Finding a Way Home
by Andrew Collins
Josh Garrels’ music is marked by his deep and total immersion in the entire creative process–from the inception of the first melodies to production, performance and even distribution. All of the Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter’s seven albums are self-produced. His music dips into genres as diverse as hip-hop, electronic, soul, and folk, and yet he’s quite capable of carrying a show alone behind a microphone with only his guitar.
Garrels’ tenacity as an independent artist paid off with the release his sixth album, Love and War and the Sea In Between (2011), which tapped into the talents of Mason Jar Music in Brooklyn to help perform and produce a few tracks. It soon was complemented by a documentary film, The Sea in Between.
When his latest album Home dropped earlier this year, Garrels gave away the songs for free on Noisetrade – after earlier giving away all of his earlier albums as free downloads in the weeks leading up to Home’s release.
The attentive listener will notice that Garrels’ music is unabashedly inspired by his faith, but that doesn’t detract from its artistry or dictate his audience. You’re just as likely to find him playing at a church as in front of a bunch of hipsters sipping craft beer at a venue downtown, and if you’ve happened to encounter his music somewhere, it was probably in coffee shop, not Christian radio. He’s been highlighted by the folks at NPR, Relevant Magazine, and many in between. He presents himself on stage with more questions than answers, more heart than dogma, doubting and fearful but ultimately a man of conviction.
Garrels’ live performances bring his emotive music to new heights – eyes rolling back almost maddeningly, face contorted somewhere between pain and ecstasy, voice shaking but on key at the climax of the refrain. His stage presence has the humble, somewhat awkward charm of authenticity, and he elicits such affection from the audience that it’s clear his success is founded on talent and creativity more than animal charisma and spectacle.
RedFence managed to catch the final show of Garrels’ most recent East Coast tour at McLean Bible Church in northern Virginia, and then spoke with him after he returned home.
RedFence: I understand that once upon a time you were a skater kid growing up in Indiana? So how did you end up getting into music?
Josh Garrels: My dad was a music teacher before retiring. He taught high school and middle school band and orchestra. We have generations of artists, preachers, and musicians in our family, so music was always sort of a common language in the Garrels household – it was always on. My dad would come home with old instruments from his school that he’d give to me, and we’d have a pile of old drums and synthesizers and Wurlitzers and violins in the “junk” side of our basement. He bought me 4-track recorders and then 8-track recorders, and he’s actually the one who bought me a laptop to begin recording digitally.
And then my two older sisters – before the age of grunge they were into what would have been coined alternative music, the era of 120 Minutes on MTV, and so through that I would get these mix tapes all the time with The Cure and Depeche Mode and The Pixies and The Smiths. I was listening to music that was kind of above or outside of anything kids my age were listening to, which I think really formed how I listen to music, because I would have my sisters tell me why this music was worthwhile. They would do the hard job of crate-digging and hunting for these obscure bands and then they’d make me mix tapes as like a 13-year-old skate kid.
I guess that’s a long answer to say that hunting for music of both obscure bands and the great bands – rooting through my dad’s Beatles vinyls and stuff –was always very much a part of our family. So early on whatever music I was into I would dive headlong into, whether it was punk-rock or hip-hop or in college folk music, the tools were there to create it. And the language in our family was given to us to listen critically to music and think about how it was made. They gave me the tools and they were creating music, and so it always felt attainable – like something that you should do.
I don’t know that it was ever a pursuit of mine to be a vocational musician, because it was just part of life. If anything, I was more into skateboarding all through middle-school, high-school, even into college. And it wasn’t until I was around twenty years old that I really, in a focused way, began to make music – and began to realize this might be something I have a talent for. And so then I purposefully started trying to hone the craft of songwriting and production and recording, which I’ve done since.
RF: So how did you then end up settling in the Pacific Northwest?
JG: I kind of bounced all over the country and have made albums in bedrooms and attics and garages and porches – literally. So I can do what I do from anywhere because I’ve always self-produced. We moved to Portland about six or seven years ago in favor of my wife Michelle going to school here to study art. We’d never even stepped foot here, but art school didn’t end up being the reason we stayed because upon arriving she was already pregnant with our second child, and her focus changed. But that’s what brought us here, and we’ve been here ever since.
RF: Let’s talk about the new album, Home, which just came out earlier this year. Stylistically you’ve moved away from some of the hip-hop elements and loops of your former work toward more of a rich, soulful sound. Can you talk about the musical shift and where you were trying to go? Was it primarily a musical decision or was there a thematic element as well?
