JOSH FIX

REVIEWS: Josh Fix, "Free At Last"
By Michael Gallant

Josh Fix did nearly everything on this energetic album — songwriting, vocals, B-3, electric pianos, guitars, bass, drum loops and programming, virtual orchestra, production — and this is (mostly) a great thing.

Josh is explosively creative and highly musical, bringing a Queenesque level of grand complexity to his arrangements and an old-school piano rock vibe that sounds like equal parts Elton John, Gavin DeGraw, and Led Zeppelin.

Songs like the title track are lush and sexy, while the piano-powered “Don’t Call Me In The Morning” is raucous and frenetically majestic. There’s excellence and fun here, and Josh is one to watch. - Keyboard Magazine

Josh Fix: A One-Man Band Says Goodbye
'Free at Last' by Josh Fix
By Marc Silver


In "Free at Last," Josh Fix sounds like a hybrid of Queen's Freddie Mercury and Elton John, melding bombast with genuine sorrow.

NPR.org, July 10, 2008 - "Free at Last" is a spurned lover's declaration of independence from the woman who dumped him: a finely orchestrated power ballad, sung at a deliberate pace and dedicated to the proposition that he's through with her, even though she's come back around. In case she has any doubts, he borrows Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous phrase. But Fix has a hard time staying on message, as he goes on to play a moody guitar solo and whistle a melancholy tune that reveals him as a secret yearner.



A singer, composer, guitarist, and whistler (not to mention keyboardist, percussionist, synthesizer player, record producer, album-cover designer, and provider of "additional engineering"), the 30-year-old Fix probably sews his own clothes from cotton he's grown. A South African who came to the U.S. when he was 11, he sounds like a hybrid of Queen's Freddie Mercury and Elton John as he melds bombast with genuine sorrow, soaring over choral backgrounds that (naturally) also stem from the vocal cords of one Josh Fix. Yet despite his clear influences, he sounds like nobody but himself: a young man wistfully telling an old flame that he's free at last. - NPR (National Public Radio)

(5 Stars)
Now we're freekin' talking!! The long awaited debut from the multi-talented Josh Fix is finally here and what more can I say than that it is a monster CD!!!

Imagine yourself a mix between Queen, Jellyfish, Bleu, The Grays, ELO, Mika, Melêe, Rooney and Gavin DeGraw and we're quite near the carpark of Josh music. Phew. Heureka. The sound is freekin' awesome. He produced it himself with help on the mix from the mighty Paul Ebersold. Just listen "Whiskey & Speed"" God damn!! There we can talk about arrangements... And harmonies!! Pure pure heaven. All songs are mighty fine moments - none mentioned - none forgotten... Ahh.. I need to mention "Bad With The Superbad" with plink plink piano all freekin' over as well - and listen to the choirs and arrangements on that tune!!

Nah - enuff said folks. Instead of sitting here and writing superlatives I demand everyone surf the net and buy yourself a copy at this freekin' moment! Josh Fix for president. Easily a contender for the best album in 2008. - Melodic.Net

CD reviews: Josh Fix; 'Steinway the Hard Way' (Flop of the Century)

Josh Fix has been causing quite a buzz in his native San Francisco, progressing in short time from winner of a local demo contest to opening for the Who and gaining the enthusiastic support of Lenny Kravitz and Eddie Van Halen. Along the way, the 26-year old has drawn comparisons to everyone from Ben Folds and Billy Joel to Elton John and Queen. As preposterous as that sounds, his commercial label debut -- a 25-minute EP-- offers proof positive of a burgeoning talent with an amazing ear for majestic pop. His voice does at times strongly evoke Freddie Mercury, and he channels a sense of classic '70s rock and infectious pop in his songwriting. The comparisons aren't all that preposterous after all. With a modern, Folds-like playfulness on piano and a deft production ear, Fix emerges with seven songs that are simple yet smartly layered and quietly effecting. Download pick: "This Person."
-- NATE DOW - Boston Herald

By Daniel Sliwek

Born in South Africa, but raised in New York, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Josh Fix will soon debut with a full-lengther, Free At Last, but it was his demo EP, Steinway the Hardway, that got him on Eddie Van Halen’s speed dial. Without any formal training, the young talent wrote and performed his own symphony and is an example of how the video game generation rocks out with classical influences.

