‘Life is so cyclical…’ - Josaleigh Pollett
When you follow independent artists that live abroad, you quickly get used to the idea you might not ever see them perform. It costs unfathomable amounts of money for an indie artist to mount a tour anyway, without that tour also being in a foreign country. But what about a one-off gig? And what if that gig just happened to be when the artist was on holiday in that country?
It’s Saturday 14th December 2024, and I’m pulling up in a train to the busy seaside city of Brighton. It’s probably the last weekend the students go out on the town before going home for Christmas. I walk past a bustling pub called The Hope and Ruin where I’ll see an American indie artist’s first gig outside of their home country later that night. First I was heading to another pub down the road because how could I not interview the thoughtful and bubbly Josaleigh Pollett ahead of their emotionally charged set?
Image Credit: Josaleigh Pollett.
Josaleigh Pollett is an American singer/songwriter from Salt Lake City in Utah. Born into a family with a passion for music, Josaleigh has been writing and recording their songs since the age of thirteen and has rarely stopped since, always adding a lyric to their notebook for safekeeping. By the end of their teens, Pollett had put together a homemade album, a true DIY effort made with cheap gear, a slew of first takes and no soundproofing. The resulting record, ‘Salt’ is still miraculously on their Bandcamp page.
In 2017, Josaleigh would release their first full band effort in her ‘Strangers’ album. The arranging, recording and releasing of the record would be detailed in the documentary ‘Letting Strangers In’, produced by filmmaker Sydney Goodwill, who also played piano on the album. It would mark Pollett’s first release on vinyl, a trend that would continue for the albums they’ve released since.
By the time she began the writing process for their next record, Josaleigh Pollett had met their future collaborator and best friend Jordan Watko. With Jordan expanding the scope for Pollett’s sound, the difference between 2017’s ‘Strangers’ and the pre-pandemic ‘No Woman Is The Sea’ is staggering. An album of rich textures, Josaleigh’s work with Watko allows her to focus and hone their lyricism, while Jordan sees just how far Pollett’s song ideas can go.
‘No Woman Is The Sea’ would be the first time Josaleigh Pollett would go international. In addition to a sell-out double LP, Lavender Vinyl would put out an anniversary edition of the album on cassette with bonus tracks. The album would later be picked up in the UK by promoter and record label Cupboard Music for Pollett’s first CD release. It was for Cupboard Music that Josaleigh would play their first gig outside of the US at Brighton’s Hope and Ruin.
‘Somewhere between confidence and self-deprecation,’ is a bold lyric to open Pollett’s tremendous 2023 album ‘In The Garden, By The Weeds’. Straight away, you go, ‘Ha, I know that person.’ How many people have you met that straddle this line? Without announcing themselves to the chattering audience, this lyric was also the first thing most of the people in that room heard from Josaleigh Pollett.
Unaccompanied by a band and using an Epiphone borrowed from headliners Perennial, the core of ‘YKWIM’ had its soul laid bare before the Brighton crowd. A small group had already circled the stage area, a clearing in the pub’s bar that was refreshingly unchain-like, the true kind of rustic that can’t be emulated.
You couldn’t help but be drawn in by Josaleigh, the way you knew every word sung was their truth. The room was already rammed, or it could’ve been empty – the delivery would’ve been the same. They closed their eyes, the audience only a mere metre or so away on the same level, giving us gut-wrenching lines like; ‘I want to cry in the arms of somebody that knows me. I think I’ve been trying, but I don’t want anybody to know me.’ Maybe we don’t actually know her at all.
‘Do you feel shame? The way you live like you deserved it better?’
Sandwiched between two new songs (one of which was introduced as, ‘Uh, this next song is about no longer wanting to die in a car crash because you are loved’) was ‘The Nothing Answered Back’. Here the song is beautifully realised in filmic form by Ryan Ross and performed by choreographer Nora Price. Pollett’s pre-album single for ‘In The Garden, By The Weeds’ showcases the record’s noisier sound, a stylistic contrast to the duo’s previous album ‘No Woman Is The Sea’.
The song’s choppy feel was still prevalent in Josaleigh’s fingerpicked performance, but the harsher elements of the studio production were left on the record in favour of a more honest and soulful rendering. For this is an honest and self-reflective album, without the traditional singer/songwriter tropes. Through the buzz and whir of Pollett and Watko’s crunchy musical landscape is the realisation that life isn’t all shaped hedges, manicured lawns and ornate roses. You will inevitably find weeds amongst the undergrowth.
