Review Fix chats with Ivory Lake’s Josh Watts, who discusses his creative process, origin in music and goals for the year.
Review Fix: How did the project start?
Josh Watts: Ivory Lake is a project I started back in 2019 whilst touring with Geoff Tate (previously of Queensryche), we played over 100 shows in six months over 26 country’s, so as you can imagine there’s a lot of down time on the tour bus. So I started writing a tonne of songs and started putting them together in my own very dyslexic way. After putting out a demo I contacted Ville at the Animal Farm Management. He liked the stuff I had and from there we stared putting together an EP which is available on all major streaming platforms.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Watts: It depends, sometimes it’s very messy trying to put together a million ideas that I’ve had over the past few months. I’m dyslexic so it can make it quite hard to stay organized so sometimes my songs end up having numerous topics with one macro idea in mind. But then again sometimes when I’m in the right zone the song will just flow out pretty much fully formed. Either way it usually entails copious amounts of coffee and cigarettes.
Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?
Watts: It’s so difficult to pick but I would probably say the title track of my new EP Pillows. It started off on a rainy day in southern Spain, I was feeling depressed and didn’t know what to do with myself, nothing felt right. So I sat down with my guitar and started playing around with progressions. It took me a while but when I had the right feeling down, the lyrics started to flow. My mom had a line of violent boyfriends whilst me and my brother and sister where growing up, so on a cold rainy day it felt natural to put it into a song. It’s like a form of self therapy, putting it on paper can give a new perspective and help me to process what we all went through and help to remember that those days are gone and not coming back. The song grew very organically from there with the drums, keys and bass all sliding in where they were needed giving the song its slow and emotional yet bouncy and optimistic feeling.
Review Fix: What are your goals for 2021?
Watts: My goal for this year is to be heard and make people feel the message behind these songs, they are deeply personal yet hopefully relatable to my listeners. I hope also to get back into the studio this spring and bring out some more music this summer. I have a ton of songs ready to go that I am very exited to lay down and shape into the best versions of themselves. I had hoped to tour the West coast of the USA and the UK this autumn, however with the state of the world right now I remain pessimistic as to whether that will happen or not. Either way no matter how long it takes I will be back on the road.
Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?
Watts: I hope to make people feel something different and excited whether that emotion is positive or negative. As an artist I feel that really allowing yourself to sit with negative emotions as well as positive is a very important part of being human and finding your way through difficult times. If you live in a place that is sunny and dry 90% of the year, you really start to appreciate the rain.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Watts: I hope to be back in the studio this Spring to record another EP and if I’m lucky an album and tour at the end of the year, but who knows what will happen at this point. If I’m unable to tour I will be spending my time writing and honing my craft. Creating is a never ending process for me,
It’s what I love and no matter how hard I try, it will never be good enough- there will always be new horizons and new bridges to cross.
You can find all my music on all major streaming platforms. Here is a link to my Spotify page
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