By Ruth Moon
At 32, country music star Josh Turner has already made it by most people’s standards.
The singer/songwriter has sold more than 4 million albums, produced three multi-week No. 1 hits — “Your Man,” “Would You Go With Me” and a single from his latest album, “Why Don’t We Just Dance” — but Turner isn’t done yet.
“My ultimate goal is the Country Music Hall of Fame,” Turner said. “I have a lot of years ahead of me that I need to work, and there’s a lot of things I want to accomplish.”
Luckily for Colorado Springs residents, the artist’s list of things to accomplish includes a concert stop at the Pikes Peak Center today, where fans will be able to hear the gravelly voiced musician live.
Turner said he’s looking forward to playing here (and he insists he doesn’t say that about every city he visits).
“There’s a lot of great country music fans out there,” he said of Colorado. “It’s a beautiful area; we just always have a great time playing out there.”
Despite the star’s success in the music biz, he still seems down-to-earth as he jokes about the challenges of turning stories into songs and talks about coping with tough times through his music.
Question: How did you get into music as a career?
Answer: It all started when I met a small publisher here in town (Nashville) named Jody Williams, and he gave me a publishing deal and took me around to MCA Records. … I played three songs and they decided to sign me, and next year will be 10 years that I’ve been signed there.
Q: I’m always curious when I talk to musicians about how you go about writing songs and how that process works for you.
A: I’m still trying to figure that out. Songwriting is something that’s not easy, I don’t care what anybody says. You really have to put yourself in a place to allow yourself to be inspired or to be moved by an idea or a story. … I’ve had a lot of songs just seem like they write themselves, like they need to come out and you just write the words down on paper and they just keep going and everything fits. It’s a great feeling.
That’s the best possible scenario, where songs pretty much write themselves. But then there are other songs that you have to work at a little bit. There are songs I’ve written in the past that I believed in, but they just didn’t come easy, so I just had to keep working at them. Finally, they came together, and I’m glad I stuck it out.
Q: How do you know when a song is done, when it’s finished?
A: It’s just an inner feeling, an inner thought formation. You feel when it’s done. It’s hard to describe, but you can just tell. It’s kind of like when you’re cleaning the house. You could keep going for another couple of hours, but you know when that time has come to quit cleaning. You know what I mean? That’s kind of the way it is with a song. You could keep working at it if you wanted to, but you’d probably be wasting your time or probably be screwing it up or whatever. You just kind of know when there’s nothing more that needs to be done with it.
Q: What’s your favorite song you haven’t written or performed or recorded?
A: This song that I’m about to tell you is a song that I never answered this question with. And it’s not so much something that I would record myself, but as far as melody and the craft of lyrics and chord progressions and just artistic ingredients … I heard this song again last night, and it’s a song called “Misery and Gin.” When I was sitting there listening to this song, it just made me realize just how great of a song it was. It kinda gave life to heartache and pain, and, like I say, the melody and the chord progressions — it just all felt so natural. It’s just a good song to use as an example of how to tell a story.
Q: “Why Don’t We Just Dance” has been a hit for four weeks, and one review I read said you were attracted to the song’s ability to create an escapist, happy mood in the middle of difficult times.
A: I think music in general has been a form of escapism for people for a long, long time. Dating back to the dawn of time, I think people have used music to express themselves; they’ve used it to communicate with each other, but they’ve also used it to take their mind off the troubles they’re going through.
So “Why Don’t We Just Dance” is definitely one of those songs that brings people together; it makes people want to dance together, it makes people want to talk about the important things in life and forget about all the bad stuff going on in the world.
Q: What is your goal in music? You said you want people to talk about the important issues — in your music, what are you trying to get people to think?
A: I never want people to feel worse about themselves or their life after they listen to a Josh Turner record. I want them to listen to my record and say, “You know what, life isn’t so bad, after all. And I just need to look on the bright side of things, and this song really makes me feel good, and you know, I need to dance. I need to quit worrying about all this other stuff and just concentrate on the good things in life.”
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Original story posted here.
Ruth Moon 