‘Nothing’ brings into question the permanence of people, likening some to ‘flowers in the concrete’. What happens when you’re more guarded after being hurt, is it really better? Is letting people in really such a bad thing?
‘Aren’t you grateful for the nothingness? The way that sparks don’t catch? You asked for this and here it is - The Nothing Answered Back.’
“Thank you so much. I’ve got one more song for you. It’s kind of a long one, when I wrote it, I used to say this song was about toxic masculinity, and it still is. And it’s also about toxic individualism. And it’s also on the CD that Noel has for sale upstairs. He like somehow found me in the middle of the US and was like ‘Hey, I wanna put out this album on CD,’ and that was very sweet of him to do. And this is the title track from that album. Kind of. The album is called ‘No Woman Is The Sea,’ this song is called ‘No Man Is An Island.’”
With or without a band, ‘No Man Is An Island’ was a captivating way for Josaleigh Pollett to finish their set. Like ‘In The Garden’, ‘No Woman Is The Sea’ is about growth. In this case, these songs came after the dissolution of Pollett’s marriage. Certainly not in the thick of it, but not out of the woods either, ‘Well I used to cry myself to sleep, now I only cry when I sing.’
Live at The Hope and Ruin. Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
It wouldn’t be a great shock if multiple women in the audience could relate to the words in this song, such is the weight of expectation in a relationship to be the fixer and mender of broken people. ‘I thought our love could conquer all, like we'd seen it on TV, but how's our love supposed to grow if you won't talk to me?’
A gentle waltz in two verses, Josaleigh’s voice rang through the pub as they reached the pinnacle of the song, ‘Cause no man is an island, and no woman is the sea!’ In its studio version, guitars clang, cymbals clash and distorted snare follows these words like you’re dropping to your knees at the ocean’s edge in reverence. At The Hope and Ruin, the words reverberated through the glasses and walls of the room, the meaning stark and clear. Behind me, somebody spoke into the ear of their friend, ‘She’s amazing!’
Bringing their voice back down, Pollett strummed the final chords of the song repeating, ‘I’m not a lifeboat, and I can’t save you,’ as if the person they were written about was in the room. I wonder how many felt that way about someone they were sharing a drink with that night?
We hope it’s not the last time Josaleigh visits the UK, perhaps this is just the start and maybe we’ll see a full band performance next time? Until then, continue reading for our interview with Josaleigh Pollett. We talk about all four of their albums, including the emotions behind ‘In The Garden, By The Weeds’ and working with close friends on ‘Strangers’. We talk about going sober (whilst in a pub), Pollett’s opinions on AI technology, their time in Brighton and the new music Josaleigh has been writing. All this and more below!
Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
Teri Woods: So it’s your first time in the UK, how are you finding it so far?
Josaleigh Pollett: It’s been amazing. I really just didn’t know what to expect, having never been outside of the US at all. So, it could’ve been anything, and it’s just been like, so friendly, so oddball similar to home? Because I mean I knew it would be somewhat similar. See we’re speaking the same language as England so that’s really helpful, but yeah it just feels like uncanny valley a little bit where it’s just like, ‘This is so similar to home, but so different.’ We’re saying the weather feels really similar right now too. But yeah it’s been a lot of fun, all of it has been amazing, thanks I’m loving it so far.
The time difference has been a challenge. I’m like so sensitive to changes in my sleep schedule, even if I stay up an hour past my bedtime at home, I’m a little dysregulated the next couple of days and being like a full eight hours ahead of home, I’m just like, ‘I have no idea what time it is and my body feels so weird.’ (laughs) But it’s fun.
TW: Yeah! When did you land?
JP: Uh, Thursday morning.
TW: Oh right, so only a couple of days then!
JP: 7:30/8 o’clock in the morning. That day was the weirdest, because we couldn’t really check into our hotel until about 1pm, so we get into town about 8:39? And kind of just had to hang out really sleep deprived and like experience it a little bit. So like being in a fully new place on zero sleep. I mean we just got off on an overnight flight and yeah that was really weird (laughs). It’s like, I don’t know if I’m just like hungry or if I need to cry-
TW: (laughs, maybe a bit too hard)
JP: -or if I need to lay down, like I feel so weird right now. But as soon as we got into the hotel room, me and my Dad slept for like four hours and then were able to be a little bit normal and go and have dinner and then try and have a normal schedule from there on. So day one was weird. It was so fun.
TW: So where are you going onto after this?
