Touring in support of One Day Home, the tenth studio album of his more than two-decade career, world-renowned singer-songwriter Joshua Radin is scheduled to play Denver’s Swallow Hill Music on Saturday, November 8. One Day Home was released on February 14 of this year. An acoustic piano/vocal alternate edition of the entire album will be available on August 22.
Radin’s music has been featured in more than 200 films, television series, and commercials, and he’s been a national TV regular, having performed on The Today Show, Good Morning America, Jimmy Kimmel LIVE!, Conan, and Ellen. His style of introspective, acoustic, folk music has won him worldwide acclaim and a string of high-profile fans, including Ellen DeGeneres (he performed at her wedding to Portia de Rossi), Michelle Obama, and actor Zach Braff (who Radin originally met when they were both students at Northwestern University).
I caught up with Radin via Zoom late last week. He was in Sweden, where he generally spends his summers, sometimes working, sometimes not. Since selling his LA home and giving away most of his worldly belongings more than three years ago, he’s lived what he describes as a minimalist lifestyle, traveling the world, taking life as it comes. Luckily for those of us who enjoy Radin’s music, it’s a lifestyle that provides him with limitless inspiration, resulting (thus far) in two EP’s released in 2023, and the new One Day Home album released earlier this year.
The self-described nomad returns to the U.S. for a two-month, forty-one date tour that kicks off in Nashville on October 8. In our conversation we talked about his excitement over what’s different for this tour compared to those in the recent past, the two primary influences for the new album, why he avoids political commentary in his songwriting, his continual love affair with traveling the globe, and more.
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Rick: Hey Josh, how are you doing, my friend? How’s life in Sweden?
Joshua: Oh, man, it’s perfect weather right now. I never skip an August in Stockholm. It’s the only month you know you’re going to get great weather.
Rick: You know, the last time you and I talked was two years ago, almost to the day. It was in August of 2023…
Joshua: And I was probably sitting in the exact same place!
Rick: I suspect you were. When your people were setting this up, and they told me you’d be calling in from Sweden, I had to laugh. You know, it’s two years later, yet so much is the same. Just like then, you’re in Sweden, with a fall U.S. tour waiting in the wings. It’s like déjà vu all over again.
Joshua: And you know what? I don’t know about you, but luckily for me, nothing much has changed. It’s still great.
Rick: Well that’s a fantastic place to start this conversation. I remember very fondly the conversation we had in 2023, when you were about a year and a half into what you described as the life of a nomad… traveling the world and just letting life happen. You had sold your home in LA, and either sold, given away, or put all of your worldly possessions into storage. But you were preparing for a return to the States, with a pretty extensive tour in front of you.
Afterwards, I wondered if perhaps you might put down roots again, once that tour was over. But everything I’ve heard and read suggests that wasn’t the case… that things really haven’t changed for you.
Joshua: No, not one bit. And that’s by design. It’s really been lovely. It’s been over three years now that I’ve been houseless and material object-less and just living a minimalist life, spending time catching up with friends all over the world, traveling, eating good food. You know, experiencing life. And my friends and family ask me all the time if I ever see a change coming for this type of lifestyle. And I guess I could see it coming, but I think the only way that might realistically happen for me would be if I met a woman and we fell in love and she had to live in one place, you know, for work or had a kid or something like that. Then maybe I could settle down in one place, or at least buy a property, or buy a house, and put some of my stuff back in it. But otherwise, I just feel like (this lifestyle) is still so fun. I feel so much spontaneity in my life and freedom, and I love being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want. And the only thing that would make me change that lifestyle is someone else in my life that changes it for me.
Rick: I know you grew up in Cleveland, and that you’ve spent time on both coasts, in New York and LA. And even though as a professional musician a nomad-like lifestyle more or less comes with the territory, you’ve had those physical roots for a good part of your life. When you made that decision to leave it all behind, was there something that happened that prompted it, or did it just evolve more of less organically?
Joshua: It evolved organically. But I would definitely say being in LA during the pandemic and being locked away in my house alone for so long… yeah, that definitely lit a fire under my ass. And I had realized, even before the pandemic, that I didn’t want to be in Los Angeles anymore. And then I got locked in, and so it was even tougher. But I knew that the minute Americans were allowed to travel outside the States, I was gone.