WRITING A SYMPHONY

I got this crazy idea in college that I wanted to do a symphony before I died; I wanted to conduct it and have it performed and all these things. I just thought that if I didn’t do it while I was young, when I could utilize all the resources of the college, I’d have to wait until I’m old and rich to afford an orchestra- not the most sound plan. So I begged my way into the music department and convinced them to let me do a thesis as a music major, I had to take all these composition classes to qualify for it.

That was the beginning of my real formal education and it turned out to be really helpful, because all the prerequisites you have to pass, like ear training and theory, have come in handy. It didn’t help that I couldn’t read a lick of music before I got the idea to write the symphony, but I had a MIDI notation program called Finale that helped me out a lot with the basics. With something like that, it was possible to kind of leap-frog my way through a crash course in symphonic orchestration.

LEARNING FROM ALBUMS

I was really frustrated growing up, because even as a young child I gravitated towards more complicated stuff, and trying to play music with slightly more sophisticated chord structures would be rough. I would play along to a lot of Queen records and even Supertramp gave me some problems; there were some things that they were doing that wouldn’t be apparent if you had only had a few years of music lessons; weird extended chords and inversions and other subtle stuff that someone without theory would probably have trouble with.

Making little breakthroughs on my own was really cool. I was 10 years old when I figured out the chord progression for “Take The Long Way Home,” and I was so psyched because I realized, “Wow man, these aren’t the normal three chords.” The key of the song changes three times in the first verse alone, and it was a concept that was really hard for me to wrap my head around at the time. For me it was a quantum leap. From there, things became clearer.

SINGING & PLAYING

I’ve had times where I’ll be playing and singing a song, and as soon as I start thinking to myself, “Hey wait a second, I’m singing and playing at the same time!” that’s when I start losing my footing. It’s like, up until the point you started thinking about it, the muscle memory –– or whatever it is –– made it work. But as soon as you get inside your own head, you’re interfering with your natural instinct.

VIDEO GAMES

I was reading this book called Everything Bad Is Good For You, by Stephen Johnson, and it’s all about how things that popped up in modern culture that you would think should be intellectually stifling (like video games, TV, and other sensory overload) are, in fact, really helpful. I keep the book close by so I can read it to my girlfriend whenever she gives me crap about playing video games. I found when I was doing a lot of writing that playing video games actually became a sort of meditation. It’s like the same sort of phenomenon that has to do with transcendental meditation; the whole repetitive action thing? And I heard how soldiers keep taking apart and putting their guns back together to keep their minds busy; so I found that even playing video games for 20 minutes indirectly gives me a major brain workout. You’re not consciously giving anything much thought –– it’s more of a meditative state –– but I think it stimulates a lot of ideas.

IN THE STUDIO

I’m barely over the depressing early stage, when you find out how little you know about production. It’s like, “What? There’s this thing called EQ and it makes everything sound better? Wow!” It was once like that, but I’ve heard from some experienced guys that my EP, Steinway The Hard Way, sounds good considering it’s from someone who didn’t know what they were doing. That’s because it was arranged well; if something is arranged well it should transcend the recording –– even though I still think the EP sounds shitty. [Laughs]

The keyboard is the basis, and that’s just because it’s such a huge instrument and takes up so much sonic space. If you play it right, it can almost be any instrument; it’s bassy, it’s percussive, you can play melody, and whatever. I went all around the Bay Area trying to find a place to record, but they all had immaculate Yamahas and it all sounded too nice. But when I found this antique upright piano at Hyde Street Studios, I knew that it would set the tone for the whole process. We used more microphones than you would think; at first we put them in the normal places, like over the strings, where the pedals are, but then we were sticking them all the way in the back of the room, under the piano, behind it, just to get any kind of ambience of the piano playing in the room.

TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT

Honestly, I’m not the best keyboard player in the world. I play other instruments and I don’t devote the time to it that I should in order to be better. If I come up with something –– like if I write a part for myself that is too difficult for me to play at first –– I’ll just work on it so I can play it, and it kinda makes me look like a better keyboard player than I am. But I think there’s a cumulative effect of me trying to challenge myself. I know that I’m getting better at handling what I need to play. That’s where the composition training comes into play; if you have more training- and you take advantage of that training, you can get to that point faster. - Music Connection

AFTER SLEEPING ON THE SLY AT HIS DOWNTOWN OFFICE,
JOSH FIX SPENT HIS SAVINGS ON RECORDING GEAR.
HE MADE A DEMO, THE REST IS HISTORY.
By Jane Ganahl

Josh Fix has opened for the Who. One big fan (Lenny Kravitz) flew him to New York; another (Eddie Van Halen) calls him sometimes to chat. His self-produced demo -- the source of all the buzz -- won the most recent local Grammy chapter competition and caught the attention of the venerable KFOG, which put the young musician's rough-cut tunes into rotation.

The only boulder on this yellow brick road: The 26-year-old San Franciscan has yet to put out a record. Which means he's a little shy on the basics.

"I've never done a photo shoot before," says Fix, fidgeting. "I don't know what to do with my hands."

He can't seem to get comfortable, as he is positioned by a photographer in front of an iron gate on Chestnut Street, close to his Marina apartment. He mugs, he looks stern. Nothing seems to feel right.

"That was weird," the musician mutters afterward.

This is also his first interview. "I actually practiced what I would say last night," he admits, sipping a Chimay ale at the Grove. "I know, what a total geek."

Like Woody Allen's Zelig, the pianist/guitarist/composer has a strange gift for finding himself suddenly in the glare of the spotlight. Rather than being unnerved, Fix is amused. Take the Who gig as a classic example.

"It was complete, dumb luck. The producers of the Who's tour had seen us (Fix and his band, the Furious Force) at this tiny gig where there were maybe four people in the audience," he says with a smile. "But they really liked us. Right about then, Adam Duritz blew out his voice so we got to replace Counting Crows on the main stage in L.A. It wasn't even our 10th gig as a band."

Just days later, a small gig at L.A.'s Knitting Factory drew a huge crowd ("I guess we made some fans," he chuckles), including the wife of Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, one of Fix's favorites from his youth.

"He called me, said his wife came home with my demo -- said it was some of the best music she'd ever heard. So he listened to it, and told me this is amazing stuff, something no one else is doing right now. So I met him, we've spent time together."

Soon after, he got the call at home from Van Halen, another hero, who got a copy of the demo from Lukather. This time, the icy-cool Fix was less so.

"I thought maybe it was a friend calling, and I told him to quit f -- with me. And the voice said, 'No, seriously, this is Ed Van Halen. I really like your stuff.' I haven't met him yet in person yet, but we've talked on the phone three times."

And then, Kravitz called when the increasingly hot demo found its way into his hands. "He said, 'Hey, I love your stuff. Want to hang out for a few days?' So he flew me to New York and we partied. Being part of his entourage was fun, but it was also really weird."

And a reminder of what he does not value in the music industry.

"I'm not driven by the need to be a rock star," he says, in a slightly hoarse voice accented by both his South African homeland and his New York transplantation. "I got all that partying out of my system by the time I left college. People want a consequence-free lifestyle, and that no longer appeals to me."

Still, he admits, the machinery that goes into gear with a record contract would be helpful in getting his music out -- including his first, seven-song EP, "Steinway the Hard Way," which will premiere at a CD release party Thursday night at the Independent in San Francisco.