JP: So we’ve been in Brighton since then, tomorrow we take the train to London, and then we’re in London through Thursday. So we fly home on Thursday morning. Very exciting.
TW: Moving onto some more musical topics, a lot of the songs on your latest album, ‘In The Garden, By The Weeds’, are noisy or electronic in nature, so were they composed that way from the ground up or did they have more acoustic origins?
JP: So, a little of both? So my producer/songwriting partner is my best friend. His name is Jordan Watko, and he is like the mastermind behind all of the production on the record. We tend to start our songs, like they’ll usually start as an idea with me and my acoustic guitar and then I’ll record a scratch track of just that and lob it over the fence to him, and he plays with some sounds and ideas.
But sometimes we both attack it from both directions at the same time. Like I’ll come up with just a melody, and then he has maybe a song that already existed in some instrumental capacity that I kind of morph stuff into. So, a lot of different directions, but it’s usually: acoustic guitar and lyrics first for me and then we just kind of build it from there, so.
TW: Do you ever have any idea where that sort of an idea could go? Do you give Jordan notes and be like ‘Ah I want it to sound this way!’ Or is it just, ‘You do your thing and you make it sound how you think it should sound’?
JP: Yeah, I would say now it’s much more like, I trust Jordan implicitly to do whatever the fuck he wants to do! On my last two records we made together entirely and when we first started, it was very much like, ‘I wrote this song, I think it should go like this.’ But I realised very quickly how limited I feel in like how a song could be produced because, I get so focused on the lyrics and the melody and I’m like, the important part of the song for me is what I know how to do, and then beyond that I feel really limited in what it could sound like eventually.
So, it became really natural for me to just say, ‘The sky is the limit Jordan, like do whatever you like to do!’ Sometimes I’ll share a note where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if there’s this rhythm here that I think could be really cool if it sounded like this?’ We’re really close when he does have like a more fully fleshed out idea. We’re working pretty closely together on that piece of it, but generally his initial path of what the song is gonna feel like and sound like, he does a lot of that on his own, and we come together and work through it, so, there’s a lot of trust there.
TW: Yeah I can imagine! There’s a sprinkling of musicians other than yourself and Jordan on the record, what was it like to work with a musician as dynamic as Bly Wallentine?
JP: Bly is great. They’ve been in several bands in the Utah music scene, and they’re part of a project called Little Moon that is really kind of very orchestral, stuff like that. And in Bly’s own project, they’re like, really free jazz, indie, bizzarro kind of like genre-less stuff sometimes, they’re just a really talented musician.
So I think when we first started writing ‘In The Garden, By The Weeds’, we had like two scratch tracks, and I think I remember it, I was going on a trip somewhere because I remember we were about to get on the plane, and I emailed the scratch tracks over to Bly and was like, ‘Whatever you’re feeling, I’m fine with anything that might speak to you as to what you wanna add to these songs.’ And when they got back to me, they were like, ‘I was feeling like some bowed banjo and some like really incredible oboe parts right here.’ I was not expecting that at all but I fucking love it and I really like the songs they’re on, they’ve added so much to those songs, so, I kind of just said, ‘Yes’ to those things as they came back and we were like, ‘Fuck yeah! That works great’ (laughs).
TW: You know songs are like your children, they’re like your babies! And to just be like, ‘You can do whatever you want with these!’ I think that’s a really brave thing to do as a songwriter.
JP: Yeah, it feels brave, but I also think it’s part of that like, where I feel really limited in what a song could be or could sonically turn into. I love when people are just like throwing things at it after I’ve done my part with it because the lyrics always feel like my baby and then I’m like, ‘I want other people to help me make those go beyond what I already think they could be.’ So, it’s always fun to just have a bunch of people’s stuff and ideas, ‘What if it sounded like this?’ And like I wouldn’t have thought of that in a million years, thank you!
TW: Yeah! That’s the beauty of collaboration. Ah, there’s a really powerful lyric in ‘Jawbreaker’ - ‘What if at the centre, I am just more of the same.’ Do you still hold some of the same feelings you had when you were making this album?
