CRS 2021 – Q & A With JOSH GALLAGHER

Photo courtesy of Josh Gallagher

You may already be quite familiar with Josh Gallagher. His introduction to the worldwide stage was via NBC’s The Voice in 2016, where he reached the show’s finale. It’s appropriate that Josh landed a spot on that particular television show, because his own voice is one that simply can’t be denied. Like so many of the best male country music vocalists in history, his voice has all the same power and honesty that the genre covets. What makes Josh unique, and we’ve talked with him before, so we know, is his equally honest personality. Make no mistake, this is a guy who likes to have fun and allows himself to be exactly who he is. Just know that when you meet Josh Gallagher, you’ve met him. You often hear the phrase, “the real deal.” From his big as life singing voice and tremendous songwriting abilities, to his “I am who I am” personality, Josh Gallagher is the real deal. I caught up with him during CRS 2021 to see what he’s been up to. Check out our Zoom conversation right here.

Patti McClintic: Hi Josh. It’s been a while since we last talked.

Josh Gallagher: Yeah, hi. I was a minute late, sorry about that.

Patti McClintic: A minute? That’s nothing. No big deal. We can live with that. So, for our friends that are unfamiliar with you, tell us where you’re from, a little of your background, you know, the brief spiel.

Josh Gallagher: Okay, well, my name’s Josh Gallagher. I’m from a small town in Pennsylvania originally, called Crescent, Pennsylvania. I stated playing guitar when I was 10, teaching myself to play, and over the years I played more and more and more. I went to college at Penn State to play baseball for a little bit and just kind of dabbled around with the music as a hobby. I eventually ended up dropping out of school, moved back in with my parents and ended up doing music full-time on the weekends. When I was living with my parents I had a full-time job during the week and was playing music on the weekends. I did that for a few years around the area, and then I was like, “You know what? Screw it. I think I could probably have a pretty good shot at doing this for a living,” so I decided to pick up my girlfriend at the time, she’s my wife now, and move down here to Nashville. That was in 2014, so I’ve been here for several years. I had a little stint on The Voice, Season 11, back in 2016. I made it all the way to the finale and the top four, and ever since then we’ve been off to the races. COVID kind of put a damper on that situation for right now, but that’s happening for everybody.

Video (audio) courtesy of Josh Gallagher and YouTube

Patti McClintic: Yeah, that’s a story I’ve been hearing over and over again, and at least you’re not along in that.

Josh Gallagher: Yeah, I think it would feel way worse if something different happened to everyone individually, but we’re all in the same boat here. At least we’re ridin’ the storm out together (laughs). Of course, we also have this other storm goin’ on here. (The Nashville weather was highly unseasonable, with snow, ice and very cold temperatures that day.)

Patti McClintic: I know! I moved south to get away from this stuff and here it is.

Josh Gallagher: I know, we’re supposed to get hit again this afternoon. Everybody’s freakin’ out and buyin’ all the bread and milk. I’m like, “What? I need to go to the beer store.” People are like, “Why?” I look at ’em like, “Because there’s a storm comin’.” (Laughs)

Patti McClintic: (Laughs) Right? Beer store, the steak store, you know, get some good stuff. You don’t want to be eating French toast if you’re stuck inside.

Josh Gallagher: No, I don’t want to be eating French toast and eggs and drinking a gallon of milk. Get some beer. I see a snowstorm coming and it makes me wanna party. Everybody else wants to get shut in. (Laughs)

Patti McClintic: I want to eat pizza or chips, you know, good stuff, but that’s just me. So, I watched your video for “Get Lost,” that’s fun. I wanna get lost right now. Don’t we all? Is that the most recent thing you’ve put out, because it looks like it is.

Josh Gallagher: Yeah, that’s my current single and we’re still pushin’ and promotin’ that. We’re trying to push the video as much as we can, but that video shoot was really fun though. We shot it at my video guy’s old studio. He’s actually in the next room here, he’s staying with us until he can move into his new apartment, but we shot that video at his old studio on all green screen. That’s the first time, as far as video, that I’ve ever shot anything on all green screen.

Patti McClintic: Oh, that’s cool. Was it awkward? Did it feel awkward shooting on green screen? Or were you a natural?

Josh Gallagher: I was au naturel, uh… (laughs)

Patti McClintic: (Laughs) Well, I must have seen the G-rated version because you didn’t look very au naturel to me.