“The songs that felt like they wanted to be
grouped together out of the thirty or forty
some-odd sketches that I had written are
the ones that ended up being Home.”
JG: When I start writing an album I don’t always know where I’m going with it, and it rarely ends up being what I think it’s going to be. I very much build as I go, and it takes personality as I get a ways in. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m working with until halfway into an album. But on the front end I’ll write a ton of songs, a ton of snippets, a ton of little sketches on my phone. I still play around with a ton of samples and synths and loops. I love creating music that way. But on this one, the songs that felt like they wanted to be grouped together out of the thirty or forty some-odd sketches that I had written are the ones that ended up being Home. So then once I realized there was this grouping of songs, I saw they all more or less had a similar personality. They felt like a group that was trying to say something.
And then you choose your production style. The subject matter of this album felt nostalgic. While I was writing a lot of songs I was listening to old fifties music, sixties music, and classic rock, as opposed to what would be cutting edge happening right now. I still love electronic music and hip-hop, but the music that I was ingesting a lot during the creation of this album was like old classic rock and fifties music and old soul music.
RF: And on Home you were working with Mason Jar Music, which also helped create Love and War, correct?
JG: I worked once again with Mason Jar Music out of Brooklyn. They had a hand in seven or eight of the songs. They have a house band, which would be similar to Motown or something, where they’re working with my song and in their studio they have a live drummer, live bassist, live electric guitar players, they bring in a horn section. I think that sort of gives that classic feel when you have a house band.
On Love and War (and the Sea in Between), Mason Jar produced two out of the eighteen songs, whereas in Home they had a hand in two-thirds of the album. So I think you hear that with more of the live instrumentation. In my past albums there’d be a lot more almost like hip-hop back beats as opposed to a live drum set. They’d even come up with a different type of accompaniment than I would come up with on my own. A lot of the Mason Jar guys are like Juilliard-trained composers, so they’ll come up with more classic-sounding accompaniment.
So all that to say, I chose a certain production style, I chose a certain grouping of songs. I don’t know necessarily that that’s the direction henceforth I’m going to build upon. Right now I’m actually playing around with a lot of synths and electronic stuff because that’s what’s intriguing to me. But yeah, the subject matter and the songs themselves felt like they wanted to be produced that way.
RF: As these songs then end up grouping themselves together, do you feel like there’s any sort of narrative or thematic arc from one album to another in your music? For example, to me it seems that Love and War is concerned with the forward-looking journey, while Home feels more settled and, like you said, nostalgic.
JG: Yeah I really do, because a majority of the work I put out has an autobiographical color to it. A lot of times I’m writing these songs because I need to either express something that needs to get out, or I’m trying to figure something out. Songs are often a tool for me to intuitively and emotionally figure out life, you know? In Home, there is the sense that I needed to know that things could be ok. I can tend towards being melancholy, wearing the weight of things on my shoulders. That can be a good thing, but I think on this album I really was searching. Where is the place where it’s going to be all right? Where is the place that we can find rest and joy and peace?
RF: Because those things were eluding you?
JG: I’ve felt the lack of those over the years. For all of the good things that have happened in being able to make a career out of this and having a wonderful wife and children and a studio to work in, life’s still chaotic and frightening to me sometimes. I needed to know there’s a place where things are all right, and Home, with at least the idealization of what home should be, symbolizes that for a lot of us. The songs are all revolving around that personal pursuit, which in some ways tells a story.
“Love and War is this outward focus, trying to get
to the distant shore, and Home is looking
at what we have and trying to find the
contentment and joy in the simple things.”
RF: And what about Love and War?
JG: I’m hesitant to use the word, but with Love and War it was almost like a militant pursuit in me, where there’s this sense that life is a fight, and damn it, we’re going to stand up, and we’re going to take responsibility for what we need to take responsibility for, despite the onslaught of everything that’s trying to tempt us and tear us down. We’re going to move forward, but with the tools of forgiveness and honor and courage. That definitely was where my heart was during the making of Love and War, which would lend itself to more of an epic storyline. Where with Home – I wouldn’t quite use the term “devotional” – but it’s more internal.
But you said it man. Love and War is this outward focus, trying to get to the distant shore, and Home is looking at what we have and trying to find the contentment and joy in the simple things. So yeah, whatever I’m going through at the time, it’s going to lend itself to storytelling in some way.
RF: You mentioned a sort of searching and longing you wrestled with during the creation of Home, which I think speaks to this idea that artists often create out of wounds or conflict. You write profoundly emotive music, so would you say that’s true for you? Is there some sort of state you find yourself in when you’re writing songs?
