Review: Josiah and the Bonnevilles at The Grey Eagle
In fall 2022, Spotify’s algorithm convinced me to listen to Josiah and the Bonnevilles’ “I Used to Fall in Love Without Drinkin’.” With its evocative lyrics and wry pathos, the song reminded me of my beloved John Prine’s music enough for me to put it on my seasonal playlist.
But it was the group’s next song that Spotify recommended I listen to that turned me into a fan. “I Am Appalachia” is an expression of love for a place, as well as a war cry of self-awareness. And when Josiah Leming, the one-man band that is Josiah and the Bonnevilles, played it near the end of his set at The Grey Eagle on April 2, it was perfectly timed.
Up to that point in the evening, Leming had taken the audience on a musical journey that closely mimicked the story of his life. He opened the show with “Back to Tennessee,” a song he wrote when he was 20 years old as a way of, he explained from the stage, “mourning the death of my music career.”
What kind of career ends at the age of 20? One that started soon after Leming dropped out of high school in Morristown, Tenn., when he was 17. It was more of an order than a decision. “You can keep coming to school,” the principal told him, “but with all the days you’ve missed, you’re never going to graduate.”
Academia’s loss was music’s gain. Leming drove his $500 Mercury Topaz straight to Texas, where he worked in a packing plant and hit as many open mics as he could. He had been playing piano since he was eight and writing songs since he was 13, but when he auditioned for American Idol in 2007, the producers were more interested in the fact that his car often doubled as his home.
As a contestant on the show’s seventh season, Leming failed to make the Top 24, but the appearance led to a record deal with Warner Bros. However, his first album, Come on Kid, was a commercial failure, convincing the label to drop him. As painful as the experience was, it provided Leming with material for a bunch of great songs.
Besides “Back to Tennessee,” he also played “Six Dollar Check,” which sounds like early Bob Dylan and describes the paltry royalty checks he used to receive from Warner. In the hands of a less skilled songwriter, the words might sound merely bitter, but Leming manages to infuse them with a touch of sadness and humor as well. He was so poor at the time, he explains in the lyrics, that he actually looked forward to receiving those checks because, as small as they were, they were big enough to pay his tab at the nearest bar.
During the first half of the show, when Leming wasn’t singing about a record deal gone bad, he was singing about a volatile relationship with a woman that delivered him to the same place: rock bottom. “Stolen Love,” “Burn,” and “Hey Violet,” which he sang in quick succession, all focus on a three-year relationship with a woman that took decades off his life. With its drums, bass, electric guitar, and piano, “Stolen Love” is the standout track on his album Motel Mayday because, put simply, the song rocks. Could Leming conjure the same energy alone on a stage with an acoustic guitar? The answer was an emphatic “yes.”
The Grey Eagle show was the latest stop on Leming’s current tour as he promotes his breakthrough 2023 album, Endurance. And “Keeping Love Alive,” the second song from Endurance that he played after “Burn,” served as a line of demarcation for the evening: everything before, a bit sad and weepy; everything after, hopeful and uplifting.
Leming played harmonica on most of the songs that followed, giving them an extra kick and prompting audience members to start filming the show and singing along with him. That the next batch of songs were more lighthearted wasn’t an accident. The 35-year-old explained that, after all the heartache in his early life, things began to change in his early 30s when he decided to “let go of his ego and start from scratch.”
Part of that process involved releasing a series of covers giving popular tunes a country spin. When it comes to covers, I ask a little more from artists. They need to make the song they’re covering sound better; otherwise, what’s the point? The fans of Taylor Swift, Tyler Childers, and Justin Bieber might not agree, but for me Leming’s versions of “Anti-Hero,” “Jersey Giant,” and “Ghost,” which he played in succession, are superior to the original versions. Stripped of drum machines and audio pitch correction software, these songs come alive in Leming’s hands. His rendition of “Ghost” was particularly haunting as he dedicated it to his mother Sharon, who died in 2009 after a long bout with cancer.
Leming gave equal billing to his father’s influence on his life with “Another Day in the Factory.” Before launching into the song, he explained that when his family was living in an 800-square-foot house with squeaky hardwood floors in Morristown, he would wake at 4 a.m to the sound of his dad packing himself a lunch before heading to work at a local factory.
The experience took on even more meaning for Leming when he started working at the Amazon distribution center in Lebanon, Tenn., in 2021. The workingman ethos Leming describes in “Another Day in the Factory” made me think of Bruce Springsteen, while its humorous lyrics brought to mind Prine once again. While Leming does bear a slight resemblance to Brad Pitt — if Pitt had a dad bod — the lyrics make it clear why he never had a chance with his forklift-driving coworker Morgan. She’s “cool and calm and six feet tall,” and he’s only five foot seven.
Leming’s career revival has benefited from a series of good choices. When he decided to give music another try, he didn’t bother courting the music industry. Instead, he started connecting with the Bonnevilles, the name of his growing legion of fans, on social media and funding his tours and albums with money raised from Patreon subscriptions.
Another good decision was enlisting Mon Rovîa, a folk artist from East Tennessee by way of Africa, to be his opening act. After playing “Holy Place,” another standout track from Endurance, Leming brought the Afro Appalachian folk artist back on stage to sing “Just One Break” with him, and the two voices paired beautifully.
Mon Rovîa’s backstory also makes Leming’s seem quaint in comparison. During his set, he told a story about being rescued by missionaries from civil war in his native Liberia and having a child soldier point an AK-47 at his head during a return trip there. As interesting as Leming’s own life has been, he has made it clear he’d rather be known for his music.
The headliner closed the show with a series of crowd pleasers. After “I Am Appalachia,” he prompted a sing-along with “Blood Moon,” the hit song from Endurance with 24 million listens on Spotify. For his encore, he picked two songs that bookend his career. The first, “One Last Song,” was written in his parents’ basement when he was 18. Featuring Leming on the keyboard, it hinted at Coldplay’s influence on his music and showed the breadth of his skill as an artist. Ending the show with “Basic Channels,” another popular song off Endurance, he left the audience on a high note, singing along with him and begging for more.
He certainly left some meat on the bone, choosing not to play such fan favorites as “God Made a New Chord,” “Tennessee Song,” and his latest single, “Lithuania.” As riveting as the performance was, there was some room for improvement. The running joke throughout the evening between him and the audience was that he’s painfully slow at tuning his guitars, but I imagine that problem will be fixed when he inevitably graduates to bigger venues and has 10 pre-tuned guitars on stage with him instead of just two like he had at The Grey Eagle.
It’s not a far-fetched notion. Two years ago, Leming was bartending in Nashville just to make ends meet. Now he’s selling out shows from LA to Boston and playing at Bonnaroo and Lollapolooza this summer. It would be understandable if his recent success went to his head, but throughout the evening in Asheville, Leming seemed genuinely humbled and grateful for the adulation he was receiving. “I’ll never get used to this,” he said at one point. It’s that sort of genuineness that turned me into a Bonneville.
(Photo by Andrew Mack)