"Since the demo won that competition, I've met with every major label," he says. "I've been flown out to New York, L.A. ... But I just don't think of myself as mainstream, and that's what record companies are looking for now."

To compare Fix, who plays every instrument and sings every harmony on most of his recordings, to any artist in the top 40 -- make that the top 200 -- would be an exercise in futility. It would be easier to draw comparisons to vintage pop acts such as Queen and Billy Joel. And Brian Wilson, circa "Pet Sounds" -- a love he shares with other modern one-man-bands such as Jason Falkner and Blinker the Star. Fix also shares Moby's affinity for neo-gospel, and Ben Folds' joy in aggressive key-pounding.

"I purposefully shut myself off from whatever is popular and hip," he says. "I don't try to stay current, I just go with what I like: interesting melodies that both challenge and entertain."

Indeed, a good challenge would be to check out one of the songs available on his Web site (joshfix.com) and try to pry it out of your brain after one listen. "Burn It Down," and "Coma," both from the new EP, are the best of what Fix offers: sweetly soulful, punchy vocals, unexpected bridges, danceable beats and humorously morose lyrics.

"Look at all the dirt on the floor/ that used to be someone we knew/ why should I care if I'm wrong/ if everything ends all the same way /maybe I'll just slip into a coma/ get away for a while."

In fact, there's nothing funny about the heartache Fix has had to endure in his young life. At 20, he lost his best-friend father to a heart attack (his mother died when he was 4). Fix spun out emotionally and ditched his pre- law academics at Bates College in Maine for 18 months of travel and general self-indulgence.

"I was completely freaked out, going through that 'I don't have any parents anymore' life change," he says. "Even though my dad was a lawyer, he had been my greatest musical influence. He introduced (me) to everything from Queen to the classical masters. He knew every opera by Verdi by heart."

He also made sure, when Fix showed early signs of talent, that he was trained in piano and other instruments. Perhaps because of the influence of his late father, Fix had a revelation during his walkabout that music, which had been such an integral part of his youth, was an inevitable part of his future.

"I was working on an oil rig in the gulf of Mexico, rooming with ex-cons -- and reading the biography of Leonard Bernstein. Everything would always come back to music, which made me wake up and say, 'What am I doing? I may not be super talented but I have to give it a shot.' "

Returning to Bates, he informed his counselors that he was switching to music as a major, and for his senior thesis would compose a symphony.

"It was pointed out to me that I didn't know how to do this," he says with a laugh. "They said I was crazy, and would have to take some additional composition classes. But I did it. It became kind of a circus, with TV cameras and such."

Fix's first experience with the world beating a path to his door? Did it ensure his future in music? Hardly.

"I did that symphony as an experiment, because it was in me and needing to get out. Music is just one part of my life. Charles Ives had the best mind- set. He was a prodigy, but purposefully chose not to make his money as a musician so he could be as creative as he wanted to be."

Modestly adding that he's not drawing a comparison between himself and the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, he notes that they share the same birthday -- 100 years apart.

"And he also lost his dad in his second year of college. Weird, huh?"

Without a preconceived idea about where his life would take him, Fix headed west to San Francisco in 1999 "because this is where the jobs were." His five years here have been the stuff of picaresque legend.

There was the first job at Morgan Stanley that he two-timed with a job at radio station ("I'd sign in at 6:30 a.m. and then at 8:30 a.m. go to my other job, and no one ever caught on"). And, when he finally decided he needed to get back to music and buy some equipment, he moved out of his Mission apartment -- and into his office, at a major insurance company on Market Street.

"I needed to save some money for a digital studio," he explains unapologetically. "I kept everything in the filing room, and I was the only guy who ever went in there. A couple times I overslept on my air mattress and I'd hear voices outside the door saying, 'Where's Josh?' So I'd have to race to put my clothes on. But mostly it worked pretty well! I got all my cleaning done once a week at the cleaners downstairs, and went to 24 Hour Fitness in the morning to take a shower. I was even dating women, but they thought it was funny and eccentric."