And I gotta tell you, it hasn’t been great to watch what’s been happening to the United States since I’ve been gone. It feels good to be away. I mean, obviously I still identify as an American and I’ll always believe in the theory of America and the experiment of the last couple hundred years, but to watch what’s happened within the political climate, and how it has changed so much in the last few years… it doesn’t make me want to run home. I’m coming home to tour because I love my fans there, and I’m going to see my family and my best friends, and that’s what America has become to me.
It’s going to be bittersweet for me to come back to the States for this tour. But I’ll say this about the tour itself… I’m really excited because I’m playing with a whole band, and I haven’t done that in the United States for… it’s got to be like a decade now. People like when I play solo or as an acoustic duo… they always come to see me, and they’re very loyal. They like listening to the lyrics, and they don’t want my very hush, hush songs to be drowned out by a rhythm section.
But I think audiences are going to love this show. There’s still going to be plenty of intimacy. It’s not like I’ll be playing every song with the band, and it gives me the ability throughout the show to go up and down and up and down in terms of energy. To be perfectly honest, doing it this way keeps me even more engaged.
Rick: I know exactly what you mean. And listening to the new album, or for that matter your entire catalog, I don’t think it matters all that much whether a song is played solo acoustic or with a band. It’s still about the songs themselves, and the purity and sincerity of the lyrics. I’ve never seen you perform with a band, so I’m really looking forward to it.
Joshua: This is a new band I’ll be using out of Nashville, and it always takes a week or two to really find your stage legs with new guys playing with you. So by the time we get to Denver, which will be about a month into the tour, we’re going to be locked in. And I don’t mean that in terms of the music feeling tight. That’ll happen very quickly. But the show itself will be more locked in. The band will know more of my songs and more deep cuts. I mean, I have ten albums, and I’m not going to ask them to learn everything. I’ll give them a list of songs to learn. But it’s not like a Bruce Springsteen show where you pick up placards or poster boards from the crowd, and it could be some song they haven’t played in 30 years. It’s not going to be like that by any means. But I know I’ll be able to call out just about any song, and they’ll be ready for it.
Rick: One of the things I most appreciated the last time I saw you play in Denver was that you told the crowd straight out that you didn’t walk onto the stage with a pre-determined setlist. You told us that you were going to play whatever seemed to make sense based on the interactions with the crowd. But you were performing solo acoustic, so you could do pretty much whatever you wanted to do. When you’re playing with a band, don’t you have to be a little bit more buttoned down?
Joshua: A little bit, and it’s usually for the benefit of the drummer. And that’s fine. I haven’t worked from a setlist in a really long time, because I love being able to read the room. I don’t like being locked into a setlist. I feel so much more free and spontaneous the way my life is now, being a nomad. I feel that way on stage when I don’t have a setlist and I can truly be myself, and I think when I’m really, really open and vulnerable on stage, I always feel like audiences appreciate that so much more, because they really get to know me. I just want to get up there and be free, you know?
Rick: Absolutely. And I think that’s a huge part of the reason people come out to see you. There’s an honesty and a sincerity in your songs that people really connect with.
Joshua: Thank you. That’s a big compliment because that’s what I’m going for. So thank you for saying that.
Rick: So let’s talk about the new record, One Day Home. Or I guess we’ll call it a semi-new record, since it dropped in February.
Joshua: You know the second part of that album is going to be released next week, right?
Rick: Indeed I do, and I definitely wanted to ask you about that. It’s described as a “stripped down” version of the entire record, just piano and vocals. That sounds awesome, but it also sounds like a pretty ambitious undertaking.
Joshua: I appreciate you saying that, but it actually didn’t feel that way. We did the second version of just my vocals and piano in one day. They were all one takes. But yeah, it’s all 13 songs, and I hope people love these versions of them.
Rick: This is simply fascinating to me… I have so many questions. But let’s start with this… since you have alternate versions of every song on the album, when you’re playing those songs on the upcoming tour, and you have the full band with you, how do you decide which versions to play?
