Blackburn Singing in the Dead of Night
By Chris Manson November 20, 2003 Issue

It’s ladies night at the Funky Blues Shack in Destin, and the ratio of women to men is disappointing. Fortunately, there’s a guy on stage singing his heart out to take my mind off that small concern.

At 26, Josh Blackburn is best known for his blistering lead guitar work with the Hog’s Breath Band with whom he also sings the occasional Pink Floyd or Tom Petty song. But on Tuesday nights, his fans get to hear a different side of Blackburn—emotional takes on his favorites and original tunes from his upcoming album.

His set included a cover of Pink Floyd’s instantly recognizable Wish You Were Here. Blackburn’s original songs Here You Go and Thank My Lucky Stars followed. His dirge-like rendering of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower included a speedy instrumental break that would make Steve Howe sit up and take notice. This was a unique arrangement of a classic done by Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young and countless others.

“I try to give them a different sound, so people don’t go to a different bar and say it sounds exactly like someone else,” Blackburn explained.

Blackburn says he likes to start off with “weaker” songs, but I suspect he means less aggressive material—there’s nothing weak about his stuff. “I get more energetic as the night goes on. I do my new stuff, and Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains—stuff you don’t hear anymore, like when I was in high school.”

It’s true. Blackburn graduated in 1996, and with ‘80s nostalgia in full bloom, there doesn’t seem to be much room for the music he loved from the last decade. Too old for the clubs, too new for classic rock radio.

Blackburn occasionally adds keyboards, but tonight it was just the young man and his acoustic guitar.

“I’ve always played by ear, listening to bands and pretty much figuring things out.” Blackburn moved here from Nashville in 2001 to join the Hog’s Breath Band on the recommendation of performer/songwriter Greg Barnhill. Blackburn played in the band Eskra with Barnhill for about four months and realized that there were a lot of “bad ass songwriters out there.”

An unfulfilling stint as an Internet tech preceded Blackburn’s plunge into full-time music making. “It was such a negative vibe, people calling in with their problems. ‘My internet doesn’t work!’ Well, I wanna play guitar! I’ve been pretty lucky, though. I haven’t had a lot of bad jobs since I graduated from Ole Miss in 2000,” Blackburn said.

The artist describes his solo music as “kind of an edgy folkie contemporary.” For his CD, Blackburn recorded all the vocals and instruments in his room. “I’d like to get signed to an artist or publishing deal as soon as humanly possible.”

Brand New Something is due out in early December. “I’ve been writing songs since I was 15. In the last two months, I’ve gotten really serious about it. It’s an assortment of different styles.” He said his songwriting doesn’t follow a particular formula. “If something makes me happy or pisses me off, I write a song about it. Some people think it’s weird, some think it’s cool.” The CD will be sold at Hog’s Breath, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million.

Blackburn’s vocal influences include Eddie Vedder, Crash Test Dummies and Peter Gabriel. He cited Jeff Beck, David Gilmour and Ani Difranco as important guitar idols. “Her style of playing is very rhythmic,” he said of Difranco. Blackburn is greatly inspired by what he calls “abstract” writers, those who compose songs that are open to more than one interpretation.

“Most of the songs I write are like short stories. I imagine it as a picture, seeing descriptions of things. One of my songs, Right Eye Twitch, is about this guy and every time he sees this girl he gets nervous. I try to make my music as colorful as possible, so the listener can see what I’m trying to do,” Blackburn said. The last song on the album is an all-instrumental synthesizer song, and there are tracks that bring to mind Depeche Mode, Dave Matthews and David Gray.

So what exactly pisses Blackburn off enough to write these songs? “Traffic, I hate traffic a lot. And telemarketers. I don’t like gossip, and computers piss me off—when I’m recording and my computer just stops. Emotions arise, you come up with words…my emotions usually don’t have anything to do with the songs I’m writing. It just gets me going.”

Blackburn will appear at the Funky Blues Shack Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. through next February. Which brought me back to my earlier concern—where the heck are all the ladies tonight? “Oh, normally, it’s late night,” Blackburn said. “Around 10:30 or 11, it gets really busy. This is such a good place to be an artist. Everyone applauds. You can better express yourself than when you’re doing something for tourists. This is like having your friends come in to see you play.”

Josh Blackburn’s Five Desert Island CDs:

Peter Gabriel, Secret World Live
Pink Floyd, The Wall
Tool, Undertow (“I gotta have a ROCK album,” Blackburn says.)
Radiohead, OK Computer
Sam Kinison, Have You Seen Me Lately? (“So I can have something funny to listen to.”)

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