00:01:21.100What came first in your heart and your mind as a musician?
00:01:25.680the music or the stories that you needed to tell it's always the stories it's always been about
00:01:31.140that and that dates back to the first artist that that turned my got my attention when i was young
00:01:37.520steve earl when the guitar town album came out every one of those characters every
00:01:43.160every song was about a story and a lot of them really hit home with me and so that's to me what
00:01:50.580songwriting and music is about i can see that steve roll uh inspiration in the music that uh
00:01:58.120that i hear from you because it does have sort of a steve roll always had the ability to put sort of
00:02:02.280a pirate's edge or a cowboy's edge on topics that would normally be you know pretty sensitive topics
00:02:09.980yeah yeah he takes it's never been afraid to take on sensitive topics and uh and just go at it
00:02:17.760honestly where does all this begin for you then so you've got an inspiration you've got some
00:02:22.520inspirations about storytelling and songwriting how does it all begin for you when do you pick
00:02:26.840up a guitar and start to go that's tough songwriting for me is i'm not the most disciplined songwriter
00:02:33.620i don't i should be but i struggle with being self-managed and i book myself and i drive the
00:02:43.060vehicle and on and on and on so songwriting happens to come when i have breaks in our lives
00:02:50.480tour schedule and that's tough because i should be writing more often and i should have self-imposed
00:02:57.620deadlines but yeah i was gonna say that jj come on that's good let's get well but i'm making a
00:03:03.020living doing this so put keeping the furnace running and putting food on the table has to
00:03:07.880come first 100 hey before we go any further please hit the subscribe button right now if you
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00:03:24.840paywall all right back to the show and tour and people think touring is a uh you know you get to
00:03:31.160see the world and and i will tell you doing what we've done this summer back and forth across the
00:03:36.280country i've seen more of the holiday inn bureau in my hotel room than i have of almost anything
00:03:42.460and the road ahead of us we sit and do a podcast and off we go it must be much the same what are
00:03:48.040some of the challenges in in being a self-managed canadian uh country singer just what i had already
00:03:53.940said having the time to do what artists are supposed to do i you can't really sit and smell
00:04:01.860the roses and say okay i'm going to write for two hours today because i have to be in the next town
00:04:07.260in order to play my next show or else when i get home off the road then i have to be looking at my
00:04:13.940schedule six to eight months down the road and trying to fill those dates with bookings so
00:04:19.440and then managing social media and all of that you it leaves very little time or i've found
00:04:28.400a very tough i've had a tough time making time to be just an artist i can see that in many places
00:04:36.160in canada with regard to the culture and art that we produce uh there is not this management
00:04:41.900infrastructure anymore that is reasonable to deal with that was the record industry
00:04:45.820right uh pretty much it is dissipated into what now you do which is a self-managed business yeah
00:04:53.260You know, and I kind of think, to some degree, artists are better off because the big machine has gotten off their back a little bit, but then what's left behind is they are the ones that were connected to the live nations, to the tour bookers in other countries and things like that.
00:05:11.540It's a blessing and a curse. I know for a fact that I wouldn't have a career if the music business proper was functioning the way that it used to, because the music business has no use and no need for a 50-year-old artist.
00:05:28.820indie artist right now if you've if you blew up when you're in your 20s and 30s well then you
00:05:35.160you you might have some you might have some rope left but for somebody who's slugging it out in
00:05:42.180as an indie artist gaining fans you know show by show the music industry has no interest in that
00:05:49.100never did and never will and in some respects it's frustrating but on the other hand i've made
00:05:54.500peace with it because I don't consider myself even really in the music business I'm I've created my
00:06:00.940own I've created my own company I've created my own brand I've got people that some people that
00:06:07.080enjoy what I do I focus on them and I try to find more of them you've got kind of a community behind
00:06:13.060you yeah I think so yeah the people who like what I do are pretty loyal yeah and it allows me to be
00:06:20.780able to keep the furnace running and keep food on the table it's not easy but no job's easy
00:06:27.380it's really nice to hear somebody in their 50s still with their focus on music as their career
00:06:33.600because a lot of people are you know you you are jettisoned from that by having to keep the furnace
00:06:41.040on having to feed a new family and suddenly your music career takes a back seat and you're going
00:06:46.440end up doing something else for a living well that's the thing is i made choices over the years
00:06:50.780whether good better or indifferent i never did have my own family in my 20s and 30s i was
00:06:58.900dedicated to living dedicated to this to this career so i some of the choices uh i made those
00:07:07.480choices then and it allows me to you know not have to be necessarily providing for and but in
