As the reigning Canadian Country Music Association “Breakthrough Artist of the Year”, big things are expected of Josh Ross in his homeland yet his initial success has been seen further afield with his single “Trouble” being certified Gold in the United States, a feat that had not been achieved by a Canadian artist in fifteen years.
His eight track sophomore EP “Complicated” was released at the end of March and would likely be the initial introduction to many people as it was his major label debut after signing with UMG Nashville / Universal Music Canada, yet since his independent debut release in 2019, Ross has already achieved in excess of 300 million career global streams.
Having already been on the road with artists such as Nickelback, Brantley Gilbert and Luke Bryan, he now begins his first taste of shows in Europe to play Highways Festival at the Royal Albert Hall along with joining Bailey Zimmerman for his six date UK and Ireland tour, where we spent some time with Josh before the opening night at Koko in London.
Thanks for taking the time Josh, it’s great to have you here and we are very grateful for you bringing the sunshine over to us and if you have that magic power to have it follow you around then please come as often as you can. Not to overstate things or anything but your numbers have been huge, have you looked at the DSP figures and seen that London and the UK in particular is somewhere where they are strong and was a market that was important to get over to? “Yeah, it’s been really cool to see. I always said that I want to travel the world to see different places and being here, it is the music that has brought me here thanks to the fans, you guys that have been supporting me, the streaming side and even some radio stuff which I have heard about too. It’s incredible and I’m really thankful for everybody in the UK.”
This is a fun little trip with Bailey to come over here for the first time and it’s not too condensed with all of the shows back to back as you’ve got some off days so you can explore a bit too. “Basically, I think it’s seven shows in fourteen days, so we’ve got some days in between which is really cool and I’m excited to get to explore, then we come back to play in London and I’m really excited about that.”
I’m pretty sure that the Royal Albert Hall will be one of the most stunning rooms that you will ever get to play. “Yeah, I’ve heard that the building is just incredible.”
It’s stunning, it’s the sort of place that no amount of pictures, videos or what you hear about it really come close to doing it justice. “I’m excited and everything is very beautiful here, obviously there is a lot of history so it will be cool to play somewhere that is a part of that.”
We tend to have the opposite attitude to the Americans in that they knock fifty year old buildings down because they are old whilst we look at two or three hundred year old places and are scared to do anything to them. “I noticed that driving around today and obviously you don’t see a lot of big vehicles, the roads are small and it’s because all of the buildings are original which is really cool.”
We said how it’s music that’s brought you here and Canada is home for you, which is really exciting and really interesting to us because particularly off the back of “Trouble” you’ve had great success Stateside but we don’t see too many Canadian male artists achieve these heights across the border. We have seen plenty of incredibly talented Canadian artists come over here but the majority who are Nashville based and making waves are the girls. “Yeah, which is really great to see because that is probably the opposite to what it is in the US right now where it appears a male solo dominant genre then obviously there are some really incredible females and groups that are coming up too. I know that is something that wea re all talking about, whether that be DSP’s and radio but I was lucky enough to leave Canada for my own personal reasons before I really had anything going on country music related and I think that was why I was able to establish a great fanbase in the US, then bring me opportunities like this.”
Where we have covered a lot of Canadian artists and the market in Canada, to me it almost has a similar feel to the scene in Texas where you have guys that are huge up there, have so much success and feel they don’t need to chase the Nashville machine. “Yeah, you can make an incredible living, like you said with how it’s similar to Texas with your own radio market and a little bit of a different style of music where you can stay there, tour and make a great living but for me going back to what I said, I wanted to travel the world. I’ve always had that itch to go to different places so for me that was why I wanted to explore.”
In the grand scheme of things, you were quite late in terms of music being your career focus because you went to college on a football scholarship. “Yeah I played American football as you guys call it and I was a defensive back then found music through injuries so, I started late but it was probably a very good thing because it made me hungry to catch up and want to work hard. I found with a lot of sports that I played as a kid, by the time I had played it for ten, fifteen or twenty years I kind of got burnt out a little bit.”
Do you think the adversity in college helped you coming into the music industry? You’re aspirations going into college were to be playing in the CFL or maybe an NFL contract but then you got hurt and things had to change so I guess it set you up for an industry that isn’t straight forward and that things don’t always go to plan. “Don’t go to plan and sometimes there is always that better reason. My better reason I guess was music and I didn’t know that so if it wasn’t for the sports and the injuries I may never have found music which I never even would have planned. I feel it was definitely meant to all happen and football taught me a lot about the work ethic towards a music career.”
A career that has brought you to Camden on a sunny afternoon. What have you heard about coming to play over here? “I have heard so much about the fans and that they actually care about the music, they study the music and they want to know all of the songs for when you come to town so I’m really excited about that.” We had the new EP “Complicated” drop around six weeks ago, it’s eight tracks and I like that as a length for a project particularly in the modern era where consumers attention span is slightly shorter and demand is greater. “Trouble” was the leading single and came out around a year ago so in terms of the process, how long had the project been done and why did now feel the right time to share it as an EP rather than waiting for a few more tracks to be a full album? “Some of the songs on the project are over a year old, I just had a bank of songs saved up that were my favourites and I was probably picking from a hundred and fifty songs from the past couple of years and honestly I just wanted to do a little bit of everything that sounds a little different. Each song on the EP sonically sounds a little different and I wanted it to be like that because as a writer and someone that loves listening to music I like so many different varieties of music so I wanted to be able to show my influences through that but also tie it through my vocal. I still think I have enough songs to do a full length and that’s what I’m excited about but I wanted to give people a dose of what I really thought was to come. I might go back to singles again for a little bit but it just felt like a good time after the success that we had with “Trouble” then “Single Again” is our current US radio single and our focus track on DSP’s so I felt like putting that on a body of work of other songs that I was very proud of was a good idea.”
Most important question of all to finish up, especially seeing as you played ball in college but who are your NFL team? “It’s the Buffalo Bills for me.”
Sure, that makes sense being from Ontario. I’m a Cowboys fan but I like the Bills franchise a lot right now as Josh Allen is awesome, I like McDermott as a coach and I think Brandon Beane is one of the best GM’s in sport let alone the NFL. “Look at you as a Brit being all up on our football. Definitely a Bills fan and as I live in Nashville, you’re sort of a bit of a Titans fan too but the Bills are always going to be closest to my heart. It’s the same as hockey where I grew up a Toronto Maple Leafs fan but now I’m in Nashville, the Preds feel like home too but you’ve got to stick to your roots.”
Appreciate your time Josh, it’s so great to have you here and I’m sure the run with Bailey will be a blast and excited for next Saturday back here in London, so hopefully you’ll bring the sun with you again.
Saturday 11th May - O2 Institute, Birmingham Monday 13th May – Academy, Manchester Thursday 16th May – Galvanizers, Glasgow Saturday 18th May – HIGHWAYS FESTIVAL, Royal Albert Hall, London Sunday 19th May – The Limelight 1, Belfast Monday 20th May – The Academy, Dublin, EIRE The new EP “Complicated” from Josh Ross is out now and available HERE. Josh continues his UK and Irish tour opening for Bailey Zimmerman in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin, whilst Josh will also be performing as part of Highways festival for a further show in London. Ticket information for all shows can be found on his WEBSITE whilst you can keep up to date with all that Josh is up to be checking out his socials on: INSTAGRAMTIKTOKTWITTER & FACEBOOK.