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 Estes, bassist for southern blues/rock band Magnolia Bayou!
How have you been doing during the pandemic and how are you spending your time? Have you been working on new music?
I’ve been doing pretty good during the pandemic despite not being able to play music in public. Trying to stay busy while off the road has been easier than I expected, from spending a lot of time with family that I haven’t seen so much lately to working on new music. Now I’m just waiting to start playing shows again to really bring them to life.
5 albums that changed your life
Harvest Moon, Neil Young
Traveler, Chris Stapleton
Led Zeppelin II
Stadium Arcadium, Red Hot Chili Peppers
Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
5 artists that influenced you as a musician.
John Deacon, Queen
Flea, Red Hot Chili Peppers
John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin
Joe Dart, vulfpeck
Chris Stapleton
Your 5 favorite live albums
Where the light is, John Mayor
MTV Unplugged in New York, Nirvana
At Folsom Prison, Jonny Cash
If You Want Blood You’ve Got It, AC/DC
Life on the road; 5 of your craziest/funniest/scariest tour stories
One of the craziest experience I’ve had was heading out west for the first time with a van we got 2 weeks prior. We had an 30 hour drive ahead of us to Idaho and before we made it out of Mississippi our van started missfiring. I remember climbing up the Arkansas and Missouri as if we weren’t gonna make it in this van. Somehow we drove all 60 hours there and back in with. It was a real eye opener trip for all of us I would say.
One of my greatest fears of being on the road is the van breaking down. Especially since it hasn’t happened yet. I remember driving up to Vermont and on the way up our brakes started shaking so bad that it broke off a rubber shock absorber. We would pull off to fill up and I would climb under the van to cram ducktape where the rubber was just to soften the metal to metal action we hand going on under our van. Going down a hill at seventy with all our gear piled up to ceiling and every time you hit the breaks it felt like the van was falling apart was the most scared I have been on tour.
Your 5 favorite movies
Jurassic Park
Back to the future
Silence of the lambs
Dances with wolves
Apocalypto
Download/Stream “Sweet Magnolia”: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/magnoliabayou/sweet-magnolia
