Just over a year ago, I started this fun project — surrounding myself with beautiful people who make beautiful art.
Now, this fine fellow isn’t just a random musician I found on the street and asked to photograph for my series. No. This is one of my dearest friends, Josh Cody. He came into Josiah’s and my life at the perfect time, and even though we haven’t been friends since the dawn of time, it sure feels like it. He’s the type of person that puts a smile on your face just by the way he says “hello,” the type of person that you want around ALL the time. He has a fervor for life and art that is contagious. And I am just so damn grateful to know him and count him as one of my friends. I look forward to a lifetime of misadventure, late night glasses of wine, and Lord of the Rings conversation with this fine gentleman.
{Soul Being}
Part 4
// Joshua Allen Cody //
How long have you been playing music? And what instruments do you play?
“If we count me putting on bicycle gloves and beating on a small hand drum my father got from India: 17 years. My first real instrumental pursuit was an African hand drum called a Djembe when I was 12 years old. My father began to teach me guitar when I was 13. He told me “Son, all you need is three chords and the truth.” He showed me basic chords and I stumbled through the rest over the years just experimenting with different chord shapes and sounds. Already having developed a love for percussion I easily fell for rhythm guitar. I’ve always just told people I play drums on my guitar. Eventually my father again encouraged me to join choir and I began to sing. Singing was/is my most difficult instrument to hone… But nothing compares to singing as loud as you can while banging on a guitar. You just hope at some point others can enjoy it too. I’ve found one of my greatest joys is learning new instruments. Since I started, I’ve gone on to learn the basics on accordion, piano, other percussion, ukulele, bass, mandolin, whistling, harmonica and just other odd end noise makers.“
What are some of your biggest musical influences?
“U2, Coldplay and Counting Crows got my wheels turning and sent me in a musical direction at a young age. Since then, bands such as Sigur Ros, The Arcade Fire, Damien Rice, Sea Wolf and Andrew Bird have continually blown my mind, helping me think outside my own box and strive for originality.”
What inspires you most?
“I am in love with the outdoors. Mountains, trees, rain, water ways and the color green have always sent me to my favorite creative/imaginative places. I’ve found the happiest, sweet places in those settings and peace in my most melancholy of times. I think I just get emotionally heightened in nature. Over the years I began composing music for film, I love pairing the audible with the visual. I started my own company as JoCo (Josh Cody squished together, given to me from a sweet friend Josh Mock aka JoMo) and now work with a licensing company out of Portland Oregon.”
What do you love most about music?
“I love that music can bring us peace and comfort, meeting us in the darkest of hours or in the happiest of times. Being able to channel all the wild things we feel in this world, into a creative medium has been and continues to be something I’m so very thankful for. Whether it is in personal expression or being enveloped in another’s.”
How does music effect your day to day life?
“From when I wake up till I turn in, music is always there to meet me — however I’m feeling. It also keeps my crazy ass brain focused to learn or create something new. Music is a lovely, beautiful thing and I’m so grateful for its daily reprieve in this life.”
| JoCo Facebook | iTunes | Artist Profile | History of Painters Facebook |
