Josh Cleveland always loved music and singing, but the act of getting in front of people and singing felt very exposed and vulnerable. Relentless in his pursuit of music, Cleveland took up drums so he could still play music but do so in a space where he didn’t feel so out in the open. But then he discovered guitar.

“The guitar became that buffer of, ‘OK, if I have a guitar, then I have a reason to be in front of a microphone’,” Cleveland says. “It allowed me to get in front of a microphone and do what I really wanted to do, which was just sing.”

A Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter, Cleveland and his “band of Wonders” released a new album, Prove the Sound, on May 15. Cleveland visited The Current to talk to Radio Heartland host Mike Pengra about the making of the album and the band behind it. Listen to the interview using the audio player above, and find a transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Mike Pengra: I'm delighted to be in the studio with Josh Cleveland. Josh, welcome.

Josh Cleveland: Thank you.

Mike Pengra: Nice to finally meet you.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, you as well.

Mike Pengra: Yeah, this new album came out recently this winter, right? Prove the Sound. It's Josh Cleveland and the Wonders.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, that's kind of.. they're my band of Wonders. Yeah, we keep workshopping the name, but that — they just, they're such tasty treats, and what they do is just so wonderful, and it just, it keeps coming out of my mouth.

Mike Pengra: I read that your dad's a preacher. Your mom made you and your brother sit and write poetry lyrics.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, it used to be just write. I think mostly it was "Please go be quiet somewhere for an hour." But eventually, I went towards poetry. My middle brother went towards like making cartoon art and that sort of thing, comic book sort of things. And then my other brother just stayed with the straight kind of long-form literary, and now my oldest brother is an English teacher and an author.

Mike Pengra: Wow.

Josh Cleveland: My middle brother is an art teacher and does art. He's done some art for me for some albums before. And then I went to songwriting, so it's like my mom knew something about us before we did.

Mike Pengra: And you played drums ...

Josh Cleveland: I did. Yeah.

Mike Pengra: And then switched to guitar somewhere along the line.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah. So, I grew up — you know, my dad was a preacher man — and I grew up singing a cappella in church, and I always loved the voice; I just thought it was such a vulnerable thing. And I loved singing, but I was so afraid because it was such a vulnerable thing to put yourself out there in that way, or at least I thought, I was so afraid to actually sing in front of people, so I became a drummer! Like, try to get as far away from it as you can.

Mike Pengra: Hide behind the drum kit!

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, which was great, but I found myself just — I mean, I loved music, I just wanted to, I wanted to sing it out, but I was also just so afraid to just put myself out there, so then the guitar became that buffer of, "OK, if I have a guitar, then I have a reason to be in front of a microphone," and it just became this sort of thing that I could, it allowed me to get in front of a microphone and do what I really wanted to do, which was just sing.

Mike Pengra: I saw an interview with you — or actually, it was, I saw you talking on Facebook about the recording of this record, Prove the Sound, and there were good days and not so good days. And tell me about that process, how it works.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah. The producers we worked with were ... they really liked what we were bringing to the table, but they wanted, they felt like we had, we were covering up the song itself with, whether it was instrumentation or maybe the lyrics, so when we went in there, it just, some of the songs wrote themselves, and we, you know, it wasn't that difficult, but there was one day in particular where it was the song just wasn't working. It just wasn't. It didn't feel right to play, it didn't feel right to sing, even the words I started, I lost my connection to it, and it was so disheartening to just sit there in the studio and realize, "I don't think this is going to work," and then, of course, all those doubts start coming in, of like: "Is any of this gonna work? What are we doing here? What am I doing here? Maybe I should go back to the drums," you know? It was just... but it was the process to break everything down to the bare bones of, why did I write this song in the first place? Why are we playing this in the first place? And it, the next day, became this, let's build from that sort of broken-down root, and let's see what kind of blossoms from that. And it was, and that was the day that we wrote "Prove the Sound," which is my favorite song on the record. Just then the title, the title track.

Mike Pengra: So when you went to the studio in the first place, you had arrangements in your head, but nothing written down?