00:07:16.100later years now in the last i married a wonderful woman and she had a family she has her family
00:07:22.020which has become my family and so i i now have a bunch of grandkids which is probably the you know
00:07:28.060the coolest thing that's happened to me you know i'm a little jealous right now i'm waiting on
00:07:33.320grandkids but you don't mention this to the kids you don't say to them hey we need grandkids
00:07:37.140they just happen to arrive but it i look forward to that element of my life too i think that could
00:07:41.960be inspiration for new music for you as well oh definitely definitely it's uh it's kind of it's a
00:07:48.620unique situation to kind of bypass one step and i was you know i was like okay i don't really have
00:07:55.740my own family and there's you know that's there's definitely uh there may be some regrets to that
00:08:02.500but i managed to i have this family now and it's amazing what uh what has been the best part of
00:08:09.260your career in your mind being able to operate on my own terms i guess that's always uh i won't
00:08:20.480the the term freedom is thrown around for i won't say that i was saying that i i did pretty much the
00:08:27.440way i operated the kind of way my my dad did he didn't necessarily follow the cookie cutter path
00:08:36.100but he operated on his own terms and at the end of the day he was able to sleep you know it's uh
00:08:42.000it's that's actually represented i think in your music in a lot of ways uh you know it's funny the
00:08:49.540message i got from a lot of your songs it's pretty positive like there you don't leave a lot of room
00:08:55.440for negative uh a sad or negative taste in your mouth a lot of country music takes a hard right
00:09:04.100and you end up going down sadness road i notice that you make observations about life that
00:09:09.480all of us can pretty much relate to well and i you know maybe to some degree that was
00:09:16.220intentional in my writing i don't i never want to bitch and complain about something that's my own
00:09:22.440choice um that being said it's not that i don't i complain as much as the next person and there's0.85
00:09:31.260times that it's like this is fucking hard yeah but i made this choice and i continue to do it
00:09:37.700continue to make the choice to to do what i'm doing so i try not to complain too loudly some0.77
00:09:43.940of the newer material that i'm writing excuse me recently might veer into that a little bit more
00:09:50.740there's uh you know there's but i think that's also a human uh emotion and that's a a part of
00:09:59.360the process there's no job there's no career that is that's roses all the way there's trials and
00:10:08.360tribulations and things don't always go the way they're supposed to where do you think country
00:10:13.300music's headed in canada this might be the bad answer but i don't care no you do your own thing
00:10:20.880Yeah, I mean, that's a shitty thing to say, but I, uh, the organization of country music in Canada has never shown any interest in, I've tried when I was younger to get involved and tried to be part of it.
00:10:38.720and at that time i was in my you know mid to late 30s and a little bit heavier and a little bit not
00:10:46.060mtv and they wouldn't the people involved with that couldn't even look me in the eye
00:10:51.640that's pretty wild because i think uh music in general suffers when the image is more important
00:10:58.360than the actual product and we see that in we see that in all kinds of places we see it in film and
00:11:03.580television we see it in music but i think it makes a big difference when a musician is able to
00:11:10.020kind of keep to their own druthers if you will you know because at that point we get creative
00:11:16.420real creative music that represents this culture this place this time yeah and for luck i didn't
00:11:24.240have to or i don't have to create uh music and songs along guidelines that this person is going
00:11:31.740to say okay we can do this or we can't yeah i'm the one that's making those choices and if i'm
00:11:37.700going to put my name behind it then i'm going to put it out to the world and it might be an
00:11:42.620uncomfortable topic or it might not be everybody's soup du jour but if it's in if i feel it's
00:11:48.920important enough to me and if i feel that the song is strong then then i'll get behind it this is
00:11:53.320going to sound uh bad maybe but i'm not sure that i could put 90 minutes up standing up on stage
00:11:59.200with a guitar around my shoulder anymore in my 50s uh that in fact i i like to play i'm terrible
00:12:05.040i like to play i'm good i'm exhausted after three songs to be honest with you it's the stamina that's
00:12:11.080required to do this i think is not just the training but you got to really love what you're
00:12:16.320doing to get up there and and put that physical effort in you gotta want it and you gotta need it
00:12:22.540yeah for sure yeah i mean uh this solo like i play probably 90 of my shows uh solo and it's
00:12:33.400really kind of blossomed since the during the pandemic and since the pandemic wow why is that
00:12:39.620well because the whole live scene changed so drastically then as well and it wasn't just
00:12:47.140the pandemic prior to that too like the club scene died 20 years ago yeah and it used to be
00:12:54.800you know a band would learn some songs go play for a they'll give you you know however much money to
00:13:00.900go play the latest hit songs in the bar get paid and we're professional musicians right and i did
00:13:06.720that throughout my 20s and 30s and i was fresh done with that so in some respects it was good
