I ’ m Josh Newton . I play drums with Below Sea Level Soul . I ’ ve been playing for 16 years now , since I was ten years old . My first exposure to music was through the church and my family . My grandmother was a wonderful singer and had a piano in the house . As a child , I would mess around on the piano while she improvised with her voice . When I entered middle school , I joined the concert band as a percussionist ; as I recall , I really wanted to play xylophone . However , when I got my hands on the snare and bass drum , I knew what I was really going to focus on .
One of the other major early influences was hip-hop . Most of my friends were hip-hop heads , and many of them were half decent at freestyling . I was never any good at it , but I could beatbox , so I spent a lot of time laying down beats while my friends went off . Meanwhile , I got my first drumset on my eleventh birthday . At the time , I didn ’ t really have anyone to play with , so I would sit in the basement and play along with recordings . That was how the first seven years of my musical career proceeded .
I joined my first rock band as a senior for the high school talent show , and for the first time , I was making music with others with room for creativity . I was no longer reading every note off a sheet of paper . We played a lot of classic rock covers , but we composed a few originals and made the other tunes our own . That was the first point where my appreciation for being a musician grew into love , and I just went with it . Since then , I ’ ve picked up numerous percussion instruments from different cultures around the world , played so many different genres of music , from rock , blues , funk , jazz , to Cuban Rumba , Indian classical , Brazilian samba , etc . I ’ ve played in bars , large venues , music festivals , recording studios and street corners . I ’ ve been a homeless traveler playing for food money , a starving artist trying to get noticed , a financially thriving street musician , and many places in between .
I started playing with Below Sea Level back in May of this year . I had been playing with a brass band , but the bandleader and several of the musicians left town for the summer , leaving me with no one to play with . The next weekend , I rode my back down Royal St . and found Percy , Bryan , and Birat playing in front of Rouses . I approached them and asked if they needed a drummer . They said yes , I biked back home , hooked up my trailer , brought the drums down , and the rest is history .
t ’ s really hard to say where we ’ ll be in five years . I ’ m also a community activist , and have a startup non-profit ( Pyrogene Productions ) whose goal is to use the availability of recording equipment and software with the social power of the Internet to cut the industry middlemen out of our livelihood as musicians . I hope that Below Sea Level Soul will be at the center of this larger process of renegotiating musicians ’ relationship with the music industry at large . As it stands , musicians are being cheated , deceived , and thrown to the wayside , and my ambition is to catalyze a smarter and more sustainable business paradigm and a stronger relationship with the communities we exist in . Right now , we ’ re making all our money off of tourists , but I ’ d like to see us connecting with locals , partnering with our many peers in this vibrant music city , and using our influence to lend support to communities in need . Regardless of how it turns out , we will be bringing the soul and healing to anyone within earshot .
October 2016