JG: It’s sort of a blessing and a curse, to be real honest, because just within the past few years I’ve come to realize something about myself: as intuitive as I think that I am, a lot of times I don’t know why I’m feeling a certain way. Like at home here, I’ll just be “in a mood” and not be able to locate where it’s coming from. Whereas with my wife and my son Sheppard, they’ll be feeling a certain way and they’ll be able to verbalize it.
I’m an emotional person, but I’m not always self-aware. I’ve come to realize that I don’t always know why I’m feeling a certain way, so a lot of times music is the place that I go to. Somehow the sound itself unlocks in me why I’m feeling a certain way. Often the melody will come first – like putting song to what I’m feeling. It sounds cheesy, but it’s literally like I need to find an audio representation of what’s happening inside. A lot of times that unlocks words that attach themselves to it, and then I’ll realize why I’m feeling a certain way.
RF: Your music that results from that often ends up appealing to the divine and is full of scriptural references. Clearly this is a spiritual struggle for you as well, so how does your faith factor into all that?
JG: As you stated, my music revolves around faith, and talk about a mysterious – at times mystical – path where you don’t always know where to put the next foot in front of the other. For me, music also meets that need. I’m trying to walk this line where sometimes you can’t even see where the next step is. I’m trying to follow this God who is invisible, but I see His work around me, and using these clues, and this puzzle to “follow” him. So along with trying to figure out what is happening inside of me, song is this way that I’m trying to connect with and figure out this life of faith, following my living but invisible God. That’s a strange part of being a human – a spiritual human, you know?
So yeah, I think I write for both of those things: figuring self out and figuring out my place in this world, and even in the eternal storyline. Music and song is a place where I’m always grappling with those things, trying to – I don’t know that I’d say “figure them out,” because I don’t know that they’re ever “figured out.” It’s more a necessity to interpret them and make sense of things a little bit as we go.
RF: Let’s shift gears a little bit. At RedFence we love art, particularly a good book. Are there any writers that inspire you and shape your music?
JG: Authors like Madeleine L’Engle with her work Walking on Water come to mind. I used to read that over and over again. She allows for a lot of mystery, not only in the faith but in creation, that it’s mysterious. Also Wendell Berry, especially his poetry, I’ve loved over the years.
“Kandinsky, he had this experience where
he felt like he could see sound, so a lot of
his work was trying to capture and picture
what sound and music meant to him.”
RF: What about visual artists?
JG: I always tend to gravitate to a particular visual artist during the creation of a given album. For this past album Home I would look at the work of Wassily Kandinsky, who has this sort of geometrical, colorful work. He had this experience some people have with the senses where they almost can see sound and hear color – there’s not a harsh delineation between what you see and what you hear, and what you feel and what you smell. The group Mae, which my buddy Jacob Marshall is in, gets their name from this experience. I’m forgetting what it’s called exactly, you can look it up [It’s called synesthesia].
Anyways Kandinsky, he had this experience where he felt like he could see sound, so a lot of his work was trying to capture and picture what sound and music meant to him, which I didn’t even know when I found him. I’ll put an artist’s work up on my screensaver on my studio computer, and it’ll live on there while I’m making my album, but I didn’t learn that about him until talking to Jacob. So that’s been the visual art component of me writing and making songs.
RF: Anything else come to mind?
JG: Anytime I can come into contact with a good book, good visual art, a good movie, sometimes those really help prod me in my own craft. I watched this documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. People call him the best sushi chef in the world. I love sushi, so I started watching it. This guy has had his sushi shop in the subterranean subways of Tokyo that holds like ten people. For the past thirty or forty years he’s been doing this – he’s like in his 80s or 90s now. And if you want to get in to have some of his sushi you have to get on a year or two waiting list, and then you pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to have him create a few pieces of sushi for you, and then you taste it and you walk out. He has like two or three of these meetings a day, and then he goes home.
To Jiro the craft of making sushi was endlessly creative. He would have these dreams when he was younger of things like new ways of cutting the meat and making sushi. He’s spent his whole life honing in on this one craft that he’s in love with, and he’s still in the same little spot that people come from all over the world to peer into and taste. They say this food sort of transcends just being food, it’s like this “spiritual” experience or something. But I remember watching that and realizing man, if this dude can invest himself in the art of making sushi, how expansive and endless is the craft of creating a song? Like how far could I go with that? My hope and desire is to invest myself that fully into songcraft so that I’m creating my best work in my fifties and sixties and seventies. That sounds exciting to me.
*laughs* Sorry, I take these tangents, man.