Was it worth the few thousand dollars to spend eight months hiding out?

"Of course! I got my digital studio -- and a really good story -- out of it."

Once Fix got his digital studio and learned how to use it, it was like opening a Pandora's box: He began composing and soon had a huge catalog of songs -- at present count, close to 100 are complete. "I think I need to stop writing, because I've got like seven albums' worth of stuff, and I figure my career probably won't be half as long," he jokes.

So far, the music part of his career hasn't paid him enough to quit working -- although he did quit his insurance company job the day the band opened for the Who. He has since gone to work for a startup, Asoka, which provides him with more freedom to do his music.

Fix has also dabbled in film scoring, which has proven lucrative. "I did a score for an indie film ('Redemption') that got bought by a huge studio, so they had to license the music from me. My lawyer added some zeros, and since then I've been able to only work part-time."

Another example of dumb luck? He smiles. "Maybe. I feel kind of guilty sometimes."

He pauses. "I don't want you to get the idea that I see music as something I'm here to exploit. I have a profound love and respect for it; it's the highest form of self-expression."

And what is the master plan for his self-expression?

"I'm telling you, I have no goal and no plan. Of course I'd like people to hear my music; I'm negotiating with independent labels to have it distributed. But I don't expect to ever have a No. 1 single. And that's fine - - I have a pretty cool life. I don't have to work that much and I do music when I can."

Fix smiles. "I mean, this was never supposed to be about anything but getting out and playing in front of people. And having some fun."

He really doesn't see what the fuss is all about. - San Francisco Chronicle

8. Josh Fix, "Free at Last"

This Bay Area Renaissance man (imagine a post-Radiohead Elton John) obliterated slacker chic with a virtuosically glossy piano-pop opus.

- Time Out New York

By Michael Gallant

“I came to San Francisco straight out of college to work in an investment bank,” says exuberant piano rocker Josh Fix of his less-than-musical introduction to the working world. “The first day I got there, I saw it wasn’t for me. Slowly but surely, I weaned myself from the corporate world.”

Though they weren’t the best of times, Josh’s months in finance helped him find a meaty theme for his monumental debut album, Free At Last, an explosive and layered collection of tunes that brings to mind elements of Elton John, Led Zeppelin, and Queen. “We keep finding ways to unnecessarily complicate our lives, whether we’re bankers or bums,” he explains. “You can’t help but listen to some homeless people arguing when you walk down the street — they have complicated lives, too! Every little song on the album has a slightly different point of view about the modern neurosis we inflict upon ourselves, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it.”

Produced by Josh, Free At Last features a generous helping of piano courtesy of a “rickety little Emerson upright which is probably 100 years old” — even though Josh had a Yamaha C7 grand at his disposal while recording at San Francisco’s Hyde Street Studios. “I was in this anti-establishment state of mind,” he says. “I thought using this beautiful grand piano would be the predictable thing to do. I wanted a grungy feel. The Emerson has a unique sound and we didn’t have to do too much to it in the mix. It recorded naturally punchy. We got a huge sound out of it and we were only using one mic.

“This was the record where we used every part of the buffalo,” Josh says. “We used a Nord Lead, but a lot of the synthy stuff I did in my bedroom at home with a couple different programs — Native Instruments Absynth, IK Multimedia SampleTank, and MOTU MachFive. I didn’t have a huge budget, so anything that I could find laying around in the studio that we thought would be cool, anything I had on my limited Pro Tools rig at home, I tried to play.

“It was a wacky process,” Josh continues, referring to the intense time he spent recording. “We couldn’t have been in the studio for more than two weeks, but we compressed a lot of activity in a short period of time. The days we were there were crazy, like 20 hours a day.” He adds, “My engineer’s wife wanted to kill us!”

