RAISING THE BAR
Texan singer-songwriter Josh T. Pearson has enjoyed a warm reception in Europe, yet he’s struggled to peddle his art back in his home country. But with the release of his second album, The Straight Hits!, that could all be set to change. Laura Williams finds out more
Laura Williams
After several years in the wilderness (again), Josh T. Pearson has emerged from a cocoon of self-doubt as a beautiful, colourful butterfly – with albums brimming with new and varied material under his bright-white cowboy hat.
Unrecognisable from the bearded, sober, yoga-loving introvert of 2010/11, Pearson became reacquainted with a razor and booze, learned to dance and love again, and hasn’t looked back. “It’s been a great few years,” he says. “It’s so different to the first 40 years.”
After living in Europe for several years in the late 2000s – London, Berlin and Paris – Pearson achieved cult status with his only solo record, 2011’s Last Of The Country Gentlemen – Rough Trade’s Album Of The Year. It’s a heartbreaking story of love and loss, delivered intensely, by a man on the brink.
“We worked the Last Of The Country Gentlemen record for a year or two in the UK, then came back to America and no one wanted me, so I just moved back out to the desert in the middle of nowhere, Texas, and stayed there for a year or two,” he recalls. “I kind of thought life was over, and then a friend said: ‘Come visit me in Austin’, and he invited me to this bar called The White Horse and I walked into the bar and I felt the universe had made a bar specifically for me. I spent a year or two there, learning how to dance and on the road to recovery, and I’ve come a long way. I was so in my shell and selfaware, and dancing was so liberating for me.”