Tag: Josh Shaw

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “If You Feel Alone at Parties” by Blvck Hippie

The new album by Blvck Hippie is called If You Feel Alone At Parties. Josh Shaw has refined his sparkling indie rock sound to perfection on these 11 songs. He makes longing and alienation sound beautiful.

For the title track, director Lawrence Shaw went literal, putting his brother Josh in a rocking house party where he knows no one. Then he meets a cute girl (Vivian Cheslack) who wants to get to know him better. It’s so loud in here. Wanna go somewhere more chill? Will Josh close the deal? Only one way to find out:

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Music Music Features

Josh Shaw’s Hippie-Man Homecoming

Blvck Hippie’s Josh Shaw at Black Lodge (Photo: Phen Hildreth)

Just seconds into the song “Art School” during Blvck Hippie’s first hometown show following a six-week tour in support of their album If You Feel Alone at Parties, singer/guitarist Josh Shaw’s mic stand dipped downward, seemingly of its own volition. As I watched the musician follow a rapidly descending microphone (while still singing into it) I thought to myself, “This is what Josh does — roll with the punches.”

But the latest Memphian musician to sing on the popular indie music platform Audiotree Live later described this mic stand snafu as simply “hilarious.”

“I was like ‘Oh god, I need to bend down,’” Shaw said. “And then ‘Oh god, my knees.’”

Making light of a moment like this illustrates something essential about the singer/guitarist: What has been accomplished with the band is other-worldly, but Shaw is still as endearing a person as ever.

Still, the band’s success is undeniable. Blvck Hippie sits at just over 30,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. On January 26th it was announced that Blvck Hippie will be joining the South by Southwest official festival lineup this year in Austin, Texas.

Admittedly, I have a history with Shaw that’s getting more and more difficult not to brag about. In 2017, I shared the bill with him in what was his first live performance fronting a band (then going by St.John). In 2018, we were tourmates, and 2019 saw us become roommates. I remember when he burst out of his room with an unplugged electric guitar and the opening riff to “Bunkbed” — “You gotta hear this thing I came up with today!”

All this to say that catching Blvck Hippie at Black Lodge was far from my first rodeo with Shaw, drummer Casey Rittinger, and their brand of self-proclaimed “sad-boy indie rock.”

Shaw says, if he had to guess, the band’s big sound comes from the group maturing, as well as an improvement in the way he writes his guitar parts. The current lineup is composed of “really great artists who have their own things to add.” Undoubtedly this includes the suave Celest Farmer, joining Shaw on guitar, and the talented bassist Tyrell Williams.

“During tour, we really came into our own as a band, and we really want to come out to every show punching people in the face with our sound,” Shaw says.

That description may not be far off from what listeners can expect from the next Blvck Hippie record. “We’re going to get angrier and more aggressive with our music,” Shaw says. “While on tour I saw Black people in a ton of different cities headbanging to my songs. That affirmed that what I’m doing matters and is reaching people. It gives me the confidence to be myself more and make the music I want to make.”

This confidence has enabled Shaw to elevate not just one voice, but to increase representation for POC in indie/alternative music in general. When it came time to fill the bill for Blvck Hippie’s first show of the year, Shaw made sure to provide a platform for Black out-of-town artists, the surfy Bluphoria and math-rock-inspired Rest Ashore.

“I’ve been a huge fan of Rest Ashore for two years so it was amazing to get to play with them,” Shaw says. “It’s important to me that when Black bands come to Memphis we give them a reason to want to come back. It’s important to put on a safe welcoming show for them.”

Shaw says that they felt the safest they’ve ever felt in a musical space during Blvck Hippie’s past tour at a Black-run DIY venue in Cleveland. While Josh cites Black bands like Bartees Strange and Enumclaw rising to mainstream prominence since summer of 2020, the singer says more Black-owned and Black-run venues are necessary to inspire representation in the scene.

“Through touring and the internet, especially TikTok, we’ve been able to reach new audiences and a lot of times we’ve been the first band people have seen that look like us,” Shaw says. “We get comments all the time from Black people that it’s nice to see people that look like them making indie rock, and this is amazing to hear.”

As for their own group’s recent success, Shaw says things have been “wild” since the Audiotree performance. The band hasn’t processed everything yet.