RF: Oh no worries, you brought it full circle!
“I remember watching that and
realizing man, if this dude can
invest himself in the art of making
sushi, how expansive and endless
is the craft of creating a song?”
JG: But yeah, seeing a good documentary like that can really help me make sense of my own craft, and even though it’s like, “oh, this dude’s making sushi,” I see the parallel of how I can become single-minded and really strive for excellence in my field.
RF: In that striving for excellence, what is the most fulfilling or meaningful part of what you do as a music artist? Is it performing? The songwriting process itself?
JG: On Sufjan (Stevens’) new album he ends one of his songs with the line – and I’m paraphrasing here –“What’s the point of singing songs if no one ever hears them?” But that’s not always the motivator on the front end for me. There really is sort of a compulsion to create.
I will say though, when you’ve poured your sweat and blood and heart into a thing, at times you wonder “Why am I doing this?” You’re sort of killing yourself to finish an album, but when you then have a response, whether it’s at a live show or someone engaging with the recording and taking the time to write you and tell you what a particular song has meant – how it’s helped him through something or has been sort of healing in some way – that’s the point where to me it comes full circle. That’s when I feel this is fulfilling; this is meaningful. It’s not just my joy to create this, it’s also adding something to other people’s lives.
When I get that feedback it prods me on, and then I can pour myself even more fully into it because you realize it’s not for naught. It’s not just some selfish sense of “I have to create for me,” it actually does spill over to others.
“Life on the road can do something to you.
You’re not living in reality, if you think about it, man.
Life as a touring artist is a strange thing.”
RF: It looks like we have time for one more. You’ve made a point not to spend too much time touring even on the heels of a new album so that you can be at home and present with your family. Wasn’t your last tour like three shows? So can you talk about the challenge of trying to stay balanced and keep your priorities straight in the midst of your growing music career?
JG: I don’t tour a whole lot. I enjoy getting out and playing shows, but for me as an artist that’s always just one part of what I do. It never feels primary to me. I love connecting with people, but I feel like first and foremost I love to be creating new songs. For whatever reason I love the act of making a recording, which puts me at home. I value home life and watching my kids grow up and keeping a good connection with my wife because I’ve realized something the few times that I’ve done longer tours – though compared to other artists they haven’t been very long. I’ve done maybe fourteen-show runs where I was gone for three weeks or so. I remember doing a run down the west coast with Mason Jar and then working my way back up the coast doing solo shows alone, and a weird thing happened by the final few. I was tired, pretty exhausted, and for the first time I actually felt myself getting sort of jaded. Like connecting with fans after the show – if there was like the same question again, or taking a picture on another iPhone – I was inwardly rolling my eyes and like so tired of it. But I also took note, like “Whoa, you normally don’t feel this way right now – you’re feeling jaded towards the people who are coming to listen to your music.”
Life on the road can do something to you. You’re not living in reality, if you think about it man. Life as a touring artist is a strange thing. You go from city to city, where people are applauding you because of something you’ve done and something that you’re like. You’re playing the song that they’ve connected with. So you’re getting this praise, but yet your heart can be like a million miles away. You’re provided for and applauded, but yet at the same time you’re worn thin, and you’re not actually connected with anyone on a deep level. You’re disconnected. And I think to live in that space for too long is really unhealthy. There are enough tragedies among working, vocational musicians. We all know the stories of implosion of relationships and drug abuse and infidelity, and man, just this carnage.
RF: But of course in many of those cases there are other factors at play as well…
JG: I’m not saying touring is the first and foremost reason, but I think it’s a big one at times because you have no deep relationships in your life when you’re on the road, unless you have a good band where you’re really checking in with each other. So for me, man, the balance is out of necessity, because I really want to do this for a long time, and I want to honor my listeners. I want to foster not only a good relationship with my family, but a good relationship with the listeners.
I’ve seen being away for long periods be detrimental to my relationship with my family, I’ve seen it be detrimental to my relationship with the music, and I’ve seen it be detrimental to my relationship with the people who are listening to the music. I’ve found when I’m home for longer I’m rooted in a local community, I’m rooted with my wife and children, I’m actively creating, and I then have a better relationship with my fans. So when I go out and do shows, I’m present, and I’m stoked to be there, as opposed to like, “another show, another city,” and not seeing the people and being like “How many came? What did we make?” And so on.
I think those are the reasons. I felt like it’s a necessity to protect my family, but also man, to protect my craft and my relationship with those who are engaging in the music. It’s all connected.
RF: Thanks so much for your time Josh.
JG: Thank you.