JP: Oh that’s a good question. Erm, definitely. I think so much of this album is about self-exploration, and I was in a lot of therapy at the time, just really trying to unpack a lot of like childhood stuff and current relationship stuff and as I get older, the more I find that life is so cyclical all the time. (laughs) Like everything that happens will continue to happen in some weird way, even if it’s not exactly the same, it’s just like, ‘Oh I’m seeing all these fun little patterns repeat in my life, just in different shapes, over and over, forever.’ (laughs)
So, yeah, definitely but it’s interesting because I recently have been relating to some of the songs on that record again where it’s like, I wrote them and then I feel like I moved past them, and then performing them again lately, I’ve been like, ‘Oh fuck, I feel this way again!’ (laughs) I’m trying to reshape it a little bit, it’s kind of a helpful checkpoint I think emotionally when I’m thinking about my own personal growth as like, ok. I don’t wanna be stuck in these, you know, these rivets or something in my brain, so, when they’re popping up in songs and then I start to relate to them too much, maybe that’s a nice little reminder of like, ‘Hey, we were here already, what do we need to work through? What do we maybe need to look at differently to not get stuck here again?’ So, yeah, in a way! (laughs)
TW: Going back a bit, I really enjoyed the documentary by Sydney Goodwill about your ‘Strangers’ album!
JP: Oh, excellent!
TW: So what’s a good memory you have from that time?
JP: That was such a fun project to be on because it was really my first time ever putting a band together for my songs, and I think, when as soon as the idea came into my head of like ‘I could have a band’, I was just like, ‘The sky is the limit, I need a nine-person band,’ apparently! It was chaos! And it was the same thing where I was like, ‘I don’t know what this could, or should sound like, but I think that it should have banjo, I think that it should have piano, (laughs) that it should have two guitar players, and then cello, like everything!’
And so it was just really chaotic but it was so fun because for the most part it was just my friends that happened to play instruments, and I was like ‘You’re in the band now and you’re on the record now, so we’re gonna figure this out.’ And I got to record it with friends, it took like a couple of months in this studio. It was a friend’s studio so it wasn’t like we were running against a clock or anything, we got to just be really silly with it and really fun, and it was the first time I ever could be like, ‘No, I got a whole band together and we recorded it, and we put it out into the world and it was just like this huge accomplishment.’
But yeah, it was a special time. I feel so far away from it now, it feels like that was a different person entirely, since like, I was in the band with my now ex-husband and it was just such a different time in my life. But I look back at all of it so fondly and getting to play the album release for that was like one of my favourite memories of all time. I don’t remember why, but the time got scooted like three different times so by the time I went on for like my own album release, it was midnight. And the AC was broken, we were in this downstairs bar and it was probably, oh just way too hot, everybody was sweating and having to take off as many layers as possible. I had been stressed about like how cute I could look with my hair and my make-up and by the time we went on I was just like a drenched little sloth-rat. And it was still such a fun show and everybody stuck around and rode the heat and the sweat and just had a wonderful time and I loved it, I loved that whole experience.
TW: It’s interesting to hear more about that, footage of that release show is in the documentary right?
JP: Yes, yes, uh huh. It was a blast. I took it very seriously but because it was all my friends, like it still just turned into this very fun, silly experience that I think prepared me for any possible studio experience forever (laughs). Like at least I have that really silly, fun one, so then I can like handle whatever, whatever happens (laughs).
TW: Well going even further back than that, I actually listened to your first record ‘Salt’ in the past week.
JP: Oh my god! (laughs)
TW: So how do you feel about that album these days?
JP: It’s so funny, it’s so like teenage me and when I think about any of it, I haven’t listened to it in ages, but it’s such a specific amalgamation of all of the like teen angst (laughs) recorded at home in my bedroom and like not any professional audio, anything on it at all. I think it’s done with like a shitty USB microphone.
I lived in this duplex across the street from my college while I was recording this stuff and they were all songs I had written in high school. But I lived with my two cats and they had little collars with like jingle bells on the collars, and you can hear them running around in the background for the whole record and I just didn’t care.
I would like, fuck up, and I would mess up the words or the guitar part, or sing the harmony wrong, and I would be like, ‘Nailed it’ and just put it onto tape (laughs) like, ‘This is what the song is, I don’t care!’ And I think that level of, I don’t know, just freedom around recording something and being like, ‘It doesn’t matter what it sounds like,’ it's that, ‘These are my songs and I need them to be out of me and into the world.’ It’s like a very, I don’t know, a very admirable thing, like I would never do that now.
(Laughs) I think about my music now and I’m like, ‘That has to go through like four different stages of editing and changes, and production before I want other people to hear it.’ And there’s something like so cool about me before any of the adult life shit happened being like, ‘No! Put it out, put it out there!’
‘Salt’ album cover.
TW: Yeah it very much captures a time of your life, how old were you when it was released?