Josh Gallagher: (Laughs) Yeah, right, we kept it pretty G-rated. Yeah, it was pretty easy actually. It was cool doing it on the green screen, because like I said, I had never shot a music video on a green screen, but we really didn’t have a choice. The green screen was my idea because normally when we shoot music videos, we go scout for locations, and because of the whole COVID thing we couldn’t go scout any locations that we really wanted to shoot at. So, I was like, “Why don’t we just do everything on green screen and we make the video more of me and my wife’s personality?” The song, “Get Lost,” it’s not necessarily about me and her, but it’s more about how we love to get outdoors and kind of get away from all the craziness and technology for a little bit. So, it wasn’t necessarily about us, it was more a date song that everybody can relate to. Even if just sittin’ on a porch and havin’ a drink is your idea of getting lost, great. So, our personalities are kind of quirky and we’re not too serious, so I thought it would be funny to do a video on green screen where we’re getting chased by a buffalo and we’re hiking and she pushes me off a cliff, stuff like that. (Laughs)

Patti McClintic: Oh, yeah, that’s definitely fun and you can’t do that in real life. Clearly that would be a little dangerous.

Josh Gallagher: No, you couldn’t, but it was pretty easy though. We set everything up in his old office and had the green screen stretched out on a 15 or 20 foot wall, so we had a whole wall of green screen. We had green screen all over the floor so we didn’t have to see the floor. Then we just went to the corner store, grabbed a case of beer, came back and started shootin’ a video. (Laughs)

Video courtesy of Josh Gallagher and YouTube

Patti McClintic: I love that. That’s just as redneck as it gets. You made a cool, redneck video. That rocks. That’s country. I don’t care what anyone says. So, what’s next? What do you have cookin’?

Josh Gallagher: So, we have music coming out all of this year actually. I’ve never released a single a month, so, I’ve never released a single every four weeks for a whole entire year, but that’s our plan as of right now. We’ve got new music coming out in, we’ll just say, April. I can’t give you a specific date because we haven’t announced it yet, but we’ve got new music coming out in April, and then from there on, for the rest of the year and into the fall, we’re gonna be releasing singles every four weeks, except for June and July when we’ll release three summer singles. Then what we’re gonna do is pair up all those singles that were released from April to September, pair all those up with the rest of a five-song EP, for a full, ten song record. The first full record that I’ve ever put out, so that’s our plan as of right now.

Josh Gallagher: For music, as far as touring and stuff like that, I don’t know. (Laughs) We’ve got the music part figured out though. I’m pretty excited about it because there’s three things going on with this campaign I’ve never done. One, releasing a song a month. Two, releasing three summer singles over June and July. Three, having a full-length record coming out at the end of the year. So, I’m pretty excited. I pitched this idea to Kore PR and Burning Ground, my publicist and artist rep, and they were like, “It’s crazy, but we love it!” So, I was like, “Alright, let’s figure out how to do it.” (Laughs)

Patti McClintic: If it’s crazy, that means it’s usually good because there’s some enthusiasm behind it. You know, you’ve gotta have that. You’ve gotta have some fire!

Josh Gallagher: Yeah, you do, and I just got my first reference mix back on the first single that’s comin’ out in April, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s gonna love it.

Patti McClintic: Can you give us a little? Is it upbeat or is it a ballad? Or is it midtempo?

Josh Gallagher: It’s slow, it’s a ballad, but it’s really, really big. It’s not like “Stairway to Heaven,” where it builds, it’s just kinda big right off the bat, straight across. You know, it’s something different that I’ve never put out before.

Patti McClintic: It’s a badass ballad.

Josh Gallagher: Yeah. It’s a little darker as far as the production of the song goes, but the melody is kind of sweet and bright. So, it’s this sweet, bright melody over the top of this kind of dark, sinister guitar tone, and things like that. I love it. I’ve gotta be honest with you, it’s a little “Eric Church-y.”

Patti McClintic: That doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all.

Josh Gallagher: No, not at all.

Photo courtesy of Josh Gallagher

Patti McClintic: Definitely looking forward to that. What else in the livestream world? Are you gonna be doing any of those?

Josh Gallagher: I don’t know because we haven’t talked about that. So, what we’re doing right now is we’re pushing our fan club which is called Camo Crew and we’re pushing Community really hard. So, Community is a texting platform that all my fans, even you, can get on, and literally, we can just text back and forth all day long. That’s how I’ve been keepin’ up with my fans recently.

Patti McClintic: Let me ask you, is it really you?

Josh Gallagher: Oh yeah, yeah.