“It’s very humbling to be able to represent Memphis in all the places we’re getting to play,” Shaw says. “Playing shows in Memphis solidifies that for me — I wouldn’t want to be doing this for any other city.”

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday Blvck Hippie

Music Video Monday is a family affair.

Blvck Hippie‘s newest single “Rhodes Ave” is about growing up, says frontman Josh Shaw. “I lived in a house on Rhodes Avenue for the first 8 years of my life and my memory of that street inspired this song. I credit much of my musical inspiration to years spent listening to my parents’ music in that house on Rhodes — this song acts as tribute to those early influences.”

Josh’s brother Lawrence Shaw, who appears with Josh on the single’s cover, created the animated lyric video for the song. “It was inspired by the nostalgic nature of reminiscing on your childhood home — the comfort that can be found in those memories and how fleeting that feeling can be. My interpretation of the song is the strain of trying to recreate an idea of what your ‘perfect’ life would be, but knowing that you will not be able to have it, i.e. ‘I know I can’t give you the big house and a dog, just more empty promises and a shoreline full of fog.'”

Music Video Monday Blvck Hippie

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. 

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Music Music Blog

Blvck Hippie’s Josh Shaw on New Single, Playing at Protests

Memphis-based indie rockers Blvck Hippie released their new single, “Bunkbed,” Friday, August 7th. The song is five minutes of frenzied post-rock, all urgency communicated on bent guitar strings. Bandleader Josh Shaw’s vocals sound frantic to escape the speaker system, as befits a track recorded in the midst of a pandemic-induced quarantine.

Blvck Hippie has kept busy these past months, recording a pair of singles at Sun Studios (the second is due in September), laying down a live video for Crosstown Arts’ Against the Grain series, and performing at the protests against police brutality at City Hall. “Now you can’t play shows, you have to think through everything and figure out how you want to get in front of who you want to get in front of,” Shaw tells me over the phone.

Blvck Hippie’s Josh Shaw

“We were able to record two songs at Sun,” Shaw says of “Bunkbed” and the forthcoming single. Earlier in the pandemic, “they do recordings, but they can’t do tours,” he explains. “So we got the opportunity to be there from 11 to 11.” The process, Shaw says, of recording music in the historic studio during the day, when it’s usually full of tourists from across the globe, was surreal. Not to mention a little daunting. “So many greats have been here. I hope we don’t suck,” Shaw says, laughing.

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By any measure, the new single definitely does not suck. In fact, it finds Blvck Hippie harnessing the melodicism of their debut EP in tandem with the energy of the group’s live performances. With “Bunkbed” Shaw rakes the listener over the emotional coals, and the band displays chops that blend elements of indie rock, power-pop, and post-rock, making a confident vehicle for Shaw’s plaintive delivery. The single already scored a positive review from Afropunk, who called it, “the feel bad song of the summer.”

With the exception of their time recording, Shaw says, “The only real way we’ve been playing live music recently is by playing protests.”

Shaw said he had already been to protests as a participant when a friend called him and asked him if Blvck Hippie would be interested in performing. Shaw was eager to back up his convictions with his art, and he understood how music might give protesters another source of strength. “The overwhelming feeling of consistently protesting some kind of inequality, it becomes very tiring on people,” he says. “Music is one of the things that can make everybody feel that everything is going to be okay.”

And, the singer says, everyone did their best to be safe and take precautions to mitigate the potential spread of the virus. People “kept to the bubble of who they came with,” Shaw says, noting that he and his drummer live together — and that it was nice to have enough distance on the makeshift stage that he didn’t have to worry about being hit in the head with a bass stock. Protesters wore masks and kept to their groups, Shaw remembers, and performers brought their own microphones. In the end, Shaw says, the cause is an all-important one.

Blvck Hippie perform at Memphis City Hall.

Shaw continues: “It’s really hard not to feel helpless and feel like you have no control over anything. Even to the point where it’s like I can’t control whether I live or die due to police brutality, or any of my family members or anybody I’m close to. It’s crippling the feeling of not having control,” he explains. “And being able to use the one thing that you have close to yourself, which is music, that’s all I love to do and want to do. And being able to use that as a voice for me and other people like me, made me feel like I had a little bit of control. It was an amazing feeling.”

