THE LOCKDOWN LOWDOWN ~ IVORY LAKE

Live music and touring have been on lockdown and fans as well as artists are going through withdrawals. We wanted to come up with something fun to help bridge that distance between fans and artists right now. What we came up with is something called The Lockdown Lowdown and it’s a Q&A session with fun questions for artists to answer. They’re not your typical interview questions, so it gives you a peek inside of the artists themselves. We’re big music nerds here at I’m Music Magazine and we love learning things like this about the artists that we love. We’re pretty sure that you’ll get a kick out of these, so we hope you’ll take the time to read them. In this installment, we sat down for a fun Q&A session with Josh Watts of Ivory Lake.

1. How have you been doing during the pandemic and how are you spending your time?

I’ve been coping pretty well all things considered, I have struggled all my life with panic attacks and other mental Heath issues, so obviously this situation we find ourselves in doesn’t exactly help, but everyone is struggling in their own way.

My kids and I caught covid late last year so since having it and kicking it we have all been feeling a little more relaxed. As for how I have been spending my time I have been creating a lot, seems to be the only way I can keep myself focused and feeling productive and it always has been for as long as I can remember. If I wasn’t making something, I would feel lost. I also have a 4 year old boy and a 2 year old girl at home so they tend to keep me occupied most of the time with either wrestling matches, make overs, or trying to get them to eat my terrible cooking.

2. Have you been working on new music?

I have been working on tons of new music throughout the pandemic, I think being at home 24/7 really has given me time to work on my songwriting and be able to take it into a more engaging ,interesting place. Playing with different genres and being able to watch an idea come together into a full song is really something magical to me and it always will be, there are just endless combinations to play with it’s just a shame we haven’t been able to get into the studio and put it down until now.

3. 5 albums that changed your life

Rumours

A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

The Black Album

Pet Sounds

Sempiternal

4. 5 artists that influenced you as a musician.

Matt Healy

Brian Wilson

Father John Misty

Phoebe Bridgers

Lindsey Buckingham

5. Your 5 favorite live albums

Bob Marley and The Wailers live

The 1975 Natty Dread tour

The 1975 live @ the 02

Fleetwood Mac live 1980

S&M

Nirvana MTV Unplugged

6. Life on the road; 5 of the craziest/funniest/scariest tour stories

We once accidentally broke into an Italian woman’s home whilst touring in Milan, we put our washing in her machine which we believed to be part of the venue, and we overloaded and broke it we came back an hour later and found her angrily throwing our clothes over her wall.

On that tour our keyboard player also used to play bagpipes on the campsite at midnight which I’m sure all the elderly residents loved. I also got lost for 4 hours walking on foot in Norway in -15 freezing cold weather that shook me up a bit.

Also, whilst playing a show in London with Geoff Tate our keyboard player proceeded to walk around the venue all day with a massive dildo stuck to his head. We also had a weird experience whilst playing in New York we noticed half way through the show that a nice lady was pleasuring her self viciously during our set witch was unsettling in a way.