The follow up to Awful Feeling, singer/songwriter and guitarist Josiah Flores’ debut EP, is Doin’ Fine. “I have an ironic sense of humor,” Flores said. “Doin’ Fine is a witty improvement on the title of my EP. When I was young, my momma told me, ‘At some point, you have to laugh at the pain.’ That stuck with me. It weaves itself into my songwriting and the titles of my records.”
Now based in San Francisco, Flores grew up in an evangelical congregation. “That’s how I started playing music and performing,” he said. “I was in the church youth group band. I was a worship leader. That taught me how to lead a band and understand all the nonverbal communication that goes on when you’re playing. I’m not religious anymore, but that experience made me start writing my own songs and poems.”
He began performing at open mics, interspacing his songs and a few covers with his poems. “I played backyard shows and house concerts and met Andrés Miguel Cervantes and other people on the scene,” Flores said. “Andrés played the same blend of country and folk music that I loved.”
Norteño accordion player Flaco Jimenez, ranchero singer Vicente Fernandez and Woody Guthrie, along with Johnny Cash, George Straight and Blaze Foley—a friend of Townes Van Zandt—all influenced Flores. “I loved the storytelling and the heartbreak in the songs they sang, so I was drawn to that style of music,” Flores said.
As Flores developed his stage presence, his friend Sami Perez, of the She’s and Harry the Nightgown, offered him time at San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone Studios and produced Awful Feeling.
“I didn’t know how recording worked and I was broke, so we did eight songs in one day, a lot of them single takes,” Flores said. “After that, I kept playing as a solo act and writing songs. My roommate, Esther Gonzales, was a dobro player. We’d sit in our kitchen and play songs. She said we should start a band, so we looked around for some friends and put a group together.”
After playing their first post-pandemic show Alicia Vanden Heuval, owner of Speakeasy Studios and head of Speakeasy Records, approached the band about making an album.
“This time we had more than a year to work on things,” Flores said. “We layered up the instruments on an analogue tape 8-track machine. We let things simmer and happen when they were supposed to happen. Our society has a press to get things out as soon as possible. It takes effort to have patience and let things evolve the way they should. On the quieter songs, you can hear the hiss of the tape, which is really soothing.”
The songs on Doin’ Fine blend country, folk, honky-tonk and more. “La Lucha” echoes Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty,” with a description of the hard life of migrant farm workers. Flores sings softly, backed by acoustic guitar and quiet, sustained notes from Esther Gonzales on lap steel.
“It’s an homage to my grandparents and what they went through, traveling around the country, doing backbreaking work, building the economy we all enjoy today,” Flores said.
“Young, Dumb, & Full of Beer,” a country drinking song that echoes the hits of the ’40s and ’50s, describes a guy trashing his relationship. Dylan Edrich adds to the doleful ambience with his desolate fiddle, as Gonzales sprinkles sonic teardrops onto Flores’ maudlin vocal with her Dobro.
Flores plays a distorted lead on electric guitar to open “Southside,” a honky-tonk rocker describing the San Jose neighborhood he grew up in. Organ player Ainsley Wagoner adds her harmonies to the chorus.
Soon, Flores and the band will head out to tour the West Coast. He’ll also work on making videos for some of the songs on the album. “A lot of venues want to see video content, so I’m a musician, video editor and something of a social media wiz, but that’s the way the game is played right now,” Flores said. “It’s exhausting, but it’s worth it.”
Flores and his band will play a record-release show on Thursday, May 29, at 6:30pm at the Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., San Francisco; makeoutroom.com. For more info visit: josiahflores.bandcamp.com.
