Words: Izzi Glover
Photography: Luke Brennan
Who doesn’t love a cosy Winter time performance at Rough Trade, Nottingham, under the neon lights with the signatures of your favourite bands all around you?
Dizzy Magazine sat down with Josie Beth at her first ever headline performance in the Rough Trade green room ahead of her set. Despite her being “super stressed out”, she still had the time to tell us all about her show and her new EP, Alone In A Crowded Room.
Josie’s hometown is Essex, and I wanted to know why she feels so connected to Nottingham, and chose the Midlands city to be her first headline show.
“I love it. I went to uni here.”
University of Nottingham, not Nottingham Trent, like me. Poor.
“The music scene is very welcoming. It’s very vibrant and there’s always lots going on and lots of support. It’s a very active community.”
Nottingham certainly is one of the best for the music scene, and it welcomes you with open arms, Josie.
Josie’s new EP, Alone In A Crowded Room, came out 22nd November.
“It’s experimental Josie Beth season,” and it shows in the new EP.
She went on to explain that all of the songs are so different from each other, not just sound wise, but in their stories and meanings.
“One of the songs is about buying a new guitar and feeling sad for the old guitar [...] It’s very wholesome.”
I can confirm it is indeed very wholesome, and very relatable to a lot of people, I’m sure.
The EP plays around a lot with different genres and sounds.
“The inspiration is just the experience of life [...] I’ve been going with what feels good rather than going for a certain sound.”
We both agreed you just need to make music you would listen to, as a musician, and that’s the right way to do it.
Josie recently made a song for a Christmas advert for Colchester Zoo, and Dizzy Magazine was very eager to find out what this entailed.
“It was very random; I was not expecting it,” she remarked.
“It’s usually like ‘Oh you’ve got emotions? Write about them.’ But this was very ‘Write about trying to find Santa Claus in the snow.’”
Quite a bit different.
However, no challenge is too great for Josie Beth. She explained how she overcame the difficulty of writing toward a brief. Whittling it down to ‘searching for a person’, and relating it back to her own life, she managed to write the whole song in a day. Impressive.
One thing Dizzy Magazine noticed is that Josie had some new merch on the table downstairs, designed by Dizzy’s own: Luke Brennan.
We spoke about how odd it is to have totes and stickers with your own name on them and to see people buying them, feels proper and real.
Speaking of being a proper musician, this was Josie’s first ever headline show. And what a place to do it: Rough Trade, Nottingham.
“As soon as I start playing, I’ll be like: ‘all of the hard work is done and I can just enjoy it now’”
Next venue on the list for Josie is The Bodega. You can’t go wrong with a “good old Bodega gig”, can you?
And in her own words, here’s why you should go see Josie Beth live in concert: “I like writing songs that connect with people. I love music and if you love music too, might as well share it together.”
You heard her.
You can listen to Josie Beth’s new EP here.
