Josh Kimbrough
On making the music you want to listen to
“Over the years, the thinking was, ‘Let’s have a band because this is fun.’ The social aspect of being in a band is fun, developing your musical style is fun, playing a show at this pizza place is fun.”
Fingerstyle guitarist and composer Josh Kimbrough has spent the last 15 years immersed in the music community in Durham, N.C. as a core member of the collective, Trekky Records (Lost in the Trees, Phil Cook, Sylvan Esso). Josh’s 2020 record, Slither, Soar, and Disappear, is a reflection of his everyday life as a parent–daily walks with his son and moments on the porch spent picking tunes on an acoustic guitar.
“I’m now able to make the music that I would want to listen to. I don’t think that’s as easy to achieve as one would think.”
Josh thinks part of that challenge is because one’s musical voice is not necessarily a thing that can be forced. “There is something to surrendering and allowing a cosmic force or the immaterial world to take over. Letting go, stepping back, and reassessing what you are doing can be key.”
Slither, Soar, and Disappear is rooted in Josh’s fluid nylon and steel string guitar work, each composition complemented by small ensembles of double bass, flute, strings, mandolin, banjo, and drums. Most of the 11 tracks bear a title inspired by the natural world, many including field recordings like crickets and bird shuffling about at dusk.“On the deck, as my mind slowed down to take in the chirps and wind gusts, these songs began to blossom,” Josh writes in the liner notes.
“It would’ve been hard at any other point in my musical life to just jump ship on the electric band format. It was just second nature at one point. Someone’s gonna ask you to play a show, and then you’re writing the next record. The jarring change in my life of having a kid was necessary to give me the permission to just burn everything down and reassess.”
“There was something so beautiful about the quietness of it all.”
Josh says seeing Sarah Louise perform at Hopscotch Music Festival in 2015 had a powerful impact on shifting his mindset as a guitarist and what one can accomplish with one instrument.
“Sarah Louise was doing lots of 12-string stuff at that show, and it was just untouchable. Transcendent. We were in this sort of black box theatre with everyone sitting cross-legged on the floor. There was something so beautiful about the quietness of it all. The way you can sort of manipulate time and make it flow in a certain way–or at least the way she could. There was something so beautiful about it that made me lean in and get deep in the music. A happening like that – a show like that – is the pinnacle.”
“There's an endearing looseness and improvisational element to their music.”
When Josh first started playing guitar in high school, he would often go over to his neighbor’s house to listen to their record collection.
“My neighbor Joe would go to live shows before I was allowed to go. That wave of post-punk bands, I remember him bringing those CDs back with all these intricate guitar lines. Cap'n Jazz’s guitar player, Victor, would play these almost classical-sounding guitar lines. That made me want to use all five fingers, so I took classical guitar lessons for a couple of years.”
Josh tried to bring that dexterity and clear melodic guitar lines to his music regardless of the genre. “My dad had a big influence on me too. His record collection is pretty jazz fusion-heavy. Whenever he would overhear me practice something or write something, he would encourage something in an odd time signature or a complex melody.”
In college, Josh started listening to bands with guitarists with complex playing styles, such as Tortoise and Pele. “Chris Rosenau, Pele’s guitar player, is one of my favorites. He's got such a distinct voice on his instrument. I played Pele a lot as a college radio DJ in the early 2000s. They can certainly draw you in with a catchy melody, but what sets them apart, for me, is their fearless playing. There's an endearing looseness and improvisational element to their music. That was getting closer and closer to the kind of music I wanted to make.”
“I’m at a place in my life right now where it’s very practical for me to just pick up the acoustic guitar and have a very simple way of creating things.”
Josh’s composition approach is rooted in experimentation. “I like working in a DAW and just playing around with samples and assembling a song that way, like sound collages. I love that if I can spend four hours with it, I can get to a place of, ‘Scrap that, keep this, scrap that.’ However, that process, as much as I enjoy it, is just not as feasible now with having two sons. Being able to have those big chunks of time. I’m at a place in my life right now where it’s very practical for me to just pick up the acoustic guitar and have a very simple way of creating things.”
With the state of the pandemic, Slither, Soar, and Disappear was not going to have a typical album release. In 2020, Josh organized an album release livestream performance in partnership with his local NPR affiliate, WUNC, which at the time, was tapping different musicians around the region to do livestreams.
“I felt energized and motivated. I was dreaming of the right space with the right acoustics, and I thought of this church I grew up in, Church of the Holy Family. It was designed to sound really nice and has a lot of natural light coming in. I went out on a limb, and wasn’t sure if they would allow me to do this. But I emailed the pastor, and he was so cool, saying, ‘We’re not able to use this space right now due to COVID. This would be great.’ So it all just came together. I feel really grateful, the record needed a release moment like that.”
Josh says he’s playing local and regional shows as the opportunities present themselves.
“I recently got to play with Liam Grant in Rock Hill, S.C. That was my first time meeting Liam and seeing him play–I'm a big fan now. He's got a track [Straton Eustis] on the expanded Ten Years Gone: A Tribute to Jack Rose album.”
There’s also a new album on the horizon. Josh has been recording at Jeff Crawford's Arbor Ridge Studios, which is where he recorded Slither, Soar & Disappear. “We're experimenting with some new instrumentation this time to accompany the guitar pieces: vibraphone, piano, and hopefully some tape loops.”
As always, the acoustic guitar remains a cornerstone. “One of my biggest sources of joy right now is a new guitar I just picked up: a Huss & Dalton TOM-R. I've had a hard time putting that down. It's just a gorgeous instrument, and I'm having fun getting to know it.”
Slither, Soar & Disappear is out on Tompkins Square. The LP can be purchased via Worried Songs or from your local record store. U.S. distribution is through Forced Exposure. Josh will be performing live Saturday, June 18th at Botanist & Barrel in Cedar Grove, N.C. with Jacob Morris. Header photo by Peyton Sickles.
