I first met Josh while working at Microsoft while we were both business managers working in different divisions. We worked together on multiple occasions along with other divisional business managers. During this time I came to not only respect the professionalism Josh brought to projects, but also valued his intellect and sense of humor. Talk to him for any length of time, you’ll hear his passion come through for using technology to make the world a better place.
As our friendship grew and we shared mutual life experiences we became friends. Together, we mourned the loss of our dear friend, Lourdes. I watched as he and his family survived his wife’s participation in the Boston marathon bombing of 2013. We survived and thrived as business managers.
While I’ve known Josh for years, it was during the Covid-19 response that I realized he had some hidden passions. For 15 weeks during the Covid-19 response, he has been doing a weekly concert on Facebook Live – just Josh and a guitar, and he has only repeated a handful of songs during that period. His attention to asking his audience for suggestions as part of his playlist planning speaks to his inclusiveness. That one hour in each week, listening to songs that I knew or didn’t know, along with other people, some of whom I knew, some I didn’t, provided such a respite from the insanity of our lives. It was sort of “communion in song” form. “Musical fellowship” without the campfire. It reminded me of a better time.
I’m not musical. In actual fact, I’m tone deaf. But I know the words to zillions of songs and those words transport me to a happy place. A polymuse I’m not but a lifelong learner I am. Many times I will suggest a song to Josh and he will give me a classical alternative or a current alternative that I have never heard to consider. I always walk away learning something from our discussions. That’s a gift. It’s a gift he gives for free from his heart to ours. His heart heals as does ours.
I hope you enjoy getting to know Josh a little bit better through this interview. You’ll be the better for knowing him that I promise you. I’m blessed to call him my friend.
Tell us about the importance of playing music in your life.
For me, music has always been an escape. While my brother put a ukulele in my hands when I was 3 years old, I really began playing music as a distraction that my older brother, Drew, orchestrated in the heat of my parents separation and divorce when I was about 5 or 6. 10 years my senior, he started playing guitar when he was around ten, and he decided that my brother, DJ, would be the drummer and I would play keyboards. When things got stressful in the house, we would descend to our basement and ‘jam.’ From those first summers, I continued to consider myself a keyboard player until one year I bought a book to teach myself to play the guitar. Building on the ukulele foundation my brother established, I added 2 strings and was hooked.
Aside from cars driven by my 4 older siblings, I didn’t really listen to a lot of music growing up, but I did watch a lot of television. I usually watched with a guitar in my hand and while I watched the programs, I learned to play the jingles in the commercials. I quickly transitioned to playing in rock bands in summer camp, sometimes on the guitar, sometimes on the drums. In 7th grade, my mom wanted me to take a rock band class at a local music school, but my audition placed me in the intermediate adult class, as there was no comparable class to my level for kids. It was in that class that a lot of my musical influences were rooted: we played John Mellencamp and Dire Straits songs, establishing my love for the acoustic rock sound of Hurts So Good and the arpeggiated solos of just about any Mark Knopfler solo.
I studied Jazz Improvisation in high school with an approach that was more akin to learning a foreign language than a style of music. We learned to communicate through music, and I developed my listening skills to hear patterns of sound that have enabled one of my best party tricks. If I listen to a song I’ve never heard before with a guitar in my hands, I can usually be playing along by the start of the second verse. But ear training was only part of what I learned from that experience. I also developed my preparedness as well as my calmness in reacting to what might otherwise be stressful situations. As a key component to the course, we had to show up ready to play, which meant that we not only needed to be physically present, but also we needed to be mentally prepared to actively participate. We also needed to be prepared to handle the kinds of adversarial situations that might likely arise for our instrument: guitar players needed extra strings, picks and cables; drummers needed extra sticks and brushes; horn players needed valve oil, reeds, etc. The class performed a few times each year and went to the recording studio as well, so I learned to get over stage fright in that environment.
I went on to play in a band in college. I was the lead guitar player in “Falling Skyward,” a band that played around New York City in the late 90’s. We played the famous Bitter End, the Elbow Room, the Pyramid, the Lion’s Den, and Arlene’s Grocery, among others. It was a great experience until fall of my junior year. Around that time, we were trying to get signed to a label, and we had a period of time when we were practicing and/or gigging every day. We were wooing Artist and Repertoire (A&R) guys to come to our shows and we were working with an entertainment lawyer to hash out how we would share the wealth if we got signed. I have a clear memory of returning to my dorm room on a practice day, taking a look at my Takamine acoustic guitar that I always kept on a stand in the corner, and having the urge to chuck it out the window. Instead, I put it in the case and made plans to leave the band. Music had always been my escape from stressful situations, but in this case it had become the source of my stress. Without a backup stress release, I had visions of finding escape in substances and rather than let that happen, I made plans to study abroad and resigned from the band as soon as they could find my replacement.
