The Witzard

"Don't sleep on Butch Bastard ," read a statement credited to Josh Tillman of Father John Misty and Fleet Foxes fame attached to a cold submitted message sent days after I posted my email address on Twitter , along with an open call for new music "not featured on Pitchfork ;" after reaching out to Poor Moon bassist and newly-christened Butch Bastard frontman Ian Murray himself, the Father John Misty -affiliated artist would go on to specify, "[ Josh is] my friend and I appreciate his endorsement, but I don't wish to be viewed as an appendage to his career." It would likely appear as though Butch Bastard was born when the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, performer, producer, and director uprooted his life from Seattle to Los Angeles in 2014 and started recording tracks from the comfort of his bedroom. Murray's wonderfully titled forthcoming album, I Am Not a Man , which currently lacks a proper label or release date, showca...

The Internet really is a never-ending Twilight Zone -esque worm hole of a place sometimes; case in point, just last night, after returning home from rollicking Sweat N Soul -filled a Har Mar Superstar concert in the depths of Philly around 1-1:30am, I wasted nearly an hour aimlessly Googling covers from Sean Tillmann 's one-time touring mate and fellow Tillman(n) , Father John Misty ... starting with two unabashedly ironic Taylor Swift in the vein of Ryan Adam 's 1989 covers and ultimately, ending up at a sparse SiriusXM cover of Nirvana 's "Heart-Shaped Box." Somewhere down the seemingly endless sonic worm hole I created, I stumbled upon @fatherjohnmisty 's sprawling, wonderfully executed renditions of widely-known Leonard Cohen , The Arcade Fire, John Lennon , Rihanna, and most recently, Nine Inch Nails classics. Former Fleet Foxes drummer and ironic "rockstar" Josh Tillman unexpectedly covered NIN 's breakout anti-pop hit, "Cl...

"My interpretation [of "Blank Space" ] from the classic Ryan Adams album "1989,"' former Fleet Foxes drummer and semi-ironic, self-loathing Indie-Pop superstar Josh Tillman aka @fatherjohnmisty Tweeted Monday evening on the heels of Ryan Adams' just-released Taylor Swift 1989 covers album. Tillman was seemingly riffing on Adams' 1989 re-imagined in the style of Bruce Springsteen 's Darkness On The Edge of Town meets The Smiths' Meat Is Murder , sloppily crooning Swift's chart-topping "Blank Space" and "Welcome to New York" in the style of Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed . "In the studio working on a [song-for-song] reinterpretation of Ryan Adams "1989," gonna be great! Ryan's amazing," Father John Misty sarcastically wrote in a since-deleted "so psyched"-hashtagged Tweet. While Tillman's rendition of "Blank Space" is, to say the very least, a litt...

"Father John Misty" is the newly-adopted nom de plume of former Fleet Foxes drummer, J. Tillman . While it's not exactly a "Hip-Hop" album by definition, Tillman's story evokes repeat run-ins with 3 of the genre's most commonly employed [de]vices: bitches, drugs & money . Father John Misty's upcoming debut full-length, Fear Fun (May) essentially chronicles one man's journey as he lets his guard down for the first time and takes some risks... "weird-ass songs about weird-ass experiences [written] almost in real-time" and then re-recorded with a handful of local LA -area musical friends. Josh Tillman has been recording and releasing music under his given name since about 2003, but just now feels as though he's finally coming into his own as a singer-songwriter. Fear Fun will eventually be followed up with a companion J. Tillman -penned novel, which was written during the same spontaneous coastal roadtrip that spawned th...