J. Tillman
J. Tillman
Joshua Michael Tillman, also known as J. Tillman or Father John Misty, is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and drummer. Maintaining a steady output of solo recordings since 2004, Tillman is a former member of indie rock bands Saxon Shore, Fleet Foxes, Jeffertitti's Nile, Pearly Gate Music, Siberian, Har Mar Superstar, Poor Moon, Low Hums, Jonathan Wilson, Bill Patton, The Lashes, Stately English, and has toured extensively with Pacific Northwest artists Damien Jurado, Jesse Sykes, and David Bazan...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth3 May 1981
CountryUnited States of America
Laurel Canyon is kind of grotesque. It's this nature-themed place, and everybody is kind of angry.
I was kind of bored playing drums in a band. Which was depressing, because playing in the band was kind of a golden ticket.
I've never taken the steps to be 'successful': I've never had a manager or signed to a publishing house.
It's a vanity to think that a legitimate shamanistic experience can be purchased.
I would play my Dungeons and Dragons songs and watch people's eyes glaze over, and then I would start joking around between songs, and all of a sudden people were lighting up and engaging.
With sad music, or music that's perceived as sad, there's a sense of solidarity that can be really powerful. My songs are all joyful to me.
I guess with the way that I've conducted myself I'm in the logical spot and I'm fine with that. Even my limited interactions with success have left me confused and bummed out, so I don't think the two can co-exist.
I don't think that just because a lot of my music has a quieter aesthetic; [it] excludes me from achieving that in a live setting, from being dangerous or something.
I think that providing obstructions in the live setting is when you get something that actually means something, as opposed to just aping your way through your greatest hits.
You know, there's an economy in lyric-writing that doesn't afford you, or at least me - I usually start off with nine or 10 verses and then boil it down to two or three that are half the length of the original verses. I think for me it's about what you leave out [rather] than what you put in. I'm not sure that the songs help me figure anything out so much as they're a distillation of the original question.
I don't feel any obligation to make my intentions for a song accessible to a listener or an audience. I'm not interested in conveying anything to them so much as what's best for me.
Christian music was music that I grew up listening to that I can't say has had much of an impact on anything I have done in my adult life. Maybe Christianity has, but certainly not the bullshit Christian music I was listening to when I was 12. To me there's not much substance in that music. I don't have a message or anything.
I like the freedom of being able to just use the live show as an opportunity to more so deconstruct what's going on in the album than to recreate it.