I’ve done a couple of bands since then. In business school, I played in the Rocket Pockets, a cover band during my second year, but we only did a handful of gigs that were all just a short drive from my house. I’ve done a couple of informal bands around Seattle, but always do my best to keep it light and avoid the stresses of regular gigging bands. My more recent passion has been to be the guy who brings a guitar to family camps associated with my kids’ school, and playing around the fire pit at my friend Pamela’s house during parties or informal get togethers. Keeping the music as an escape has been better for me.
So, you had been doing a concert every week, starting almost immediately after folks were at home. How did you decide to do that?
Frankly, it started on a whim, and continued out of a sense of duty. Let me elaborate:
Around March 10th, I started to see a bunch of my favorite artists do a concert from home. I think the first one I saw was Dave Matthews playing a 25 minute set, then I saw some posts from Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies. I thought to myself, I could probably throw a set together and have a little fun. I floated the idea with my Facebook friends to see who would watch, and got a strong positive response, including a few requests. With almost no rehearsal and just a few attempts at a technical sound check, I did my first show on March 15th. I think it ran almost 2 hours, and I had many more songs I wanted to play, but my hands and back got sore!
During the show, people commented that they loved the show, and during the following week, people asked me to do another show and offered more requests. From there, I just started a weekly habit of doing the shows every Sunday at 3PM. There were a few weeks where I got eager to build out the set list immediately after finishing that week’s show, and there were some weeks where I waited until Friday evening to even start thinking about what to play. I had two reasons for keeping going: me and my audience. For me, playing a weekly show helped me measure time. Not only did I number the “Quarantine Concerts,” but also I used the concerts themselves to differentiate between Saturday and Sunday. During the week, I have a rhythm of work, but the weekend days had the potential to blend together when I wasn’t leaving the house.
Around Father’s Day, I started to notice that my “live audiences” had dropped off significantly. I also noticed that I had a few more weeks in a row where I hadn’t had time to plan or even play during the week, and I was cramming to put together shows, rather than developing a set list that I was proud of. On the bright side, I overcame a lot of issues with the signal of my feed (both audio and video) and I did a couple of shows where I replayed some of my favorite songs from earlier shows with better audio and video quality. But I came to the realization that my audience was out enjoying their summer, and I was spending a lot of time inside getting ready for a show that fewer people were watching. So I made the difficult decision to change the cadence of my shows to monthly, allowing me to enjoy the summer while also continuing my commitment to my listeners to carry on with my performances. Fittingly, I did the first of the monthly shows while my family was vacationing with Drew’s family at Donner Lake. With the mountains and water in the background, my brother and I played the songs we’ve played together for years – most of which had been woven into my set list during the preceding 4 months. It was an amazing capstone to a wonderful week of rest in a cabin on the lake.
Now I’m itching to get back to doing another solo show!
Walk through the impact Covid-19 has had on you.
It could be the result of so many experiences that were so much more traumatic, but I have been lucky in that COVID has not negatively impacted me too much. Logistically, we’ve all been home together a lot. My wife stopped working for a few months, but returned to work as a massage therapist in June. I’ve been working from home continually, except for my vacation and a couple of days here and there. My kids transitioned well into remote learning, though my daughter who was a senior missed out on many important experiences. She had to select her college without the benefit of a ‘revisit’ day; she didn’t get to celebrate her 18th birthday with friends; prom was a Teams party that teachers participated in and graduation was a drive-through event. She hopefully will be the only high school class to have these kinds of experiences.
From a work perspective, I’ve actually hit a good groove with working from home. I previously had a job that was predominantly remote, and it was much harder that time than it has been this time. Perhaps misery loves company, but I’m finding time to focus, and I’m still managing to stay mostly connected with colleagues from work. Sure, the random drivebys are missing from what would be an optimally productive experience, but on the flip side, I get randomized a lot less!
Balance is tricky, as my office is a set of French doors away from the living room. That’s hard on me when I see my family having fun, and it’s hard on my family when I’m taking a work call, as my voice tends to get loud when I get excited, and I’m very easily excited.
Overall, I’m eating better, I’m playing more guitar, and I’m more connected to a bunch of friends and family, as we’re being deliberate about reestablishing connections due to the pandemic.
Getting back to the Quarantine Concerts, how do you plan for them?
I have kept a pretty consistent schedule – usually, I perform on Sundays at 3PM Pacific/6PM Eastern. I would personally like to do later, but I don’t want to make my east coast friends and family stay up too late on a Sunday. Going early also frees up my late afternoon/evening.
I generally start planning next week’s show immediately after this week’s show. I have a PowerPoint deck that I use to manage the set list, lyrics, etc. There’s an ‘End of Show’ slide, after which I have the songs that didn’t get worked out in time to make a given week’s show. So I re-save the file to the next week’s show number, delete the songs from this week’s show, and start populating the deck with the songs – 1 slide/song, with lyrics.
I source the songs from a variety of places:
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- Songs that have been in my repertoire for ages.
