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Father John Misty was born Joshua Tillman to an evangelical Christian family in Rockville, Maryland. Despite being a “pretty aimless kid”, in his words, from a young age Tillman was taken with the idea of being a performer. However, since secular music was forbidden in his house, the closest thing to it that he could aspire to be was a pastor, which was his ambition until the age of 17. That was the age he was at when his parents allowed him to listen to secular music that had a “spiritual theme”, leading him to discover albums like Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming”, which completely changed his life.
Tillman was already musical, having learnt the drums as a child, and then picked up the guitar at 12. Once he was able to listen to the albums that influenced him most he began to write songs, and then at the age of 21 he moved from his native Maryland, to Seattle, Washington in 2002. One of his first demos found its way to Seattle based singer-Damien Jurado, who was so impressed that by the age of 22, Tillman was opening for him on tour. After extensive touring and distributing his demos at shows for free, independent label Fargo Records released Tillman’s first solo album “Minor Works” in 2006, along with his albums “I Will Return” and “Long May You Run” in the same year as a double disk set.
In 2007, another album of Tillman’s was released called “Cancer and Delirium”, meaning that Tillman was an artist who’d released four studio albums of entirely original material in two years. For such a prolific artist, it’s a testament to his creative spirit and lack of ego that he’d then join Fleet Foxes the following year as their drummer, without any involvement in their writing process. Despite him touring with the band extensively, his solo albums still got him signed to Western Vinyl in 2009 where another two albums of his were released the same year. He stayed touring with Fleet Foxes until 2012, when he played his last show with them, changed his stage name from J. Tillman to Father John Misty and made a break for the mainstream.
Since then he’s become something of a songwriter’s songwriter, still releasing stellar solo albums, touring the world to ever increasing crowd sizes and working with everyone from rapper Kid Cudi to Parks and Recreation actress Aubrey Plaza. He’s the kind of artist that could have found success whenever he started, and we should be thankful that we’re around to see his prime. Highly recommended.
Exposed to music at a young age by his father Howard Kweller, Ben Kweller learned to play the drums at a mere seven years of age. When Kweller’s father returned from being the town’s first doctor in the evening, he would sing and play guitar, and young Kweller would play drums along to The Beatles, The Hollies and Jimi Hendrix. Having been taught how to play the highly-covered song “Heart and Soul” by neighbour Nils Lofgren, Kweller subsequently used the chord to create his own compositions.
In 1993 Kweller formed the group Radish with local drummer John Kent and bassist Ryan Green. Together Radish independently released two albums “Hello” in 1994 and “Dizzy” in 1995, the latter of which earned an unexpected bidding war from labels, and Radish eventually signed to Mercury Records. After releasing the full-length “Restraining Bolt” and making appearances on “The Weird Al Show”, “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “Late Show with David Letterman”, the band developed a cult following in the UK, aided by the Top 40 hit “Little Pink Stars”. As a result of a label merger, the band’s subsequent album was never released and the Kweller decided pursued a solo career.
After moving to New York, U.S. aged 19, Kweller self-released four EPs including the unreleased Radish album “Discount Fireworks”. Another EP “Freak Out, It’s Ben Kweller” caught the ear of Evan Dando of The Lemonheads, and Kweller subsequently signed with ATO Records, releasing the five-track EP “Phone Home” in 2001. The singer-songwriter’s full-length “Sha Sha” arrived a year later earning a grassroots following for the largely word out mouth method of advertising it adopted.
In 2003, Kweller, alongside Ben Folds and Ben Lee, toured Australia as The Bens and crafted a self-titled four-track EP, followed a year later with his sophomore album “On My Way”. Noted for its live recording with little overdubs and no use of headphones, Kweller supported the album with his most extensive tour to date, co-headlining with Death Cab for Cutie.
Playing all the instruments himself on the record, Kweller’s eponymously-titled third studio-album, released in 2006, was followed by another supporting tour in which the musician expanded his band to a five-piece. In 2009 his fourth full-length album “Changing Horses” was issued, after it had been leaked on to the internet, featuring more country arrangements than its predecessors. Kweller subsequently released “Go Fly a Kite” on his own label, The Noise Company, in 2014.
Imagine standing 15 feet from the gloriously bearded Josh Tillman as he tells the crowd about how humanity has forgone the beautiful unicorn. He makes wisecracks about the crowd, who's clearly there to see the next act at the music festival, but they still eat it all up and fall in love with his soulful singing, with his sassy personality, with him. Then he kisses the unicorn. The crowd goes wild. That was Lollapalooza 2013. If that's Father John Misty at a music festival, I'd love to see what he can do when he has the place to himself. Josh Tillman, originally of Fleet Foxes fame, is constantly satirizing modern music in his live performances, but his music is still undeniably spectacular - as good if not better and more heartfelt than that of his albums. His performance style can get a little intense at times (for example, at Lolla, he wrapped his microphone cord around his body, singing "someone's gotta help me dig" on "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings." Several audience members were visibly shaken by his performance, as you could see from the baffled looks of their faces on the jumbo screen). Regardless of his occasionally overzealous tactics for crowd entertainment, or for his own, Father John Misty has an impressive stage presence, better than any act I've ever seen live. Tillman's constant witticism, blatant disregard for rules (drinking and having a smoke right on stage) and overall couldn't-care-less attitude make for an extraordinarily entertaining show, one that's certainly not to be missed by any fan of folk and fun.
I saw Ben Kweller a while ago in Detroit when he was on tour with Pete Yorn. He was the opening act so we were excited to get to see our lover first – we got to the front row and loved every second of it. It was a very small venue and Ben played all his songs acoustically with no band up there with him. We kept yelling for him to play our favorite song – Thirteen. He finally said “Okay.” And played it, just for us!! Just him on his piano and us singing along like crazy. At the time he had a new album out, but he didn’t overplay his new songs – he had a good mix of new and old. The show was so intimate and he was so sweet the whole entire time. After the show he stayed at the merch table and met everyone in the semi long line. We got a picture, talked to him for a while and got our shirts signed. It was a great experience and we were so excited to be there.
Ben Kweller is an indie artist with similarities to Death Cab for Cutie and Bon Iver. His memorable lyrics and acoustic sound is definitely his main draw.
I love watching performances that make you fall in love even further with a band that you were already crazy about. The highly energetic, and skilful performance that Futurebirds recently gave was a great example of this, and after the show I went straight to iTunes, and bought their entire back catalogue of EPs and albums. The indie rock band are all incredibly talented musicians in their own right, and each instrumentalist had a chance to play a solo, which really gave us in the audience an insight to their musical talent, that isn’t sometimes as evident on their recorded tracks.
They opened the show with Tan Lines, and had the audience singing along straight away. Front man Thomas Johnson was shouting our for us to sing along and even taught us sections of the choruses to cry out when they held the microphone our way. Their use of instruments that don’t usually appear in mainstream bands is great, and their banjo and mandolin along with their excessive use of reverb on the pedal steel guitar makes their sound distinctive.
From holding the audience in silence, to having everyone singing and dancing along, they hand everyone in the palm of their hands, and played an incredible set.
Okay, so I had never heard of Bayonne until I saw his name along with Minus the Bear...so in short, first time listener here:
WOW. Didn't expect ONE DUDE to blow away so many people, both fans and newbies alike. So much talent for one person!!
Very chill atmospheric vibe. Easy to close your eyes and kick back to. Whenever he's in Boston again, I'll be there for sure!