JP: Ah, eighteen? Maybe? Yeah. (Laughs) I’m pretty sure I was eighteen. Seventeen or eighteen.
TW: Wow. It’s quite admirable that it’s still on Bandcamp at this time. I don’t know if by the time this is published it’s gonna be off Bandcamp or like- (laughs)
JP: It’s still on there, there’s some part of me that feels like it would be a disservice to that young version of me to take it down because they worked so hard on it, and were so proud, and I just feel like it’s part of my history, no matter what happens next, I’m like, ‘This has to exist, this is part of me, this is part of my discography I guess!’ (laughs)
TW: It was interesting to listen to for a cross-section of your history - listening to your most recent album, going back to that, watching the ‘Strangers’ documentary in the middle. Yeah, interesting to see such a broad spectrum of your creativity.
JP: Right! It’s gone through so many changes and it feels like, I don’t know, I think context is so important in any art. So, it’s like if anybody wants to know like, for sure, ‘In The Garden’ as a standalone record – I’m proud of it, I think it’s wonderful.
When I look at it in comparison, ‘But like, compared to where I was (laughs) over a decade ago like, I’m so glad I stuck with this!’ And it feels really special, and when I look on Bandcamp and it shows all the people that support it, I can’t remove it! I’m like, if you go to even think about removing it, it’s like you’re gonna take this out of the library of all these people that love it, and it guilts you, and I’m like, ‘I can’t! They love it, and it’s for them!’ (laughs)
Soundchecking at The Hope and Ruin. Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
TW: So moving off the topic of music, it’s interesting that we’re talking about this in a pub, but a parallel from this year between you and I is that we both decided to go sober at the same time.
JP: Oh, so cool.
TW: Around the same time, so, for you, what were the circumstances that led to that decision?
JP: It’s interesting because I’ve been toying with the idea of sobriety on and off basically since the pandemic started. Since I’ve been an adult I’ve always been a pretty big drinker, and then, drinking at home without anything to do, without any people around me. I was drinking a lot for a while there, and just noticing so clearly how much it was impacting my relationships and my physical health, and my mental health.
I would take a month off here and there and every time I’d do it, I would just realise how hard it was and how impossible it felt to where I was like, ‘I’m taking a few weeks off of this thing and I can’t think about anything but drinking.’ And that feels so bad (laughs) like that makes me just feel like I need to change something.
So yeah, last December I just decided, ‘Well I’ve only taken a few weeks off here and there, so I’m gonna try it for a full three months, and see how it goes. See if I can do it, see if I can get out of the stage of thinking about it constantly.’ And was able to and after like 90 days I was like, ‘This is feeling good, I’m gonna try and stick with it!’ And have continued to do so for almost a year now, and it’s like, drastically changed my life in ways that I was not expecting at all, and not always good ones, and really weird ones (laughs). It’s been such an experience that I was not expecting but it makes sense that it was so hard to do now, because it drastically changed a lot of things about my life, to stop drinking, so, it’s been weird (laughs).
TW: So how are you feeling now?
JP: I feel really proud, and I feel really grateful for it, I think that like, as difficult as it has been, it’s been overall very positive. And every time I think about like, ‘Oh well maybe I will just go back to drinking,’ like it doesn’t seem appealing to me anymore. But I’ve had to kind of rearrange my life to fit that now.
So my relationships have changed, or some of them have ended and like what I do for social time and how I exist in the music scene has changed so drastically because I just feel different, I’m existing on a different schedule, and a different level of social interaction a lot of the time too.
It’s been so weird, but mostly I feel really proud and surprised, especially because of how much it helps with like dedication to creativity, I’m like, ‘Oh my god I have so much time back!’ Just time not being hungover and time not drinking. I’ve written a whole new album this year and am able to like, spend time working on it in a way that I’ve never been able to really focus before. So, it’s exciting! And so weird.
Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
TW: Yeah, you get mornings back, isn’t that funny? (laughs)
JP: Yeah! Absolutely, it’s bonkers!
TW: And it’s interesting how intwined music and drinking culture is. Especially with regards to playing shows, the social aspect, the networking aspect of it.
JP: Totally, yeah. It’s taken me maybe six months of this year of thinking like, ‘It’s impossible to do that.’ I don’t think I can socialise or play shows in the same way, but it’s all just kind of been collecting data to prove to myself that I can do those things sober. That I don’t need two shots of whiskey before I go on stage every time, and actually, I play better when I don’t!
TW: Funny that!