- Songs I’ve known how to play, but generally don’t play for others.
- Songs I hear in passing – on TV, in a movie, in a commercial, etc. From time to time, there’s a good song in the car, but I haven’t been driving that much!
- Requests.
In addition, There’s one really interesting source for inspiration, and I’ve referred to it a few times during my shows: “The Mix Tape.” There are actually 2 mix tapes that 2 different friends of mine gave me when I was in high school, and the songs that were on those tapes massively influenced not only my taste in music, but my style of play. I’ve probably played about 7 or 8 songs from those tapes so far.
I’m also trying to source some songs with topical meaning…either relevant due to the time of year (I did a slightly belated Womens’ History Month show, featuring all female artists), or current events (putting in Rocket Man/Space Oddity in the week of the SpaceX launch). I try not to get too political, but I have played “Ohio” and “That’s Just the Way it is,” and I’m planning to play the Sting Song, “They Dance Alone” in my next show.
I usually try to end with a song that is a reimagining of a popular 80’s song. I’ve done songs like In Your Eyes, Time after Time, Land Down Under, etc.
What is the most enjoyable element of doing these shows for you? What is the least enjoyable element?
- Most enjoyable: I love to play. There are times that I love it so much that I wonder why I didn’t pursue music professionally…then I remember why I made a conscious decision not to go that career route.
- Least enjoyable: stress associated with music. The moment it starts to be stressful, I know I need to pull back. My own perfectionism is also not that enjoyable. I sometimes beat myself up about mistakes I’m making that no one else is likely noticing. If it happens in the very beginning of a song, I have no problem stopping and starting again. Otherwise, I just keep playing. It’s likely that no one would notice if I sang verses out of order on most songs, especially as my choices become more eclectic. I’ve learned to laugh it off at the end of the song and realize that I can’t give refunds on a free concert!
Have these grown you as an artist? Explain.
Absolutely. The first week took almost no rehearsal and I was able to brainstorm the set list within a day of playing the show. The hardest part was putting the lyrics together because, quite frankly, I can never remember the words to songs. Since then, I’ve grown in a bunch of ways:
- Imagination – I’ve had to think about how to get a song to work for solo acoustic, sometimes determining what the most important part is for each section of a song. This is the most creative part, and probably the second most fun part, after actually doing the performing and seeing the comments come in live. You have actually stretched me on this front – asking for songs I can’t even imagine on acoustic guitar and tempting me with cookies. I still need to get in the Will Smith song for you so I can earn my cookies!
- Guitar – learning all of the songs is a fun part, too…There’s an adrenaline rush of cramming for a show that feels like I’m a Saturday night live cast member…each week, do another one! The downside is that I’m learning sometimes upwards of 10 songs/week, and I don’t think I’ll retain that many songs in a playable state when this is all over. There were a few songs from past weeks that Drew and I wanted to add to our set that we had never played together before, and I couldn’t even remember how to play them. When you hear about songwriters like Woody Guthrie who have written hundreds of songs, I imagine there are many that they forget about. At the end of my weekly concerts, I think I am the best I’ve ever been musically, as my ear and my technical skills have really come together. It’s like going to the gym – I have to keep it up to maintain my conditioning.
- Singing – I’ve been pushing my range and I’m noticing myself getting more comfortable with the high parts. I have a friend from business school with whom I’ve reconnected over songs he was posting daily and my weekly concerts. He was a voice major in college and has coached me through some approaches to expanding my range. He cheers me on when I add Tenor songs for my low Baritone voice. We’re also starting to collaborate.
What are your plans for continuing these. Any plans for more duets?Plans to do some duets.
I will keep doing these for as long as we’re all home (or at least I’m home). Once my kids go off to school (my son is also heading to boarding school in the Boston area at some point), I may return to weekly performances.
I have done songs with my daughter, though she has started pushing back, despite the positive feedback she always gets. And, of course, Drew and I did a show when we were sharing a house last month. I would absolutely love to do more duets, but it gets tricky from a technical perspective. Unless we’re in the same room, latency literally drags the tempo down as you’re waiting for your partner to do their part. When rules allow, I could certainly bring friends in for a show, but it would take more time and rehearsal to be show ready. It’s a lot easier to fake a song alone, and doing things like slowing down for a complex part is harder to mask when you are trying to stay in synch with a partner. Besides, I quite like the challenge that playing solo rock music presents – I somehow need to incorporate the most memorable parts of a song into just my guitar and voice (and maybe a loop or harmony effect here and there).
Once we return to some semblance of normal, I am interested in getting a weekly gig at a wine bar or other type of restaurant. Not to add stress, but because when I go out, I always get jealous of those guys – they seem to be having so much fun and getting realtime feedback from the crowd playing a consistent set of songs week after week. I don’t want it to get bigger than just the solo gig of classic covers in front of a crowd enjoying dinner and drinks, but would love to spread the music.
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