But I'm certainly an advocate of, ‘No, fuck that - let’s go now’. I think there's a bit of seizing the moment. There's moments up for grabs at many instances in everyone's life. I think it’s about training the muscles that are the ones that take a risk, to get strong enough to seize these moments. So you can be part of a moment that transcends just standing around with your mouth open, breathing.
<strong>I think you were 24 when you recorded the first Desert Sessions. Do you ever think back to the guy who made that call to say, ‘I'm going to start this thing? I'm going to put this flag in the ground’ - and here you are, 22 years later, doing an evolution of that same idea? Do you think of that guy sometimes?</strong>
Do I think of that guy? [laughs] I’m not someone that looks back. I’m not interested in nostalgia. I’m not ready to look back at my own life yet; there’s so much to do. But I do know that, the way I was raised is like, you know, your life should be judged by the stack of things you’ve done in your life, and the fears you chased down, and the risks you took, and the failures that you got up from after they’re over. That’s the pile that I’m interested in. And I do know that this new Desert Sessions only exists because it’s standing on top of that pile. So if I would see that old me, I’d say, ‘Keep going, and if your arms could stretch out wider - then stretch them wider’. Because I think this is all about consistency, and taking a risk. Consistency is what matters. And so I think the only reason I'm able to do this now is because I really cared and put everything into the before, so there's no reason to stop putting everything into the now, you know? That’s the one thing that’s gotten me [to where I am]: find the cliff you’re throwing yourself off, and do it.
<strong>Thinking of that pile: it's a fucking big pile, Josh. You've put a lot of art out into the world, and a lot of it is great, in my opinion, and I'm just some guy with an opinion. Are you proud of that pile?</strong>
Yes, yeah, because I try to make things that I would love, you know? I can't watch myself perform on television or something. But I can listen to own music because I try to make something that I really love, and all the way back to Kyuss, we made music that we really wanted to hear, that no-one else made, so we knew we had to. I think that’s a good guise to make music under. When I meet people who say, ‘Oh, I don’t listen to my own music, I can't stand it,’ I think, ‘Well, what's the point?’ I think it's important to make something that you really love, so that someone else has a chance to love it, too. Or if they don’t like it, then you’re OK with that, and it doesn’t bother you.
When Iggy called me - which is the single coolest thing I’ve ever been allowed to be a part of - when he called me, I gotta believe… I hope it's because of all the times that I turned the money down, or said, ‘I’m not doing that’, and people would say ‘You’re crazy’. Or because I’m not doing, you know, adverts for Pepsi or something. They’re all the practice of doing it for a reason that you can live with, and that you can be honest with yourself - I hope that he called because of the stacking of that. I hope that he wouldn’t have called if I had of made different decisions, you know? A little part of me, after that Iggy record, I was saying to myself: ‘Well, now what do I do?’ Because I think each time, I need to find a little bit of a K2 or an Everest to climb. Where’s my next Everest? Because just making 10 more songs so you can go on tour for three years doesn’t mean anything to me.
<strong>Well, looking at what's happened since then: you did the Iggy album, which was great. You did ‘Villains’, which extended the band in more directions, and put more great art out in the world. You've got this Desert Sessions thing coming out for the first in a long time. How far into the future are you looking? Is it just one foot in front of the other, or do you have a big overarching plan that's driving your decisions?</strong>
My Dad has always told me, ‘Don’t talk about what you’re gonna do, because every time you speak about what you’re gonna do - by the amount of words you spoke, that’s the amount of words that are working against you, from it ever occurring’, you know? So I like to talk about what I've done, and share as little of what plans I have as possible. But also, that being said, I have an idea. And it involves creating things in the next bunch of years, and chasing down the extremes of the ideas that have come up along the way. So that this never becomes something that you accidentally and foolishly consider to be a burden. It would be a shame to not appreciate the opportunity to go make something, and express yourself. I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of support, somehow, even though I'm willing to burn it all down sometimes. I think I feel like this is my time to make things, in the next bunch of years. I’ve been sitting back and watching for the last year and a half. I think I understand what I need to do.
<strong>Is there something strange or unexpected you've discovered during your life in music so far?</strong>
Oh, there’s so much. I’ve been through a lot of extreme things. I think part of why I don't spend too much time being nostalgic is because when I do that, I realise I've been through a lot of things that, whether you believe that are fortunate or unfortunate, other people aren’t going to have to… [inaudible] And I'm thankful for all those things, good and bad, because I don't… I believe the society we live in is all just a handshake deal to make it look like we know what’s going on. And so I feel like this is a real blessing, to be able to speak your mind, not work for someone else, and not feel like… there is no safety, so playing it safe is just some joke you tell yourself. So I like the chance to take a risk, and provoke, and find things. I don’t always like some of the attention that comes with this, but also, it’s not worth complaining about, you know? [laughs] That’s part of the gig. It could be so much worse. I guess I’ve always been waiting ‘til the day someone’s going to ring my doorbell and say, ‘Hey, we all agree - we don’t care about anything you’re doing anymore. You gotta grab your stuff and go.’ I’m always waiting for that doorbell to ring. And if it did, I would be like, ‘Ah, yeah - that makes sense. That was a long time, though! That was a long time.’ I see no reason to stop going down this road that I’m going down, until someone has to actually stand and stop me.
<strong>You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and playing and composing and performing music. Just lastly, Josh, how do you think about what music is, and what music does for people? Not necessarily your own music, but just the sum of it all that's out there, floating in the air, each and every day? What’s it all for?</strong>
Well, for me, that’s simple. That feeling of being a young boy, when you have a crush on - for me - some girl, and she walks away and the gates shut and I have nothing but butterflies. That is akin to writing a song, or hearing a song, that transports you. And I know where words fail to articulate a feeling, music does it effortlessly. It doesn’t matter what language it’s in, or if it’s instrumental or has vocals. Music is the only thing I’ve ever known in my life that is never wrong. You may not like it; show me the worst band in the world, and I’ll show you 300 people that are willing to die for it, ‘cause they get it. You may not like something, but music is never wrong.
And so I feel like, just like every plant, rock, animal and human on Earth has its own frequency that’s humming, that is definitely how music is made: in combining and smashing these frequencies together. And so that is an expression that’s above people, and it’s above words, and it’s above whatever noises you make with your face to try to communicate. So I feel like music is this expression that’s a little bit <em>beyond</em>, you know?
<strong>Thank you for that, and great to talk with you. Congrats on the album, and best of luck for whatever else you decide to add to the pile in future.</strong>
Cool, man. I'll see you out there. Thank you.