JP: So funny! I remember all the words to my fucking songs now, that’s crazy!
TW: I mean, it was my performing ritual to have a glass of wine before playing, and back in April, I played my first sober gig in something like nine years, and oh god, the practices that you are so used to, all of a sudden when you remove those, you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t actually know how to do it anymore!’ I feel so present and I don’t feel like, hazy (laughs).
JP: Right, absolutely! It’s like when you’re drinking, it’s almost like pressing fast-forward when you’re playing. And now it’s like, ‘Wow, I am very much here the whole time!’
TW: That’s a really good way of putting it actually, pressing fast-forward. Like it disappears. You know?
JP: Absolutely, yeah. And it’s like, I’ve always thought my whole life, it’s one of my favourite things in the world, so why do I keep fast-forwarding through my favourite thing in the world? So it’s been really nice to have that experience and, yeah, just learn how to be a person a little bit again.
And learning how to socialise again has been so strange. I wasn’t expecting that. I was like, ‘This is gonna be normal, nothing’s gonna change at all!’ And now my life is a completely different shape than it was a year ago, and yeah it’s good but it’s been just very, very different (laughs).
TW: Yeah, I can imagine. Well, well done for sticking with it.
JP: Yeah, you too! Congratulations, it’s not easy to do!
TW: Ha, thank you. What advice would you give someone that’s sort of just starting? If we took ourselves back, what advice would you give someone in that position?
JP: Yeah, I would say to try and stick with it a little longer than like 30 days. I think that as you get into the two or three months area is when at least for me, I started to see like how much more energy I had and how much I was thinking about drinking less.
And I have so many people in my life that still drink regularly and it’s always added this weird tenseness in relationships now? And I never want it to be that because it’s never a judgement, but it’s also like in this current climate of politics and everything being so fucking terrible all the time, I think the best thing you could do for yourself is give yourself more energy, and a little bit more mental capacity to take care of yourself. And it seems like such a clear way to do it to me, even just less drinking is helpful, like yeah.
TW: I think what really helped me in the beginning was not saying to myself, ‘I’m giving up drinking definitely.’ I think I just said to myself, and I was telling other people this as well, ‘I’m not drinking, I don’t know how long this is gonna last for.’
JP: Yes!
TW: I mean, the first month, you know, it was awful, and then it got like a little bit longer and it was kind of like, ‘Oh, well, I’ve done this long, I might as well just keep going.’ And then it got to like, I stopped thinking about it as severely as I was in the beginning.
JP: Yeah, and I really feel that a lot, I feel very against like any absolutes. Like I feel very oppressed by anybody that’s like, ‘You can never do this again.’ And I think that’s what kept me around like not taking a bigger break from drinking before because I was always just like, “I don’t ever wanna be somebody that’s like, ‘You can never drink, or never drinking again.’” But approaching it that way of like, ‘I am not currently drinking,’ I don’t know what that looks like for future me but I feel a hell of a lot better since I stopped.
Image Credit: PJ Guinto.
TW: Yeah, I think staying in the present with it and not thinking of it as forever, or thinking of it in terms of the rest of your life for me was really helpful. So we’re still not really on the subject of art. We’re not (laughs), because we’re gonna talk about AI.
JP: Excellent (laughs).
TW: You’ve mentioned a few times that the concept of AI comes up at your workplace, to which you are staunchly opposed, what’s their argument for using AI and what’s your argument against it?
JP: It’s tricky because I work for a company that does marketing, and I think a big part of me should get the fuck out of marketing if I don’t want to be around AI projects and tools all the time.
TW: It’s all about, ‘How do we do this faster? How do we do this for less money?’
JP: Yeah, exactly. And I’m in a unique spot because the work that I do is I’m a Creative Project Manager, so I’m not being creative at work but I’m working with creative people. So I’m hiring voiceover actors, and I’m hiring talent and working with videographers and copyrighters to create commercials.
And it’s for a very niche healthcare audience, it’s not like a huge audience or anything like that. But because a big part of my job is hiring voiceover actors, it just continues to come up as far as like, ‘Well, it would be so much cheaper and we wouldn’t have to pay for licencing if we just used AI for all of this voiceover work.’ Which, to me, has been the fuel for making me so angry about it, apart from watching every piece of generative AI be such a tool of theft over the last several years.
But being able to see it in my day to day of, ‘I could’ve paid a person, that is working in this creative industry a thousand dollars today, that would’ve gone into their bank account, today.’ And instead, somebody is making this choice that doesn’t really matter, and it’s corporate money! So it’s not even their money and they’re saying we should save this money, and not give it to that person.