Free At Last carries an important message for keyboardists and non-musicians alike. “Don’t put superfluous pressures on yourself!” says Josh. “The reason I wanted to call the album Free At Last, and the reason the cover is an empty suitcase, is to symbolize leaving your baggage, your societal luggage, behind and just going for it.” - Keyboard Magazine

By Emile Menasche

With its lush recordings and prominent use of piano and stacked vocals, Josh Fix's Free at Last (1650 Entertainment, 2008) harkens back to the studio production style of 1970s bands like Supertramp and Queen — but with a decidedly modern twist.

A South African native who now calls San Francisco home, Fix says he loves working with today's technology but that his approach to composition is rooted in more-traditional methods. “When I write, I tend to hear most of the finished production already,” he explains. “The studio is not a place for me to experiment with arranging. I studied classical composition in college; when I mess around — with even the littlest, shortest phrase in music — I tend to hear all the parts up and down.”

To capture his initial ideas, Fix put together a relatively modest rig (based on the Korg D-1600 hard-disk recorder) in what he describes as a bedroom closet. “I had no experience as an engineer, but it had a good preamp on it and the built-in effects were really good,” he says. “I think the early demos I made were sounding pretty good to begin with. The first batch of demos actually became an EP [Steinway the Hard Way; Flop of the Century, 2004].”

In fact, one of Fix's early recordings won a local Grammy-sponsored songwriting contest. “Different people were passing the demos around,” he recalls. “I got a call from Lenny Kravitz one day and he liked it. Steve Lukather heard it and started passing it along to his friends, so I started getting calls from Van Halen and Steve Vai — it was really cool! At that point, I thought maybe I should do this seriously.”

When it came time to make his full-length CD, Fix decided to go into a commercial facility, working with engineer Jaime Durr at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco. “I was running around the Bay Area trying to find a place that had a good vibe,” Fix says. “Sitting in the corner of Jaime's studio was an antique Emerson upright piano. I played it and thought, ‘This is going to be the sound of the record!’ I wanted something with an authentic, live sound to it — which might have been a reaction to having to sit in my closet and make electronic demos for four years.”

But Fix's closet days were far from over. Before heading into the studio, he spent a month producing elaborate demos, this time using Pro Tools LE and a Digidesign Mbox (he's now using LE 7.4 and an Mbox 2 Pro). “Basically, every song that was going to be on the album had its own template and tempo,” he explains. “Because I place most of the instruments myself, that turned out to be a good way to work: a lot of what I thought would be scratch parts ended up being the final parts on the record. It's such a weird hybrid of vintage acoustic instruments and amps mixed into this computer world I've become so used to recording in. About 80 to 90 percent of the guitar parts were done in the bedroom using [Native Instruments] Guitar Rig 2.” Fix built tracks with so many vocal layers that he sometimes pushed the limits of the gear. “We had to open an entirely new Pro Tools session for each song just to be able to fit in all the vocal parts,” he admits. “Some sections have 100 voices doing one little part on top. This technology that lets you record digitally for track after track after track — for me, that's the greatest thing.” - Electronic Musician Magazine

by Nate Seltenrich

Josh Fix , Free at Last

San Francisco's answer to Queen and Elton John, Josh Fix is a one-man retro machine. Fix is flawless on vocals, guitar, bass, piano, percussion, and a heckuva lot more across this sophomore record, which he also produced, co-engineered, and designed.

But Fix's genius is in his songwriting. From basic composition to the nitty-gritty of instrumental and vocal arrangements, Free at Last's piano-rock rings true with all the attitude, bombast, and, occasionally, tenderness of his heroes, those relics of the '70s who first introduced cabaret classiness to the unbuttoned joy of rock 'n' roll.

A few bulletproof melodies and snarky lyrics make his modern appeal irrefutable. - East Bay Express