Interview: Joshua Radin

2 August 2011

Photo: Alan Gastelum

A few weeks away from the release of his new album The Rock and The Tide, Joshua Radin took the time to talk to us about touring, recording, songwriting and his career.

-With The Rock and The Tide being released in the States a while ago, has it been hard sitting on the songs with fans over here not being able to hear them?
Yeah. The weirdest part about the lag in time with releasing music a year later is that I'm sort of over it. I like to change things around a lot in the live show, but then you've got to come over and almost go backwards.

I'm not complaining. It's just the way it is, but it'd be nice one day to release a record worldwide on the same day.

Then, do a world tour and another record, rather than have to promote different records and different songs in different countries at different times. I always feel like I have a little musical jet-lag.

-How does the record compare to your previous albums?
This is the first time I've recorded live. It was a lot more fun to record this way. I don't know if I'll do it again for the next record, but it was really a lot of fun to be in a room with musicians and teach them the songs.

All the songs on the record are basically the first or second take. You hear little mistakes, and I dig that about recording. I'd never tried that before, but I really loved it. It was inspiring.

-Did that add a bit more excitement to the recording?
It really made it a lot of fun. Sitting around with great musicians, playing songs and laughing. It was a really interesting experience, I'll never forget it.

-Your last album Simple Times broke into the UK Top 10. How is your career going over in the States?
In terms of career, I tend not to think about it so much in terms of chart positioning, or money. I like a slow build. I haven't been a musician very long, I started late in life.

One of my favourite quotations was from Abraham Lincoln. Not about music, but life in general. I'm probably paraphrasing, but he said "I walk slowly, but never backwards." I sort of think about my career that way.

I think it's interesting when entertainers have overnight success. Huge success, like American Idol or X Factor, where they're completely unknown and then they're everywhere.

It seems like a lot of those people find it hard to deal with that sort of fame and instant success. I have the good fortune of having slightly little, minor successes over and over again. Just building something.

My agent actually told me, when we started working together..."The longer you take to build something up, the longer it takes to tear it down." You know, in terms of a live audience and building up a fan-base.

Just one fan at a time, and hopefully they'll be with me forever. That's how you build a 30 year career, rather than a five year career.

-Do you think going through the grassroots way to making a career is more important, rather than maybe being a flash in the pan on something like The X Factor?
Yeah, I think it's important for me at least. There are different artists out there that want to be crazy famous, want the paparazzi and want that whole lifestyle. That really doesn't interest me.

I didn't grow up as a performer, like I said. I never really craved the spotlight. I just started playing live shows because I loved to write songs, and the only way to get them across to people was to tour and play them live.

I've had to learn how to be in the spotlight. It doesn't come naturally to me, that's for sure. I'm not one of those people. This is a better approach for me.

I try to shy away from the spotlight, which I know sounds weird or ironic being a performer, but I started so late. I started when I was 29, playing guitar, learnt a few chords and wrote my first song.

I'd never had any overnight success. I'd go from town to town. It's been word of mouth, grassroots, and I enjoy it that way.

-Over the years, has your style of songwriting shifted at all?
I think so. I still take a similar approach when writing songs. I want to be honest, I want people to relate to them. Generally, I want a universal theme so that when I play them for people, it doesn't matter where I am.

I tend to think about love, most of the time. Whether it's falling in love, falling out of love. I find that love, I know it's ridiculously cliché, but I find it fascinating.

When I'm not in love with a woman, I'm thinking about her a lot, like I wish I were. So, that comes up a lot in my songs because it's on my brain. It's universal, obviously.

Someone told me, I don't know if it's true, that 90% of all Beatles songs have the word love in them. They're my favourite band. Obviously, they didn't write just about love.

I'm not a religious person, I'd say I'm more spiritual than religious. I think all the major religions are rooted in love. As corny and cliché as it sounds, that's what I'm all about. When I play shows and meet fans, I try to meet as many as I can.

What keeps me touring, and travelling, are people coming up to me and saying that they broke up with their partner and they listened to my record and it helped them. That really is what keeps me going.

-You mentioned The Beatles. What other acts are an influence on your songwriting?
Bob Dylan is, in my mind, the greatest songwriter ever. The best duo would be Lennon and McCartney. Paul Simon is a huge influence. Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty. Classic stuff.

I'm not throwing out anyone that you're not going to know of. I don't listen to a tonne of music. I've never been that person - whether it's music, art or literature - who goes and seeks out to the art that no-one really knows, the underground stuff.

Maybe I'm a little more safe about it. I don't know whether that's good or bad, but I always tend to like the classic stuff that stands the test of time.

There are some new acts that I think are really great for music in general, like Adele and Mumford and Sons. It's almost like music's coming back on the radio. Any musician loves to see musicians like that break through and have worldwide success. Musicians who write their own songs, play instruments, and can do it just as well live.

There's so many acts on the radio that don't write songs, play instruments or sing live. It's so nice when you see people like that play live. It's inspiring, it makes you feel like the world is ready for some real music.

-Do you prefer the live side to being in the studio?
I think I do. I started really late. I would never consider myself a real guitar player. I just know some chords to get around on a guitar, and write songs. I love writing lyrics and melody. I don't play any other instruments.

I once watched Ryan Adams record an entire record in one night. He played all the instruments, all he had was an engineer. That was incredibly inspiring, I was so envious.

I wish I could do that! I didn't grow up playing music, so what am I going to do? I'm playing catch-up all the time with guys like that.

-Early in your career, you had songs featured on shows like Scrubs, and then films. How much has that helped you?
It's helped, career-wise, enormously. If you listen to my songs, I think most record companies would've heard the first record and thought...why should we pick this up?

It's a bedroom, intimate acoustic record that they would never have a Top 40 radio hit on.

The fact that music supervisors for TV shows, films and adverts wanted to use my songs was just another way of getting my music out there. It was worldwide.

I could go to Australia and sell out huge concerts without even having a record released in the country, just because people had heard it, looked it up online and passed it to their friends. It's a total word of mouth thing.

What's cool about that is that when someone is watching a TV show or movie, and they hear a bit of your song in the background, and they remember a lyric and Google it themselves, they feel a little more ownership of the music.

They feel like they've found me rather than some huge corporation shoving me down their throat. Even though I'm on a major record label, when people hear about you that way, it's almost like "Oh, I heard about you in a way that I'll love you forever".

That's what people tell me at shows, at least. They always say they found me. They got back from the movie theatre and looked me up online, and then listened to my music. Then they'll come to a show, and we'll meet. It's more intimate that way.

-What are your plans now, past the album release?
Just to tour round. That's as simply as I can put it, I guess. I'll just keep playing music for people as long as they want to hear it.

In this day and age, so few people buy music anymore. To have a record company even investing any money in you, to send you around to promote the record and touring, things like that, is so rare.

I feel so fortunate. Everyone always thinks there's this great battle between the artists and record companies.

Maybe there is, maybe that's the way it was back in the day. Nowadays, there's so little money to be made in the sale of music.

I feel so lucky that I have any sort of business partners funding me going around and playing songs for people. So, that's what I'm going to do as long as they let me.