hi everybody

posted by josh on 08.05.09

Hi everybody. Here's my new site that my pal Phillip got together. I'll try to get ya up to speed on what I've been up to this year. I've been pretty busy lately playing gigs here and there (mostly "there") and recording in LA and Vancouver. Trying to take a breathe too and hang at home a bit. I've toured very little this year which has been nice seeing that I've been pretty non-stop for a while now. After spending most of the first half of 2009 "in town" I've just recently been traveling and playing out more often. Earlier in the year I was concentrating on sticking real close to home after welcoming our 3rd (and final in an installment of 3) child to our family. I've been building a studio, The Vandals went out and did a few "one-offs" (a couple in Vegas, Red Rocks in Colorado and a festival in Belgium). DEVO went out and played some shows which always proves to be an adventure and a good time. DEVO played a show in Dallas, one at South By Southwest in Austin, a gig in San Fran and did 2 shows over in the UK. DEVO's also been recording here in LA for their first record in 20 years which should be out in 2010. We've been working on it for a long while now but there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel and things are looking pretty good. Making it has been cool, difficult, bizarre, interesting and even a little fun throughout the (ongoing) process. All in all it's an honor being involved seeing that I'm a life long fan of theirs and (most importantly) share a very deep, dark sense of humor with them.

So, around this same time (spring) I put out my 2nd Solo record (Since 1972) and started partaking in all the odd-ball stuff I was offering up in conjunction with the albums release. That proved to be a success in the way of getting lots of people at least TALKING about my record and I got some good press out of it. I even sold a few copies a long the way (not to mention 25 trips to PF Changs and the Cheesecake Factory....more on all that later). One day I'll start getting my act together and post some of the craziness on the ol' youtube. Believe it or not, I'm still not done with all of that (sensory deprivation tank visits, foot massages, trips to Disneyland, etc..) And YES....The Volvo Wagon (part of the $10,000 package is STILL for sale! Can you believe that shit? Someone just buy it so I can not feel guilty about having 2 cars right now...please? You know the old school "boxy" Volvo's are sexy and it's only got like 73K miles on it...not bad for a 16 year old "classic!"

Then in late spring I got a call from Weezer about playing some shows. Seems that Rivers doesn't want to sing AND play guitar anymore. So instead of them adding a guitarist, Pat (who shreds on the guitar) decided to step out from behind the drums and channel his inner Jimmy Page. So, no one got booted out of the band and the Weezers are all fine and good. I'm just helping out as "the drummer" for a bit. We did the KROQ Weenie Roast show here in So Cal and just got home from doing 2 big festivals (one in Korea and one in Japan). During this time I also recorded 4 songs with them for their upcoming record and we're getting ready to leave on a month long North American tour in late August and will take us up through mid September.

Oh yeah..in the middle of Weezer rehearsals I flew out to Quebec to meet up with my old pal Sting and do 2 shows with him out there. Well, one in Quebec and one in Connecticut. This was in the middle of July. It was good to see him and cool playing all those songs again (I hadn't seen him or played with him for 3 years). He put enough trust in me to only have 1, couple hour rehearsal the day before the show in Quebec for 120,000 people which was filmed, recorded and televised! We kicked ass too! The gigs went great and playing songs like "Message In A Bottle" and "Roxanne" are like riding a bike. I'm hoping to do some more stuff with him if scheduling works out in the future.

Other than all that craziness I've also started in on my next record which I think will be called "Dirty Mature." Like my last few records I've been recording it in pieces and fragments with whatever "extra" time I have lying around. This one will probably be much weirder record than anything I've ever done (with the exception of a few "rock n' roll numbers") and will include all of the instrumental tracks that you may have already heard playing as the soundtracks to my youtube shorts that I have up and some new ones. There will also be songs about Tom Mrzyglocki, Ferris Al-Sayed and a few other folks. I'm excited about it because it won't be so "normal sounding" like my 2 other records and much more left of center.

Thanks for listening and I'll try to write more often here and keep you posted on what I'm up to.

Cool man cool,

Josh F