Josh Eagle on his road from The Comet to California and back to Ohio

From Baba Budan’s in his college days, to New York, and then to California, Cincinnati native Josh Eagle has been an influential troubadour from ocean to ocean.

Quickly evolving from cover tunes to a ruminant songwriter and bandleader, he releases his fifth studio album this month, entitled “Let’s Just Make Something Beautiful." Eagle has found himself in Columbus, sober and sound, and shared his experiences with me during a recent chat.

Here’s what he had to say.

Q: What were your early influences?

Josh Eagle: There was music in my house all the time. My dad's a very musical guy, always singing kid songs with us. And my mom’s grandfather owned a guitar shop right next to Ronstadt's Hardware – Linda Ronstadt's family in Tucson, Arizona.

We had a five-disc CD changer. I remember thinking, "This is the height of luxury," and being from a poor middle class family, "We've made it." I remember grabbing "Abbey Road" and looking at the four guys on the cover. "Why does that guy not have shoes on?" It was a lot of Beatles, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton. My dad played in a church band, so a lot of hymns.

My mom owned a consignment shop in Cincinnati. People would drop off instruments to sell and she would bring them home. Before we knew it, we had a music room with a bunch of half working instruments, out of tune accordions, guitars, a little upright piano. One day she brought home a baby grand piano. We had nowhere to put it.

Do you remember the time you made the decision to make music?

I was always a sensitive person. I never really excelled in school, and never really felt connected to anything except the outdoors and nature and feeling a breeze. I picked up a Beatles book in that music room and I played. "Yellow Submarine" was the first song that I learned. "If I can do this, then I can play a Dave Matthews song. Then I can play Van Morrison."

I started writing my own songs when I was 17. I remember thinking this is my thing. This is where I feel comfortable in my skin. From there, playing in bars in college – people are paying me $200 to sit here and belt out songs. I was amazed that I could make a living. You don't need much money when you're living with five guys in a gritty drinker's house in Clifton.

What were your favorite places to play in college?

I played at Baba Budan's (now Clifton Heights Tavern). I played at Max's Pizza – when I was just doing cover songs. Then I put a band together and wrote original material. Americana, roots, rock and roll. I remember thinking how great it was that The Comet wanted us to play original stuff. Then you're playing Northside Tavern and Southgate House. Those spots will always hold a deep special spot in my heart because they believed in me.

You live in Columbus now, but have been across the country. What took you to New York and then California? How did those places inform your songwriting?

New York is the greatest city in the world. You can pop out of any subway stop and you're in a new world. You could live there for 30 years and it would be like that. It's constant streams of discovery. If you can't be inspired by New York, you can't be inspired anywhere. It's America at its core. It's dirty, gritty and it's hard.

For a sensitive guy, for a lot of people, the first year in New York is difficult. I got with some amazing people, but I also surrounded myself with the underbelly. There are stories in the underbelly. There's more hardship in after-hours places in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the Upper West Side. It took me to a dark place. But if I didn't have New York, I would have never gotten to the dark night of the soul, and then been able to recover from that, learning more about myself along the way.

I needed to clean up my act. Not to say I did that right afterwards. I didn't get healthy until I came back to Ohio two and a half years ago. I carried those problems with me to the Grass Valley, Nevada City area. If you're not taking care of your problems, you're still going to carry them. California got me reconnected with nature. "My Little Town" is about the Yuba (River), and being where you feel comfortable, and connected to my idea of God.

What brought you back to Ohio?

It's called a location switch. Addicts will be like, "This place is bringing me down, I've got to go." But really, the problem was you. Wherever you go, there you are. Going out to California, I could be closer to my mother. My grandpa was dying. She was taking care of him. My grandma was dying. When they passed, I decided to really nip this sobriety thing and take some actual action. I knew staying there was going to be hard because my friends were in the same stuff.

Starting fresh would be important. My nieces weren't getting any younger and I wanted to be near them. I get to hop to Cincinnati if I want to see them. But I knew getting back to Ohio, it was going to be important to get healthy.

What's your songwriting process?

It usually starts with a guitar. I'll fiddle around with a lick, or a riff, or a chord structure. I never consciously sit down like, "I'm going to write a song about how upset I am about X, Y, Z." Whatever's in my subconscious comes out naturally. I follow my intuition. It has to feel right. So I'll sit with songs sometimes for years. “Oceans” is something I wrote when I moved to California around 2000. Now it's released in 2024. There were about 30 songs that I chose for the album, and I just narrowed it down naturally.

Until this album I’d never done production work before. Tommy Cappel, the bass player in my band, The Harvest City, would sit in the Batman chair. He understood how to mix things, how to record things. We would stand behind him and throw out ideas. There's a studio here in Columbus, Cowboy Studio, in an old garage. My friend Nick Kurth from The High Definitions and Angela Perley, Ryan Paradise, they'd pop in and add to the songs when they had time.

Who else helped you with the post-production?

I recorded everything here at the home studio, then I called up Mike Montgomery. He's legendary – patient, kind, and willing to share his knowledge. I listened to his mix and it sounded exactly the same, but better. That's the science behind mixing. Isaac Karns did a killer job mastering. When you find people that you can trust and learn from it's a beautiful experience.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Josh Eagle talks songwriting and more before release of new album