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BluesWax Sittin’ In With

Josh Garrett

Heartfelt Music

By Stacy Jeffress

If you think that the only blues artist of note to hail from Houma, Louisiana, is Tab Benoit, well – think again. Fellow Houma native Josh Garrett sings and plays his heart out on his brand new release String of Problems, which he wrote and produced himself at Fudge Studio in New Orleans. Garrett is capably supported by his own band, as well as by the tasty contributions of Chubby Carrier and Waylon Thibodeaux. Garrett, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom III, presents 11 compositions for your consideration, including a heart-wrenching memorial to the nine platoon members lost to an explosion in Iraq. He talked with BluesWax about his music and his military service.

Stacy Jeffress for BluesWax: What do you think you bring to the blues banquet that we may not get from other blues or roots artists?

Josh Garrett: Every artist is different by what they grew up listening to, and I think that people you listen to when you’re younger seep into your writing as you get older. Where I’m from, obviously music is a little bit different from elsewhere in the country. We have a lot of zydeco music, Cajun music, and different instrumentation, too. We have accordion and violin. Of course we have guitar and bass on everything, too, but sometimes in Cajun or zydeco music those aren’t really the lead instruments; they take a background to accordion or fiddle. Of course I play guitar; I write on the guitar and that instrument comes out front. I try to incorporate Cajun and zydeco music into the things the things I do.

BW: You have one of the most entertaining sidemen I think I’ve seen in Mark Levron. How long have you been with Mark, or has Mark been with you?

JG: Mark’s been with me about five years now.

BW: He’s great on horns, but he’s great on that tambourine, too. I’ve never seen anything like it.

JG: Yeah, it’s all about the rhythms. I guess it kind of takes the place of the frottoir, or washboard.

BW: Do you have a count on how many days of the year you’ve been touring?

JG: Anywhere from 170 to 220 shows a year.

BW: You’re a newlywed; that’s got to be rough on the home life.

JG: Yeah, it’s rough on everything – it’s rough on the family, it’s rough on the vocal cords. You just get tired. It’s like anything else – if you love what you’re doing, it makes it a whole lot easier. If I could play more, I probably would, but at some point, you’ve got to get home to the family and hang out.

BW: You have a new CD [String of Problems] out, I want to talk about it in a minute, but I want to ask you about Changed Man, your first CD that came out in 2008. I noticed it was dedicated to The Fighting Blacksheep [Charlie Co. 2/156th Infantry], and you make reference to them again on the new CD with “Proud of What They’d Done.” Can you talk a little bit about your time in the service and being in Iraq?

JG: I’ve been out of the service for about 5 years now, but the total between the National Guard and active duty service, I spent about ten years of my life in the military. Of course we got deployed to Iraq in 2004, Operation Iraqi Freedom III. We had a rough deployment. We lost nine people in my platoon, and it obviously had a huge effect on my life. Any time something that big happens to somebody, it changes your outlook on life. Now my outlet is music so I try to make sure that that’s the way I remember them. I try to make sure that any time I can mention them on credits or on record, I mention them or write a song about it. It helps me cope, and I make sure that the guys who were in my unit get to hear those things. It was a rough deployment, we lost a lot of guys. This is my way of coping with it and remembering them.

BW: It helps as a reminder that we still have men and women in uniform in hostile territory, and I appreciate that you bring that up and also your service years to the country. I don’t know lots of other artists who were in quite the situation you were in. The song on the new album is heart-rendering. Is it completely autobiographical?

JG: Yeah. Basically that’s what it is – what happened to us over there. I don’t want all our music to be about it, but like I said before, it’s such a traumatic thing that happened to me in my life. If you’re trying to write honest and true music, there’s no way for me to get around it if I’m really trying to write about what I’m feeling. Those feelings come back a lot. The song on the first album, “St. Peter,” was kind of in that vein, too. I’m not sure that will ever go away.

BW: Do you hear from the folks you served with or the survivors of the folks you sing about in “Proud of What They’d Done”?

JG: It was a very difficult song to record. As often as possible in the recording process I try to take first cuts. On that tune, it was really hard for me to sing; I had to sing it like six different times just to get a full useable cut. You do okay in everyday life dealing with it, but when you have to say it, it’s difficult. As for the families, I don’t know if they’ve heard it yet. As for the guys who came home with me, they love it.

BW: It affects the listener of that song as well as it’s affected you.

JG: That’s good. That’s part of it. If it’s translating all the way through that, I think that’s good, and it’s a powerful song.

BW: I think that’s really where blues music and roots music came from. It was like a newspaper headline about what was going on in your life at the time.

JG: Absolutely.

BW: What I love also are the songs that you’ve written for your nieces. The one on the new album, “Lily Marie,” is delightful.

JG: Thank you. I’ll tell you the story about that one. There was a song called “Cailye” on the first record, and that was about my brother’s first daughter, of course her name was Cailye. At the time, she was very, very young. Obviously she doesn’t remember when the record came out, but she’s older now. She would listen to her song, and my brother had another kid named Lily. When Lily got old enough to realize that Cailye had a song and she didn’t, she made sure she called that to my attention. She’s a firecracker, too, so she didn’t put it lightly. My brother’s got to stop having kids now. [laughing]

BW: You have Chubby Carrier guest starring on your new record. How did that connection come about?

JG: Chubby’s from Church Point, Louisiana, which is not all that far from Houma. Probably less than two hours from Houma, where I grew up. I guess about four years ago, Chubby was looking for bands to put on his zydeco cruise, and I’m really good friends with Corey Duplechin, who was playing bass for Chubby at the time. [He’s now with Tab Benoit.] At the time, Corey mentioned my name to Chubby, so he came out to see us. Obviously I’d say we’re more blues based than anything else, but there’s a lot of zydeco in our music. Chubby liked it, so we started doing cruises with Chubby every year for about four years. We became good friends. Everybody in his band and everybody in my band are really good friends. When it came to record this record, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t influenced by anything other than what I wanted to do with this record. I told Chubby, “I’d really like for you and Waylon Thibodaux to do a track with me.” Chubby was coming right off that Grammy win, and he said he didn’t mind at all, so he drove to New Orleans to the studio and laid down that track for us, which was great.

BW: Waylon Thibodeaux’s fiddle playing adds such a texture to it; it’s lovely.

JG: A lot like horns do in that New Orleans jazz style, they call that “collective improve.” I don’t want to say that everybody’s soloing at the same time, because that’s not what it is, but everybody’s playing off of each other so it makes really beautiful layers to the music. You hear that in that New Orleans jazz style a lot, but people really aren’t exposed to Cajun music, but really the instruments are doing the same thing. You can hear the accordion, the fiddle, and the guitar all playing at the same time, and it’s a difficult thing to make it not sound like a mess. It’s an art to do what they’re doing. Number one, I was just honored that they came and did the record with me, and number two, I felt like they did a fantastic job. It turned out amazing.

BW: There’s a lot of different textures and moods on this CD. Did you do that by design?

JG: For this record I tried to not let anything influence the songwriting. I wrote and tried to be as honest as possible. I’ve heard that from a couple people already that have listened to it. The diversity of sound from Cajun music to soul to straight blues. That wasn’t a conscious thing, that’s just what happened during the songwriting process. I took a little bit of time off the road and just wrote. That’s what came out.

To be continued…

Stacy Jeffress is a contributing editor at BluesWax. You may comment on the interview or the artist below.