And so taking the human element out of it is so disheartening to me, even in corporate marketing, we had this little glimmer of like, ‘Real people did this work.’ And now taking that away is like, as somebody who works a day job on top of trying to be a creative person, I’m like, ‘I don’t know how long I can do the day job when it feels like the last little bit of fun, human art that was in it is now being justified as a costly expense, in place of something that is so gross.’
Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
TW: I just don’t know who it’s supposed to appeal to. Because it seems that it appeals to nobody. Or it’s for nobody. You know, the target audience is no one.
JP: It doesn’t make any sense! Who is that for? Why are we doing it? And it’s so bad for the climate and our planet, and people. It fails people. I have so many feelings about it, when it started coming up in my day job, it felt like this really clear way for me to be like I can’t stop this from happening everywhere, every industry, but maybe I could stop it from happening in this tiny little corner of my work that I do that’s for money because I have to have a job for money, unfortunately.
So this whole year has been me having these really disheartening conversations with people. And some more hopeful conversations with people to where, maybe they hadn’t thought about it as far as the one-to-one, taking away from this creative person today kind of situation. So, it’s been hard to keep my emotions in check, I’ve had a lot of meetings with corporate bros where I’ve had to just be like, ‘I’m turning red, and I might start crying, but I got to take a walk and then I’ll be right back because I need to talk about this and it’s very important!’ (laughs) And maybe it makes an impact, and maybe it doesn’t, but at least at the end of the day I can say I tried!
TW: Yeah! It’s good that you’re staying present for it.
JP: Yes.
TW: I spoke to a teacher recently and I said, because there are a lot of students writing essays and stuff using AI, it must be an absolute minefield! And I said to this teacher, ‘You know you must think this is awful!’ And they actually said, ‘Oh I use it to write all my emails and my reports!’
JP: No! Why! Why?
TW: I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and I just stopped in my tracks, I was like, ‘How do I respond to that? If you’re advocating the use of it yourself, how do you ever stop your pupils or your students using it?’
JP: Like what are they learning in that capacity? There’s no thoughtfulness that goes into that, like why would they be paying to go to school?
My Dad’s a college professor, he teaches English, and he thankfully is also very like- because he’s been listening to me yell for the last couple of years, so he’s very anti-AI, for his own reasons too. But because he’s an English teacher, he gets a lot of creative writing papers in all the time and he’s like, ‘I can tell immediately if it is a ChatGPT paper, and I just ask them to read it, and if it sounds not like them and they don’t know where the paper is going and the sentence structure is not in their normal natural voice, it’s so easy to notice!’ And it’s like, ‘Why are you in a creative writing class to learn how to write creatively if you’re not doing that?’ It’s just a waste of everybody’s time.
TW: That’s what I don’t understand, it’s the people that are choosing classes that are then going, ‘Oh how do I do this easier?’ I think it’s in the same way that, when you see AI photographs and you see that the people in those photographs, their eyes are looking at nothing. It’s the same sort of thing, an essay like that is almost not making a point. There’s no point of view, is what I’m trying to say.
JP: Exactly! Yeah, it’s not art, it’s not a new idea we didn’t already have, it’s not helpful! It’s just not helpful.
TW: So going back to some art, some real art, one of the great things about your use of social media is how you platform other artists, and how you champion them! You spread the word about so much music, which, I just think it’s wonderful. (laughs)
JP: Thank you.
TW: Which is also what I enjoy doing as well, so is there anyone you want to highlight right now?
JP: Ooo, my god that’s such a good question. I think that it’s a perfect time to highlight, and I know anybody that follows me on any social will probably already know about Perennial, but because I’m playing a show with them tonight, I just feel they’re on my brain.
I’ve been thinking about getting a chance to see them for this whole year basically, even before I decided to come play this show, I was like, ‘Please come to Utah, please, I just need to see this band.’ They seem so incredibly fun, they’ve just been putting out the most incredibly engaging and energetic- I guess I love the music they make so much, and they’re the sweetest people, I’m really excited to see their show tonight. So they’re like the main band that is on my mind for sure.
TW: On the subject of tonight, you’re playing your first UK gig ever at The Hope and Ruin, how did you come to be on the bill for Cupboard Music’s final gig?
