Josh

Biography

Teenage singer-guitarist Josh Taerk writes songs because it helps him cope. It puts life in perspective like nothing else has been able to do for him, and, in turn, puts life in perspective for others.

“I try to put in a tangible form all of these little life lessons that get thrown my way so that I can understand them,” explains the 18-year-old Toronto native. “But as I started playing them live, I realized that other people go through the same stuff. My hope is that when they listen to my songs they know that somebody else went through it and they can relate.”

Despite his young age, Josh’s mature voice and songwriting skills appeal to a broad demographic from his peers to those twice or even triple his years. This is no fly-by-night teen pop act. His songs are folk-country offerings that deal with heartbreak, commitment, uncertainty, clarity, stress, all the things that stop and start our path of happiness and make you stronger.

“A lot of the bands that I listen to, and a lot of the songs that I really hold close as my favorite songs and my inspirational songs, are the ones that have a lot of meaning and ones with incredible writing,” says Josh of why he is drawn to the singer-songwriter style. “I listen to a lot of Springsteen music. He’s incredible at taking these stories and turning them into something that anyone can understand.”

Josh aims for the same thing. Produced by award-winning producer Terry Brown (Rush, Blue Rodeo, Cutting Crew), his songs range from the intended fairytale, “Virginia,” that turns into a farewell to an unhappy girl “slumming around like a street dog” to “Casey,” about a girl who is right for him, but “our time hasn’t come just yet.”

Josh started playing guitar five years ago after his saw a bar mitzvah band break into Nirvana covers. “This was the first time that I’d ever heard anything like that. At that point, I just went ‘Okay, I want to learn how to play guitar,’” says Josh, who grew up listening to his parents classic rock albums until he got into a misguided boy band stage in his pre-teens.

He played guitar for a couple of years, but had only got as far as rhythm. One day, during his summer job as a counselor at camp, he knew that for anyone to understand what song he was playing, he would have to sing the melody, since he couldn’t play lead guitar. That’s when he sang for the first time. “Before that, it didn’t even cross my mind,” Josh says.

After taking vocals lessons for a couple of years and continuing to play guitar, he started writing his own songs. “I had a love for music ever since I was a kid and even though at that time I wasn’t really paying attention, I think after years of listening to songs and how they worked, I got the idea of how they were structured. But writing my first song, I went with it,” says Josh. “I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing.”

That song is “Smell The Roses” and is on his forthcoming debut. “I was at a friend’s house at 11 at night, sitting at his computer listening to some band. I picked up his acoustic and played a couple of chords. I had words running through my head. I started singing some of the words and lines and got home around 1 and by the next morning I had a complete song,” Josh remembers. “It’s about me trying to figure out what I want out of life and what I want to do.”

And what he wants to do is music. He met Terry Brown through a friend of the family and has been working with the producer/arranger on his first album. “He told me my songs are really great and that I can go far,” says Josh of Terry. He says he can see this being an incredible record, but it was more that he would back up those comments with treating me like he would any artist and allowing me to have input into my finished product.”

Josh, an English major at the University of Toronto, is now dedicated to music as a career. “I want to be a rock star,” he says, “but not in the way that I want to make tons of money and live in expensive homes. I want to be a rock star in that I want to be able to say what I want to say in a way that I know people will be listening. I want to play music so that my message touches as many people as it can.”