00:13:13.760it's like i've learned how to basically live off the land so to speak like to
00:13:18.540catch what you kill yeah and so i go i get out there with my guitar all by myself and i've
00:13:26.640learned how to connect with the audience i've used a lot of the tools that i learned when i
00:13:30.840was a touring musician in bands how to relate to an audience how to be entertaining how to
00:13:36.700when you're not necessarily getting a reaction from them organically to coax it out of them
00:13:43.500and then the pandemic hit tore everything down the only path forward was we could play for 30
00:13:51.620people at a time well that's kind of where and I dropped a record the same week that the
00:13:57.340that the pandemic lockdowns happened fantastic time it was
00:14:01.260but in a way it was actually because it gave you this other other means of reaching people
00:14:09.760at a really intimate scenario well i had to yeah i remortgaged my house for an obscene amount of
00:14:17.620money and those payments were coming due right and so what do you do well you have to you could
00:14:23.760sit down and you can take a knee and feel bad about it or feel bad for yourself or you can get
00:14:29.620the hell out there and swim and that's what i had to do and so we went what were those gigs like
00:14:34.480bizarre yeah right but it's still the thing is the people were confused upset being able to that
00:14:44.180having that human connection was that much more important at that time we actually my cd release
00:14:51.860party that was supposed to happen at a venue in regina got canceled obviously and the day before
00:14:57.520we just said well let's go online with this let's throw up a live streaming was a new thing
00:15:03.620we figured out how to do it we i duct taped i didn't even have a tripod we duct taped my cell
00:15:10.780phone to a kind of a makeshift tripod and my drummer and i played through the set list and
00:15:17.200we talked to the audience and we actually because we were on for i think 90 minutes
00:15:23.700the numbers that we showed were actually pretty pretty impressive i think people were really
00:15:30.420looking for humans doing things yeah to make a difference at that very moment you you hit it at
00:15:35.380a moment where humanity was terrified and scared and confused yeah we needed anybody we could to
00:15:42.500hang on to that was human yeah you know what i mean and so did i yeah for sure you know that's
00:15:48.240that's a really good point i mean my my passion for podcasting has always been there since early
00:15:52.940days but it really took off during covid because the people that i was making podcasts for needed
00:15:58.240them more than ever uh the people that were listening to the podcast needed them more than
00:16:02.180ever it just fed itself uh through that tragic moment actually yeah and so that's the thing is
00:16:07.480a person can bitch and complain and we do yeah but it was at that point is like i had to survive
00:16:12.800so we just built and when we could play for more than 30 people we kept building that and we're0.81
00:16:18.140doing backyard private shows all over the place and at a backyard private show has turned out to
00:16:23.800me of my favorite gigs ever because people aren't they're they're not going there to
00:16:30.380get laid they're not going there to get drunk they're not going there to order food so they've
00:16:37.500got if I do my job as an entertainer and as an artist if I connect with them at the end of the
00:16:43.280show they'll come up to the table and buy a t-shirt from me and they've got cash in their
00:16:48.840pocket still and it turned out to be just an absolute godsend we did we did very well at those
00:16:55.020that's really cool that's it that's a great story do we have wildlife chasing us in the woods here
00:17:00.460we got a little uh hello fella he's coming in yeah he wants in on it please please feel free
00:17:06.060to join us he might have been at one of my shows he was yeah i think so you know what if you want
00:17:09.540i noticed you brought your guitar we can play for the animals here actually uh well look i have to
00:17:14.400tell you uh joel and a shout out to joel stewart joel thank you for uh connecting us uh his
00:17:21.880description of you was really beautiful he said here's a guy he is a storyteller yeah he is he
00:17:28.940told me a good story about you uh but the story was very kind and it was it was in line with what
00:17:34.240you're saying here's a guy that is a hard-working musician that will not put down the axe that
00:17:40.040continues sharing first of all because he wants to share and then of course to make a living at it
00:17:49.520you got to be pretty good at what you share and his note was that you know Canada doesn't know
00:17:55.180enough about J.J. Voss I hope this introduces them in a couple of ways in a couple of places
00:18:01.620because I've really enjoyed your music I'm really impressed with the the stamina that you've had
00:18:08.400throughout the career that that your hometown recognizes you even though the
00:18:12.900rest of Canada still has to discover you and and apply those awards you are
00:18:17.960beloved here at home well that's I guess that's a good feeling yeah and it
00:18:22.860should be because you know anybody we mentioned your name to is excited they're
00:18:26.520happy to hear your name that tells me I'm doing my job I guess yeah yeah we're
00:18:31.380actually thinking about taking you on the rest of the journey with us to make
00:18:34.200it easier if you don't mind I'm in all right well look JJ thank you man
00:18:38.340I really appreciate your time and I wish you great success.