Building a Creative Partnership (and Friendship) That Survives 14 Time Zones w/ Josaleigh Pollett | The J-Card Podcast
At its core, Josaleigh Pollett’s upcoming album If I Let It Quiet is all about distance.
A process that largely revolved around immediacy and spending hours together ruminating over tunes was flipped on its head when Josaleigh’s producer, co-writer, and best friend Jordan Watko moved to Japan. They had to figure out what their creative partnership looked like with 8,000 miles and 14 time zones between them. The answer became a whole album, vast but intimate, built inside a DIY PVC-and-moving-blanket vocal booth, across late-night Ableton sessions, with Paul Simon on repeat at 2am.
In our convo, Joseleigh and I went deep on the making of If I Let It Quiet (out July 24th on Audio Antihero), the thriving Salt Lake City DIY scene, the tangled feelings around social media and self-promotion as an indie artist, and Josaleigh’s mixtape — songs by Sparklehorse, Laura Stevenson, Flock of Dimes, Half Waif, and Paul Simon that shaped the record. Enjoy!
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The J-Card is presented by Rue Defense Tape Club, a quarterly, mail-order cassette compilation and DIY audio project. Each episode is part music discovery, part oral history, part hangout show. We ask artists, musicians, filmmakers, and other music-minded folks to build us their own personal mixtape and talk about the moments and memories that inspired it.
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Booking: Jamie Halliday
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⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 - Intro to Josaleigh Pollett
00:55 - If I Let It Quiet
06:42 - Making Music at a Distance
12:55 - Bringing in Andrew Goldring
19:00 - The Salt Lake City Scene
28:27 - Social Media & The Witness
32:57 - The Blade Runner Question
35:35 - The Mixtape
36:24 - “Piano Fire” by Sparklehorse
40:05 - “Lay Back Arms Out” by Laura Stevenson
43:14 - “Pure Love” by Flock of Dimes
47:36 - “Warm Dark” by lollzing
52:01 - “Figurine” by Half Waif
54:28 - “Peace Like a River” by Paul Simon
1:00:48 - Honorable Mentions
1:02:31 - Game: Play, Pause, Stop
1:10:00 - Plugs & Outro
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