JP: Noel from Cupboard Music had reached out to me maybe, it’s probably been two years now. ‘No Woman Is The Sea’ had come out in the US and I had done it on vinyl, it had a very small limited indie release in the US on vinyl. And Noel had reached out mostly driven by the fact that he liked the record a lot and didn’t wanna pay for shipping and it was sold-out. So he’s like, ‘I wanna put it out on Cupboard Music, which sometimes acts a little bit like a label.’ He’s mostly a promoter with it, but has also done a lot of really cool like independent releases with it.
He’s like, ‘I just wanna, mostly for selfish reasons, I think it’s a great record and I wanna put it out on CD so we can share it with people here!’ We did a Zoom call, I’d never met him before, I think he found my music through either Bandcamp or Twitter or something, I’m really not sure how that happened, like how he came across the record in the first place. But I thought it sounded like a great idea and I was like, ‘You wanna do all the work to put my music on a CD in the UK and sell it for me? Fantastic (laughs), yes, of course!’
‘That sounds wonderful.’ So we had a Zoom call and did the layout for it and he put it together, mailed me a few copies, and he was just casually selling it at gigs, and on his Bandcamp. And he reached out, that was like two years ago now, and then he reached out in maybe April of this year? He just said, ‘Hey, I think Perennial’s coming through. I’m booking this big show, I’m hoping it’s gonna be my last show, because I don’t wanna book shows anymore. And if you just happened to be here on holiday during this time, and wanted to be on the bill, it would be super cool and it would also be your last chance to ever be booked by Cupboard Music because I’m not doing this anymore (laughs).’
I must’ve got that note on the perfect day because I’d just gotten my passport too, because Jordan, my best friend has moved to Japan so that was like my first step in breathing, our friendship changing so much, it’s like, ‘Well I guess I’ll get my passport, so I can come see you soon!’
So I’d just gotten my passport and I was looking at flights that day, and I was like, ‘Would it be that spendy to just do it? And like go see London and go see Brighton and try it out?’ So, I bought tickets, and I bought them with my now ex-partner, had planned out a whole trip with them, and then we ended up breaking up in September and then I asked my Dad to come with me instead.
So (laughs) the hotel had us in this double and we were in like a queen-sized bed when we first got there on Thursday and I was like, ‘Oh shit, I forgot to fix this, this is my Dad, please give us two beds!’ (laughs) And they fixed it for us, but yeah that’s how I ended up on this show.
TW: What a fantastic substitute, to take your Dad as well.
JP: Yeah it was good, I was like, ‘Am I gonna do this trip by myself? I think it would be fine, I would have a good time but I don’t know if I’m brave enough to do my first international trip ever completely solo.’ I would’ve survived but I’m having much more fun bringing the old man with me.
TW: Have you got a trip to Japan booked?
JP: Not yet. Well, I’m hoping that Jordan will actually come visit me next year. I’m playing Kilby Block Party in Salt Lake, they’re doing this really incredibly cool huge festival and I’m trying to get him to come see me for that, and play the show with me. So Japan will probably wait until the Fall or a year, but it’s on the docket.
TW: You mentioned earlier that you’ve basically written a whole new album!
JP: Yeah!
TW: As our final question, what can you tell us about that?
JP: It’s still in its very early stages. I would say I’ve spent this whole year writing a ton, and this is like the fun part where Jordan and I kind of put all of the acoustic demos and song ideas that I’ve put together and see what speaks to Jordan. And he gets to listen through and say like, ‘Ooo ok, I like this! I can do something with this!’ So it’s kind of just this dissecting and interrogating different ideas in a phase.
So, I don’t know how quickly we’ll be able to put a whole album together, but I’m hoping that we can try and push for a new song to come out in the Spring. That’s my goal anyway. But it’s been interesting, because he lives in Japan now, it’s been the first time we’ve been writing purely long distance, and very separate. Usually, we’d do our own thing and then come together and be in the same room, working through ideas. And now it’s just like we’d take a week, each of us, and then get together on Zoom to talk through things. It’s very different, but, so far I think we’re getting the hang of it, so I’m hopeful. The way we write music together like is perfectly conducive to having to do it this way, so I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, this works great!’ (laughs)
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Listen to and purchase the music of Josaleigh Pollett on their Bandcamp page here.
Follow Josaleigh’s blog, Static & Distance for thoughts, music recommends and ramblings.
For upcoming gig tickets, merch and other links, check out Josaleigh’s Linktree.
Follow Josaleigh Pollett on Instagram @brosaleigh, on Facebook @josaleighpollett and on Bluesky @brosaleigh.bsky.social.
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