Joshua: The first shows on the tour will be in Nashville, and we’ll go into several days of rehearsals there without a specific setlist. For that first week, our sound checks will probably be quite a bit longer than they normally would be. We’ll just go through songs, and I’ll start hearing things, and hopefully the guys will start hearing things, and ideas will start popping out. It’s funny when you work with new musicians. I haven’t met these guys yet, except for my lead guitar player, Gabe. Everyone else will be new. I love to try to feature each musician in certain songs, but sometimes during rehearsals they might suggest that I just do the song solo. So we’ll see what happens. It’s almost a little bit of a test, and yeah, I think it’s going to be very interesting.
Rick: So getting back to the album, both the original and alternate versions…
Joshua: There were two main musical influences for me when writing this album… acoustic Americana and the 60’s and 70’s soul music that I still listen to all the time, probably more than any kind of music. I grew up on that music, listening to it from my parent’s record collection. You know… Aretha and Otis Redding and Sam Cooke… Wilson Pickett and Bill Withers and all that great soul music. I really wanted to figure out a way to incorporate that music into my acoustic way of playing. So half the album is very much that experiment for me, that melding of genres. I’d wanted to do this for quite a bit of time, but I just hadn’t figured out how to do it. The other half is the Americana genre, just because I still love that genre, and it’s very much me, especially when I play solo.
So for me, that’s what this album is all about. It’s an amalgam. I hope people get that when they listen to it.
Rick: Okay, you’ve got me cracking up here. Not because you said something funny, but because it’s almost as if you’re looking over my shoulder, reading my interview notes. I have down here that I wanted to talk specifically about the song “Only If You Stay”, and the references within it to Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett and Bill Withers. And there you go, rattling off all those same names!
Joshua (laughing): Yeah, that song was definitely an homage to many of my favorite artists but done to fit into my very acoustic style of playing.
Rick: So let me ask you something else about that song, and you can tell me whether it’s just my imagination running wild or whether I’m actually onto something. The overall vibe of the song… I can’t listen to it without thinking about the original “Stay” from Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.
Joshua: Oh yeah, and then the cover of it from Jackson Browne, right?
Rick: Absolutely, from the Running On Empty album.
Joshua: You got it… that song was right in the forefront of my brain when writing this song.
Rick: How about that? I actually figured something out.
Joshua: Spot on, my man.
Rick: Okay then, I have a very specific question for you about another song on the album… “Still Leave The Light On”. Who is Ray? (Note: There’s a line in the song that goes, “I heard ya play, “this time tomorrow”. Just like Ray, but he’s so much older than you.”)
Joshua: Ray Davies. And in case people don’t know who Ray Davies is, he was the main songwriter for The Kinks.
Rick: Ah… well, I missed that one. Given your affinity for soul, I thought perhaps you were talking about Ray Charles.
Joshua: Yeah, well, that could be too, you know? Anyway, the song is about a woman, and we both had an affinity for The Kinks.
Rick: Wow. Aretha, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Bill Withers, Springsteen, The Kinks… the diversity of the music that has influenced and inspired you, or that you just have an appreciation for, is pretty astounding.
Joshua: Yeah, I gotta tip my hat to my parents for that one. They had a great record collection. And every time my dad comes to visit me, he brings me, like, ten vinyl’s. It’s become our tradition. He doesn’t even have a record player anymore. When he first started doing it, I asked him why he didn’t just give me the whole record collection. He was like, no, let’s make it ten, every time I come see you. I think that’s pretty adorable.
Rick: Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned the current political climate in America. I don’t want to go too far down a political rabbit hole, but I would like to ask you one follow up question, if you don’t mind.
Joshua: I agree with you (about not going too far down this road). While I will talk about the political climate being something I’m not necessarily in agreement with, I don’t like to get very political in public. I mean, I read the news, but I don’t study politics. If someone wants to get into a conversation about the Middle East over a glass of wine, I’m not ignorant, but I’m not well studied enough to confidently get into a debate. I just prefer to talk about things that I absolutely know, and the only thing I absolutely know is who I am.
Rick: Okay, so that response might already answer the question I was going to ask. And that is, have you ever been moved to write any songs that express your political views?
