Chatting with Josh Oldfield on Blues, Inspiration, and Drums in Suitcases!

I was chatting to Josh Oldfield last week, a Devizes singer-songwriter I believe we’ll be hearing a lot more of. Though this interview was pending before I’d had the opportunity to see him perform, coincidentally the Sunday before I was fortunate enough to, at a private party….

And it was worth a fortune, Josh has confident stage presence, a guitar soloist with soothing baritone vocals, white shirt and waistcoat, and a vintage suitcase foot-drum akin to a travelling Southern bluesman of yesteryear. Connoting retrospective style, the drum gives depth to an otherwise acoustic set, and the show is quirky, but oozing with professionalism, like a one-man skiffle band. It’s something different from the norm, locally, which was the starting point to our chat.

Josh amended my description as ‘slightly different,’ “it’s a fair bit different,” he suggested, “and I didn’t mean to do it on purpose, it’s just naturally how it came out.” Fresh from Peggy-Sue’s local showcasing Don’t Stop the Music Radio Show on Swindon 105.5, he said it went “fantastic; there seemed to be people into it. And I don’t actually know what I’m doing, but it’s something different!”

Pinning his sound only for want of conveying it to you, I jested he caused me to think a ‘skiffle George Ezra!’ Said with upmost respect, despite Ezra’s commercial success, he never waivers his style, possibly opening a door to others with deep vocal range. Josh ducked the Ezra comparison, concentrating on the skiffle and deepness of his range. “Skiffle’s perfect. It’s something I should have realised with gigs; people seem to like originally. Years ago I’d try and move away from how deep my voice is, because it’s not popular. Professionals and singing teachers will tell you, that because my voice is baritone, they’re like, oh, you got to learn higher range for popular music.”

I supposed that was the appeal. “Well, yeah,” Josh continued, “turns out people like hearing the lower ranges, as it’s not so common, and maybe there’s a comeback now, where people are kind of picking that up a little bit more.” We waffled for some considerable time on the templates and expectancies of modern pop vocals, compared to a unique time of yore when a voice was a personal signature. Josh cited Tom Waits and Nick Cave as influences, favouring “obscure stuff,” over contemporary pop.

He first picked up a guitar at thirteen. “My dad just had a guitar knocking around the house. He used to play a bit, but didn’t really play anymore,” but stressed he didn’t start singing until recently. A couple of months ago he sang at the open mic at the Cellar Bar, “the first time my mum ever heard me sing, and I’m like thirty now. Singing is not something I’ve been doing naturally throughout the whole thing.”

Josh comes across an earnest perfectionist, one who solitarily hones his craft and doesn’t unleash anything until it’s mastered, ergo he’s new on the scene but ‘oven-ready’ to give an impressive show. If now is that time to break the local scene, there’s a valid reason. Given the all-clear from being diagnosed with testicular cancer last year, at twenty-nine years old, Josh expressed, “essentially that’s what ended up pushing me to want to pursue music. I was like, ‘I’ve kind of been given a second chance,’ you know? That was the main drive.”

At the party Josh pulled some finely penned originals out of his bag as well as adapted covers of crowd-pleasing pop, such as Tainted Love; the set was instantly prodigious. On writing he expressed songs were, “flowing out. They’re just coming. I was being asked last night, what’s this song about? I don’t really have a clue what they’re about. They’re just literally being put down on paper and then, there’s a meaning in there somewhere, you know? It’s more like transposing them. There was a song I wrote on Monday, and I played it on Tuesday on the radio, because it just kind of happened. But then, when I was trying to look at what it was about it, well, I mean, I was watching Clarkson’s Farm the day before. So, there was some stuff about a farm in there, so maybe it’s linked to that in some way!”

Capturing a moment no matter how inconsequential at the time, naturally crafting art sourced from it when inspiration strikes, and being as impossible to summarise how and why as it is to transmit a dream, is key to creative genius. That question put him under the spotlight, but he came up trumps!

Our conversation diverted to breaking the local circuits, the balance of adapting to certain venues and niches, as while many want cover bands, few prefer original acts locally, and I affirmed Josh’s self-penned vintage style would suit the matured blues aficionados of Devizes. Though we covered the upcoming more youthful indie-punk scene and talked of Kieran at the Pump. “That’s more what I remember,” Josh stressed after hearing me on the blues penchant of town. “Back in the day, the whole Sheer Music thing in Devizes. When that disappeared, I thought music in Devizes had disappeared. I thought it was all just, you know, pubs getting cover bands. But getting into it, there’s quite a big scene. It’s just finding it.”

That’s why we, and people like Peggy-Sue are here! Josh is sourcing all the right channels and appears on Fantasy Radio on the 10^thof October.

We continued onto the one-man band thing, and that authentic suitcase drum. “It’s from America,” Josh explained, “it’s a suitcase with the basic drum built in. There’s a Pan American drum company, only two companies in the world that do it.” I imagined axemen of yore stopping at the crossroads and selling their soul to the devil with it! “Well, yeah, that’s the thing,” he replied, “I want to play instruments where I can take them anywhere. So I got the kazoo as well. I can take that anywhere. I can play acoustic guitar anywhere. I can sing anywhere. When I think blues, there’s electric, but then there’s the kind of, sitting on the front porch, playing kind; playing just cause you want play,” which led us onto old-archaic bluesmen, of which there could be no doubt Josh has done his homework, alluding to RL Burnside and others. “No one knew about him until he was like sixty something. He was a sharecrop farmer, and he just lived out there. He had like sixteen children or something, you know? But he didn’t care. And that’s really for me where that kind of foundation comes from,” he said, explaining the story of a blues song he played at the party.

“That old style of blues, I’m trying to lean towards, to be honest, has a lot in common with punk,” he said and triggered a tangent on pigeonholing when roots intertwine, which developed onto open mic nights.

“Everyone I’ve met has been through the open mics, and I like playing them,” Josh reacted. “There’s this kind of community around it. Yeah, it can be a bit musician convention, and again, you mentioned Vince Bell, you know that’s where I met Vince. Me and him are looking to play a couple of shows together hopefully later this year.”

Playing with the ethos of taking music back to its roots makes Josh flexible, his music fits into folk and blues, so it’s apt to work with acoustic folk singers like Vince, and Josh mentioned working with Jamie Tyler of The Worried Men too, electric blues, a different kettle of fish, but still fits like a glove. “The live reaction to stuff seems to be great,” he added. “It’s that people like the music, to be honest, more than anything else that always surprises me. It’s like we were getting messages in while I was on the radio yesterday and people saying that they were really loving it and stuff and that’s surprising.”

If Josh Oldfield is modest and wears his heart on his sleeve, it’s a common sign of a creative prodigy. He admitted, “I’m very reserved, introverted. In fact, part of the reason I like playing music is because I don’t have to be in the crowd. I don’t like being in crowds. So if I’m playing the music, I’m not in the crowd!” There’s logic there, but in the brief time I saw Josh play, I’m convinced of what I said at the beginning, I believe we’ll be hearing a lot more of him.

Book Josh Oldfield with Marland Music HERE.

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