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May 24, 2011 Josh T. Pearson By Kyle Lemmon

Country-folk singer/songwriter Josh T. Pearson (ex-Lift to Experience) slurs his words like a true Texan. This spring he is back from wandering the wilderness with his first suite of songs in 10 years, Last of the Country Gentleman. The record touches on such old pop music themes as love, despair, and regret, but the 37-year-old artist’s delivery is labyrinth-like and truly haunting. It’s a spartan record that stays with you for quite some time. As such, we called up the son of a preacher man about his life over the past decade and trying to surmount past woes through cathartic music.

Kyle Lemmon: You’re currently living in Paris. Why did you move out there from Denton, Texas?

I’ve been living out here for the last few years because I lost a bet. That’s a joke. I wanted to be in Paris and I had the opportunity.

Your father was a preacher. What was that like growing up?

I don’t like my dad so much. He was a Pentecostal preacher. He’s kind of an asshole. I don’t want to talk about him. My parents split when I was young. We moved around a lot. I didn’t really see him.

I really enjoyed the one double-disc concept album you did with Lift to Experience in 2001 called The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads. After that I heard you kind of laid low and just played a few shows. Why do you think you needed that break from music making in the public eye?

I spent some time alone after that and lived in a little Texas town in Limestone County. It was good to be in a small community of about 300 for a while and be around some good folks. I didn’t have to worry about anything besides paying the bills. I would scrub toilets for money, but I did it so I could make my music.

Around 2005, somebody offered me a flight over to Berlin if I played a show, so I did. I got offered a tour with the Dirty Three while I was over there, and I spent a lot of time jumping in a van. I went back to Berlin for a while, and then wound up in Paris. I got married in Texas two and a half years ago, but got divorced. Are you married? Don’t ever get a divorce. Stay in the church. It’s a terrible experience to go through.

Somehow I started leading a little worship at a Baptist church there. It was weird to be in regular tuning after doing all this intricate rock stuff. I enjoyed it, though. Every once in awhile I’d get together with some old cowboys in town for a guitar circle.

Do you prefer living in small towns or cities?

That would depend on the small town or city and where I’m at in my life. I go wherever the spirit’s leading. I needed to be alone to think, reflect, and write music. I find whatever kind of place that will have me and let me play acoustic guitar. While I was on the road I would sing old country songs, stuff like Patsy Cline’s “Seven Lonely Days,” George Jones’ “Lonesome Life,” Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely,” and Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town.”

I really enjoyed listening to Last of the Country Gentleman. I think people appreciate its brutal honesty and rawness when most indie-rock acts have a veil of pretense about them. Most people have dealt with some of those emotions, whether it’s on that scale or not. I’m assuming these tracks are autobiographical. Can you tell me a little bit about how they came about?

Yeah. It’s all first person. Pretty much everything is something that happened to me. I was doing the post-rock stuff with Lift to Experience and I hit a wall with it at some point. I went back to playing folk and country songs. I stayed in regular tuning ever since then. I didn’t have any plan to release these songs and this album was just a collection of feelings I had this past year. I didn’t think I was going to record anything, and treated the shows like performance art. I made each one a unique event, so you had to be there physically.

What eventually spurred you to release these songs?

Well, it was largely due to my time playing with The Dirty Three. I really encourage you to go see them live as many times as you possible can. They are a truly special band and what they do in the live setting just isn’t quite captured on record. They asked me a few times to jump in the van with them over the last four and five years.

I was on tour with them in Ireland and a couple of big Irish dudes came up to me after the show with tears in their eyes. They really expressed a deep gratitude that I played these songs and I wasn’t expecting that. I think if it hadn’t have been for those gentlemen I wouldn’t have put it out.

I got a lot more confidence back in playing after that. A friend of mind had a studio and it felt right. It took two days to record but it took two months to recover between the days. I would bawl my eyes sometimes. I recorded it in one day, recorded it and played it the second day and then we put the strings on it in London. The songs were all done live…. It was recorded in Berlin because it was cheap.

Who are the piano and string players on the record? They are quite a lovely accent.

Warren Ellis [of The Dirty Three/Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds/Grinderman] was one of the violinists and two guys from an English outfit called SixToes play on “Honeymoon Is Great, I Wish You Were Her.” The piano player is Dustin O’Halloran. I highly recommend his Piano Sonatas Vol. 1 & 2. Great stuff.

I’m curious about your writing process. Does it easily come to you?

I just have to spend a lot of time at it. I’ll get back into the ring and get my ass kicked most of the time. It’s like polishing a turd at times. I think that’s the same way for most people. I obey the music. That’s why the new songs are so long. They had to be that long. You sit down and hope what you write doesn’t suck. I hate the lyric side of making music. I poured a lot of effort into Lift to Experience’s album. There are lots of little play on words or double entendres. There are also references to other things that nobody really got. I just didn’t want to do that again. For instance, not one person realized that the whole album is one long poem. There’s some religious imagery on the Gentleman, but nothing quite as detailed as [The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads].

I enjoyed some of the dark humor and world play on Gentleman, too. The “Honeymoon Is Geat” line, “I’m day-drinkin’ about seeing that woman and it’s drunk drivin’ my mind’s eye blind” was a tiny smile nestled amongst a series of glowers.

My friend calls it ‘James Bond humor.’ It’s really silly, black humor. You’re not supposed to laugh out loud at all. It’s kind of a release. I appreciate you noticing that. “Country Dumb” does a similar thing with the line “Sweet dreamin’ was all we could afford.”

Tell me a little bit about the cover artwork. What does it say to you?

My wife is a photographer and that was at one of her photo shoots. It was a personal thing with me holding on to this Platonic form of beauty. It looks like a hyper-real thing because it was such a high-end shoot. I like that because that’s not traditionally done for a raw, acoustic album. The other version just has me on it and looked like some Bruce Springsteen crap or something. I never got a clear signal on which one worked better. I could never make a decision and I don’t know if that was right. It was interesting that the older people at Mute liked the glossy, partial female nudity cover.

www.joshtpearson.co.uk