2013 NewSong Contest Finalist Interview: Josh Threlkeld
October 15th, 2013
At NewSong, we love getting to know the artists we work with. For that reason, we are thrilled to have been able to sit down with 2013 NewSong Contest Finalists, Josh Threlkeld. Josh with be joining the rest of the 2013 finalists in the live performance finals at
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in NYC on October 19th. You can our full interview with Josh below – Hope you enjoy!
Josh will also be performing his own show at the Bitter End in New York City this Sunday night, the evening following the finals. For more info, see the flyer below.
1. You have been performing regularly since the young age of 12. How do you incorporate all of those years of musical experiences into your current songwriting style and live performance?
I was just talking with a friend last night who said he didn’t like people, prefers to just avoid ’em if possible. I don’t think anybody’d argue that people can be a pain. The streets are full of us, inflicting it ’cause we feel it. But when you put good music in the mix it’s completely different, it’s healing. Experiencing that with people from a young age, and especially now, starts refining the music to make it more and more of a conduit for that connection. What expresses best the sorrow, hope, or joy… this is healing stuff. The more you play for people the more they show you this. I’m thankful for every chance.
2. How would you describe your experience as a NewSong Contest Regional Finalist? What similarities and connections, if any, did you find between your music and the music of other artists in your region? To other finalists who will join you at the finals in New York in October?
Hearing back from the NewSong contest as a finalist was a lot like that audience reaction that lights you up after experiencing a song together. Thrilling, life-changing
3. Your most recent release, Album Of Our Fall: Tragedy and Sequel, is said to be a journey into the “two-sided coin” of relationships. What does that “two-sided coin” mean to you?
“Album Of Our Fall” is a story told in two parts: a Tragedy and a Sequel. The music was made to follow this story of the two ways a relationship can go; in one there is A Falling Out, while the other shows what it’s like To Fall In. I was fascinated with how these dynamics play out in close relationships (how the same person can have capacity for deepening love with one person and find themselves increasingly distant from another). Also, there’s the question: are these outcomes of love and hate decided from first “Hello?” And what role do technology, current social mechanisms, etc. play in that eventual togetherness or apartness? The Falling Out or Fall In both being held in a single moment as potential in a single relationship, “the two-sided coin,” loads every moment of interaction with spinning significance.
Originally, the two disc set “Tragedy” and “Sequel” was literally going to be two sides of the same disc… but the technology wasn’t there for it. Maybe one day.
4. Lincoln Center is widely renowned as one of the world’s greatest venues for the performing arts. With the NewSong Contest live performance finals taking place on Oct 19th, what does the opportunity to perform at Lincoln Center mean to you?
Performing for/with people is inextricably part of the art of music to me. A song is incomplete until it’s heard. What better place to complete a song than this room full of invested listeners, each one caring as they hope to be cared for, in a place that’s famous for that? Yee-haw
For more on Josh, visit his website joshthrelkeld.com