Patti McClintic: You know, because sometimes you get the ones like, “Text Dan + Shay,” and really you’re texting Dan + Shay’s intern.

Josh Gallagher: No, it’s my actual number and anybody can text me anytime. So, we’ve been pushing Community and Camo Crew hard. The reason we’ve been pushing Camo Crew hard is because we’re trying to get our fan club built so we can do some more exclusive livestream stuff for Camo Crew members only. It’s a little bit more exclusive instead of just doing a regular Facebook or YouTube live or anything like that. You can sign up for Camo Crew on my link on my Instagram page. My Community number is 615-205-6760.

Patti McClintic: We’ll all be drunk texting you now, just so you know.

Josh Gallagher: I text the best when I’m drunk texting!

Patti McClintic: I just asked my husband earlier if it was too early to start day drinking and he said no. I told him I really shouldn’t yet because I still had more interviews and I’d screw something up if I did, so if you get a drunk text from me later, you’ll understand why.

Josh Gallagher: If by “screw something up,” you mean make it more fun, then go for it.

Patti McClintic: Probably. I’m just walking chaos, you know?

Josh Gallagher: I love it. Sounds like we need to party together then.

Patti McClintic: We do. I’ll bring my husband too, because he’d enjoy your deer up there (he had a deer head mount on the wall behind him).

Josh Gallagher: Oh, for sure. What you can’t see is my bow and all my huntin’ gear behind me.

Patti McClintic: Yeah, you should be friends. So, next I have this box of random questions called a Chat Pack. I’m just going to select one and ask you.

Josh Gallagher: This is gonna be fun. Let’s go. Rapid fire.

(I actually pulled a card that I had already asked someone else. That was hard to believe as the box has hundreds of questions in it. I pulled another card.)

Patti McClintic: The card says, “If you had to be of a different ethnicity than you actually are, of which heritage would you most like to belong?”

Josh Gallagher: Ooh… that’s a tough one. So, a little backstory. I took four years of German in high school, and I got a degree, no, why would I say that? I don’t have a degree in anything, maybe stupidity. (Laughs) I got an award from the State of Pennsylvania because I did so well in German class. I’ve always wanted to go to Germany and I’ve always loved their culture and their heritage, so probably German. (Laughs) That sounds terrible now that I’m thinkin’ about it, but I just think there’s something cool about it.

Patti McClintic: Well, it’s not like you’re saying you want to belong to the Nazi party, you’re just saying you would like to be German.

Josh Gallagher: No! Right.

Patti McClintic: You just want to go to Germany and wear lederhosen and drink a lot of beer.

Josh Gallagher: I don’t wanna wear lederhosen, but I do wanna go to Oktoberfest really bad. I would love to play a show in Germany, that would be awesome.

Patti McClintic: I’ve never been there but I’ve heard it’s a fabulous place to be. I think you should go play a show there.

Josh Gallagher: And invite you.

Patti McClintic: Absolutely. Then you can channel your inner German.

Josh Gallagher: I’m down with that.

Patti McClintic: Finally, because we are Think Country, what do you think when you “Think Country?”

Josh Gallagher: I think beers, woods, slingin’ mud, tearin’ up some cornfields and gettin’ in trouble for it. No, I just think… man, I love it. It’s kind of a similar question to what I’ve got in the past, but I just love the country music community and how open they are to different genres and mixed genres and things like that. I’m proud to be part of the country music business and the country music industry. I also thought at one point, “Man, if this country thing doesn’t work out, I’m definitely gonna turn my band into a rock band also.”

Patti McClintic: You definitely could, I don’t see why not. Or just mix the two together, get your Slayer on while you’re slingin’ your mud.

Josh Gallagher: I’m down. That’s why I play Gibsons and all that other stuff. I have a Dimebag Darrell guitar from Pantera.

Patti McClintic: Well, then you can absolutely get your rock and your metal and your thrashin’ on. If this country gig doesn’t work, you do have a plan B.

Josh Gallagher: We’ve got a fall back.

Patti McClintic: You always should! It’s been such a pleasure talking to you and we will talk again.

Josh Gallagher: Yes, we will and I appreciate you having me on. It was good to see you.

As it turned out, I did end up running into Josh at a songwriter show shortly after this interview took place. As to where you can find him, do check out the links listed below. If you leave him a comment on his socials, do tell him Think Country sent you.

For more news, interviews, reviews and features that always bring country closer, please visit http://thinkcountrymusic.com