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, we had some ... what we had, that was tough, we had some versions of the songs that we had actually played out, and we kind of thought, "Yeah, let's go with this," and then we just realized that some of those parts just didn't translate, now that we were listening to it and isolating some of the tracks, we realized, "Well, that doesn't actually fit with the tone of the tune," or in one case, the music was great and the lyrics were the worst! So it was rewrite the lyrics to fit the new tone of the song and find out ways to connect it, and so some of the songs we had fleshed all the way out, and thought they were finished, and thought it would be a quick snap in there.

Mike Pengra: Yeah.

Josh Cleveland: And those were the ones that we ended up rewriting and working the most.

Mike Pengra: Tell me about your band.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, there are five of us. So, on the guitar and multi-instrumentalist is Dustin Smith. So, he plays anything that's stringed, also.

Mike Pengra: Yes, he does.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, gosh, he is. Yeah, you know! He's just wonderful at what he does. He creates a lot of space and finds space.

Mike Pengra: How long you've been playing with Dustin?

Josh Cleveland: Oh, it's been probably close to 10 years, I think. And then back on the drums is Eric Smith, not related, though they are both from Nebraska, so that's fun. They might actually be related.

Mike Pengra: Two Smiths from Nebraska. What are the chances?

Josh Cleveland: Right! But he also, I've been playing with him, probably the longest, probably about 15, 17 years, somewhere around there. But he's just, he's such a tasty drummer, where he, he can play, you know, your regular four on the floor, or find like a bluegrass groove, if you want that, or if you give him space, he will just lay this bed of rhythm that he and our bassist, Joe Meyer, the way that they play together, it's just, there's sometimes when I want to just be, "Let's just do bass and drums, how 'bout?" because they just see eye to eye really well, and the way that they work together is just, just so, so nice. It lays again this great bed of rhythm.

Mike Pengra: Sounds like they listen to each other very well, too, and that's important.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: And Nikki on keys?

Josh Cleveland: And then Nikki Lemire plays keys and brings her angelic vocals to it. And it's just funny, because we were just the four of us without Nikki for probably a year, and our bassist, Joe said, "You know, I think we need a woman's voice in here somewhere." And Dustin and Nikki had known each other in years past, and he just brought her in, just to, "Hey, let's just have a songwriting session." Little did Nikki know, we were trying her out. And there was, I think, it was one of the first times she opened her mouth and sang part of a tune that she brought for us to kind of work on, that Dustin and I just looked at each other, and we're like, "OK, I think we're good."

Mike Pengra: Is songwriting for you a healing art, or is it laborious?

Josh Cleveland: Oh gosh, yeah, there's definitely... there's a few that, it just.. I know it needs to, it needs to get out of me, and those ones are usually the toughest when I feel compelled to write about a certain subject, and I know that it's there, it's in there, it's connected to somewhere inside of the center of me, and those are sometimes tough, because there's the version of the song that comes out that's the easy version that I'm like, "Oh, here's a quick little cliche here and a cliche there to say what someone has already said before that didn't even connect when they did it," and somehow it'll connect when I do, but it doesn't. And then there's the version that I have to work for, where it's, where's the deeper metaphor? Where's the deeper connection? Why do I actually care to tell this story? Because if I don't care about it, then why would I expect someone else to listen to it and say, "Ooh, he's talking about me" or "That's my story," and they don't, and so it's a labor, it's a healing labor, I think of what it is. Now. I'm not a woman, so I've never given birth, so I am way outside of my lane here, but I've seen two of my daughters born, and to watch that moment when they're laid on their mom, and it just, everything else is worth it. You know what I mean? And in fact, all the toughest parts are kind of just an afterthought, because you're there, you're skin to skin with that baby, you know?

Mike Pengra: It's a magical image.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah! And I feel like that's the best songs.

Mike Pengra: Josh, thanks so much for coming in, and congratulations on this record.

Josh Cleveland: Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Credits

Guest – Josh Cleveland
Host/Producer – Mike Pengra
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Josh Cleveland – official site