“Notice yourself noticing.”
A conversation with Josh Flowers
Josh Flowers Recording
I met Josh Flowers back when I was at University in Edinburgh and he was in an alt folk band “Josh Flowers & the Wild,” they and Roo Panes’s were in the middle of a UK tour and were crashing at my flat. I thought I had hit the jack pot with a crew of hunky guitar wielding guys under my roof. I had organised a gig for them- which was to a group of over excitable vodka and red bull drinking students in the Voodoo rooms. Fortunately my friends and I have progressed onto more full bodied drinks: similarly, Josh Flowers has evolved over the 8 years. He kindly gave me some time last week to discuss his New EP and his other musical project Echobaby.
I started off our face time with wanting to discuss the progression of his sound and how he has moved from a folk/blues sound into a less easily definable songwriter space. He told me that the breakthrough came when he started writing songs that were consistent to who he is day to day. He felt in order to be authentic, the songs needed to contain humour and wit as a means to getting at the more serious subject matter. But this has only been able to come about through him getting to know himself and finding out how he really communicates and zeroing in on that.
Josh doesn’t start with a writing formula: he just has voice notes and a physical book to hand to record what he notices. He then sits down with the notes every few days and sees if these musings can lead him down a song journey. For example, the track “San Fransisco” which is on his recent EP, "Side A" has a strong chorus singing about being born on the fault line. This would make people think that the track originated out of a trip to the dusty san Andreas fault line. In fact the song originated over a coffee with a friend at Balans cafe in rainy London. The friend said to Josh that they would lend him one of his favourite books ‘but most of my books are in San Francisco’. The line caught his ear and he wrote it down, thinking it might be a good starting point for a song. And it did, leading him on to the beautiful melodies of “San Fransisco”.
Artwork by Sam Hawkins
Josh reminded me that being ‘creative’ rarely seems to consist of just making stuff up. “It is like having your brain switched to a sort of satellite mode, ready to pick up the interesting stuff going on around you all the time.”
I mentioned the way in which his songs often take me to driving down the 1 in California and have a Beach Boys quality to them, which he said is funny as most of the tracks he had written before he had stepped foot into the Golden state. He did say that he had wanted to write good driving music, noticing the likes of War on Drugs and Future Islands have qualities to their songs where you can "let your mind roam when your body is occupied." In fact, one of my favourite Flowers tracks “The car you drive” was birthed out of a journey on the M1 from London to his hometown Leeds, whilst he was listening to Lou Reed and the line “ I love you for the car you drive” popped into his head and he precariously got out his phone to record it whilst zooming up the motorway.
He assured me that most times he pulls over.
Echobaby
Josh is also one half of the gorgeous duo, Echobaby, who is in the fortunate position of being used to writing songs over face time as Julianna is based in San Diego. In a sense they are ahead of the game whilst other artists are currently having to get used to creating in lock down. Their new single “Raining cats and dogs”, which is out on Friday, was recorded entirely long distance, which is a first for them. It was a process that was surprisingly useful for Josh as he says it limits the amount of choices you have with instruments and recording techniques and means you are forced to get very creative within those new limitations. It was produced and mixed by Julianna and I had the pleasure of getting a preview of the single and loved it. It is beautifully human, grounding and incredibly timely for what the world is going through. Josh described Julianna as his co-writing soul mate, having met her 2 years ago when they were both working on a play in New York; it was the musical love at first listen. He said that she has certainly set the bar high for other co-writing situations.
I asked him for advice for myself as a songwriter and other budding artists and he jokingly said “be yourself,” but quickly said that he wasn’t going to give me such a trite, impractical answer. “It is about noticing yourself, noticing things” he said. To really hone in on what moves you, you need to take note of what you are noticing and then tune yourself to those things and themes. This will then enable you to be a better observer and a better writer. He asked me what moves me and I said that I often can feel overwhelming sadness when I see elderly people and he said it could be because i am moved by loneliness and vulnerability and I need to lean into that when I am writing. What do you notice and why do you notice it?
It was a real pleasure getting a small insight to Josh’s creative journey and process. But the cherry on top followed in the evening when I got to enjoy the instagram live launch of his EP. What was most wonderful about it was that I got to enjoy this from the comfort of my bath; a first for my gig career! Maybe this is the future, we won’t be gracing sticky gig venues with sweaty vodka red bull drinkers… well, actually, I quite miss the B.O and the bopping heads. However nice it was to listen to Josh in a bubble bath, I look forward to a proper gig of his in the future.
Maybe in "San Fransisco" when it is “raining cats and dogs?"
Updates from behind the music with Alex Kate can be found: @alexkatemusic