Joshua: I tried. I tried a couple (of songs) a few albums ago. I had a song called “Refugee Song” (from the 2019 album Here, Right Now), and another called “Better Life” (from the 2021 album The Ghost and the Wall). And both those were about a problem that has become a world problem, which is immigration. I’m not the kind of person who thinks we should build the wall. America was built by immigrants. But those songs weren’t received as I thought they’d be. I mean, not that it was negative or positive or anything like that. It’s just that I thought they were two of the best songs I had written in a while. But there were other songs on those albums that sparked more interest with the audience, with fans, than either of those. And every now and again, when I’ve tried to write about things that aren’t based on my direct experience, my audience just doesn’t relate to them as well. I’m not saying that I will never try it again. But there are these little lessons you learn, as you watch how your songs are digested by the world. I always find that the ones where I’ve made myself vulnerable the most, those are the songs people relate to the most. So I stick to that.
Rick: But even while you stick with some things, you can still stretch yourself in other ways, right? For example, the two EPs you released in 2023, that were the product of your travels around the world. You’d write something, find a studio to work in, bring in some supporting musicians, and lay down a track or two. I thought that was an incredibly unique way to find motivation and inspiration.
Joshua: You really do need to look for ways to change it up, you know, in order to stay inspired after 20 years of doing this. I have to continually force myself to change things up, not just the way I live, but the way I write. The way I record, who I record with, who I tour with. I find it absolutely amazing that Springsteen can play with the same band for decades and still remain relevant, without getting bored. For me, it just doesn’t work that way.
Rick: I clearly get that from you. I mean, it wraps all the way back around to how we started this conversation, talking about putting down roots in a specific place.
Joshua: Yeah, there’s just too many beautiful places in the world, you know. I love Sweden, but the weather, you know, I would never want to be here in, like, January, February, March, April. I mean, it’s just so dark and cold and depressing. And so I’ll chase the sun in those months, or I’ll go back to LA and see my best friends, or I’ll go back to Ohio to see my mom and my sister right before a tour starts. There’s just so many places in the world I love to be, and too many people on this planet that live in different locations that I need to be able to engage with and be influenced by. Being in one place, it just doesn’t work for me.
Rick: Your tour in the States kicks off in October and runs into December. After that, will you go off the road for a while, or might you pick up another tour leg for the winter?
Joshua: I’ll probably start doing Europe again, but probably not until spring. I still have to decide what my January, February, and March are going to look like. Probably somewhere warm, like I did last winter, after my fall tour. I did Sri Lanka, and Thailand, and the South of France.
Not that I mind touring in winter. I did a long tour in Europe in winter, and that was fine. You’re with a bunch of people… the band, your friends, and you always have something to do. You have a purpose every day, and you’re inside most of the time. You’re doing sound checks, you’re playing the show, you’re going to a restaurant for dinner. So it’s really just when I’m off tour that I need to be in good weather.
Rick: So is there any place that you have not been that you are just dying to get to?
Joshua: Yeah, my number one is Japan. And I believe I’m going to be headlining a festival in Bangkok, Thailand in December. My manager and agent are trying to look at countries and cities in that part of the world. I suffer from jet lag… it’s a debilitating thing. If I’m going to be over in that part of the world, book more shows. So they’re looking into Japan and Australia. I’ve done Australia a bunch of times, but the jet lag is too tough for me to fly over just for Australia and then fly back. It’s just not worth it for me, because I’m in a haze the entire time, and I don’t get to enjoy myself.
Rick: So we’re looking forward to seeing you at Daniels Hall at Swallow Hill Music in Denver on November 8.
Joshua: Yeah, I’ve never heard of this venue. Is it cool?
Rick: I think you’re gonna love it. It’s a very intimate venue. I think it seats around 300 or so.
Joshua: Well, I love those the most.
Rick: And it’s actually a music school.
Joshua: Oh, great, that’s even better.
Rick: It’s a converted church building, where the auditorium is the original nave. It’s general admission, but it’s all seating. I loved seeing you at the Bluebird in 2023, and it remains one of my favorite venues in Denver. But for a truly intimate experience, Swallow Hill is hard to beat.
Joshua: That’s great, man. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll see you in the mountains.
Tickets for Joshua’s November show at Daniels Hall at Swallow Hill Music are available via Radin’s website, or directly from Swallow Hill Music. I highly recommend that you do not drag your feet on purchasing tickets. It isn’t often that you get to see a performer of this caliber in a setting this intimate. With a seating capacity of about 300, tickets aren’t going to be available forever.
Article by Rick Witt www.rickwittphotography.com
Photo credits as noted
