The times in which we live are confusing, chaotic and complex—anything but simple. Aren’t they?
Maybe. But the things that have always been important in life are still important, and those are the subjects Joshua Radin addresses on his second album, Simple Times. These songs, he says, are about “falling in and out of love. Making friendships, having friendships fall apart. Experiencing different parts of the world, seeing other cultures and getting a better perspective on how we live in our country. Everything that people generally go through.”
The means he employs to deliver those ideas to the world is also pretty simple: He picks up a guitar and sings his heart out. “It’s a personal account of my life through music,” says Cleveland-born Radin. “They’re all true and honest songs. When I meet people after shows, sometimes they think they know me because of a certain song—and in a sense they do, because I write about what’s going on in my life. It is scary making yourself vulnerable like that to a bunch of people you don’t know, but it’s also very therapeutic.”
That said, Radin grew up in a household largely absent of the kind of family turmoil that drives many musicians to spill their guts in song. “I guess that’s why my songs are about what I’m going through right now, because I don’t have anything from the past to complain about,” he says with a chuckle. “If I have any angst from my childhood, it was about the environment outside the house. I never felt like I fit in.”
His parents raised him on the sounds of 1960s Motown, Stax and Beatles records, as well as singer-songwriters of the early 1970s like Paul Simon, Cat Stevens and James Taylor. But Radin only turned to music after college, when he moved to New York City, bought a guitar and began learning to play his favorite Beatles and Bob Dylan tunes. Soon he was writing songs of his own.
“I was always trying to find some medium to express myself,” says Radin, who had previously studied art and spent six years writing screenplays. “When I started writing songs, I thought, ‘This is as honest as I can be: getting onstage with my guitar and my voice and singing for people.’”
Radin proved an extraordinarily quick study. A friend gave a demo featuring his very first composition, “Winter,” to a TV producer—who promptly used it to score a scene of the sitcom Scrubs in early 2004. Other Hollywood types found his music just as evocative, and soon various Radin songs were being heard in other TV shows (Grey’s Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters, American Idol, One Tree Hill, So You Think You Can Dance, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Eli Stone), as well as movies (The Nanny Diaries, The Last Kiss, Catch and Release) and ads.
Having captured the public’s attention, Radin set about keeping it with the release of his debut album in 2006. We Were Here drew critical acclaim and passionate listener response, establishing him as an artist in the tradition of greats like Nick Drake and Elliott Smith—confessional folk-pop craftsmen who could say more with a whisper than most can with a scream.
Still, We Were Here presented the first batch of songs Radin ever wrote. Simple Times is drawn from a much deeper well. “These last two years I spent writing and writing and writing,” he says. “I did feel this pressure on myself to top the first record.”
To help him do that, Radin enlisted highly regarded producer Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck). “I still wanted to keep an intimate sound, but I also knew I had to grow as an artist,” Radin says. “So I opened myself up to Rob’s production, and he had a lot of great ideas. We both had a really clear vision of what we wanted.”
Radin spent seven weeks at L.A.’s legendary Sunset Sound studio working with a cast of musicians that included guitarist Greg Leisz, bass player Johnny Flaugher, keyboardist Jason Borger, drummer Victor Indrizzo and percussionist Lenny Castro. “We did a couple of days’ rehearsal, then went in and started recording piece by piece,” Radin explains. “We’d start out with the drums and build the song around the beat.” Guest musicians who dropped in included Patty Griffin, who sings the exquisite harmony on “You Got Growin’ Up to Do.”
The completed Simple Times offers the next step in the evolution of an artist whose talent is flourishing, whose skills have grown and whose vision is broader than ever before. It’s also proof that a young man who was confronted with success very early in his musical life—as he puts it, “before I really found my stage legs”—has grown into his role with aplomb.
“I feel like right about now I’m starting to hit my stride, which is cool,” he says. “With this record I feel like I can come out and say, ‘OK, I’m a fully formed artist now.’ I just hope that other people like it as much as I like it.”