The musician says it was affirming, too, to get to support Black live with his music. Shaw creates in a genre overwhelmingly populated by white artists, and he says, it felt good to associate his music with this cause. “Getting to play protests was really cool,” he says, “because the genre of music I do isn’t really considered by mainstream media outlets as being ‘Black.’ So it’s nice to be able to do something empowering Black people by playing the music I am. There were a bunch of little Black kids one time we played a protest. They were all in front being really excited, super jazzed up. It’s really cool getting to show them, ‘Hey, man, Black art is just anything a Black person does that’s art.’”


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Music Music Blog

Hippie Hippie Shake: Blvck Hippie Cooks Up Tasty Tunes

Blake Galloway (left) and Josh Shaw


Memphis-based indie rock band Blvck Hippie released one of the catchiest Memphis-made songs in recent memory a little over one year ago, in January 2019.

“Hotel Lobby,” from the Blvck Hippie EP, opens with a drum shuffle followed by a descending bass line; when the piano and whining guitars hit, it’s already obvious the band has neo-soul arrangements on lockdown. And it just gets better from there.

Blvck Hippie, fronted by Josh Shaw, 24, has toured in support of the EP, undergone multiple lineup changes, and is currently working on new material. After seeing the new lineup at work at a concert at the Lamplighter Lounge, I called Shaw, who was cooking vegan pasta sauce at the time, to find out what was in store for Blvck Hippie.

The band will perform at Philly’s Got-You-Covered Fest in Cooper-Young on Saturday, January 25th, and at Pagan Mom House with Sun Not Yellow, Madd Well, Wednesday, January 29th, at 8 p.m. But that’s not all that Blvck Hippie has up its sleeve.

It’s no understatement to say that Shaw has immersed himself in music of late. He works at the School of Rock performance academy and is studying recording at the University of Memphis. He already has a music industry degree from Lambuth University. Of course, that’s when he’s not writing, recording, rehearsing, and performing with Blvck Hippie, a band that grew out of Shaw’s solo shows and demo tapes.

“Toward the end of my senior year of college I started being a little more open with sharing the music I’d been writing,” Shaw says. “I was pretty private about it at first, recording a lot in my room and in the studio on campus and keeping it to myself.”

Josh Shaw


So, after spending some time in Toronto, Canada, with his brother, Shaw decided to double down on making music. He moved back to Memphis from Jackson and bought some new gear. “I got a better electric guitar and a looper pedal,” he says.

After being booked at a festival, Shaw put together a band. “I decided January of 2018, that whole year was going to be only band shows,” he explains. Of course, the band would need a name. “I was a very weird, eccentric child, so my mom used to call me her little black hippie,” Shaw explains. He says he thought, “So I’ll just use that.”

With a name and a full roster, Blvck Hippie released its self-titled EP on January 1, 2019. That four-song example of indie-pop perfection was recorded at Young Avenue Sound with Calvin Lauber, and for a year, the band toured and played locally in support of it.

In addition to the excellent arrangements, the EP, along with the rest of Blvck Hippie’s music, is characterized by Shaw’s open and honest lyrics. Just as the songwriter who used to record in his room had struggled taking his songs public, he was unsure about being so open in his songwriting. But he had taken strength from the art of confessional songwriters when he needed it, and he was inspired by their example. “If I’m that open and honest, then I can help somebody else who might be going through a rough time,” Shaw says.

Blvck Hippie faced a new challenge when Blake Galloway, the band’s second guitarist, moved to Colorado. Shaw explains, “After losing a band member who was one of the founding members [I had to] reevaluate everything and [say], ‘What is it about us that I like? And what is it about us that can change and improve?’”

Shaw continues: “Every time somebody leaves, you feel like, ‘Aw, man, why did I even let this person into my heart? I should have just stayed solo.’ But I decided to embrace it as much as I can. Writing, arranging, recording — I do all the cooking of it, but if you don’t allow other people to throw seasoning in it, you might end up with a bland dish and not know it because you’re the only one who tasted it.”

Blvck Hippie


For the moment, the band is a trio — guitar, bass, and drums, but plans are in the works to add keyboards, trumpet, and euphonium. “Once everything hits the fan, you have to sit down and figure out why you’re still doing this,” Shaw says, explaining that he decided forced lineup changes were, from one perspective, just an excuse to build on what he likes in the group.

The two upcoming house concerts are on par for Blvck Hippie’s indie (as in “independent”) aesthetic. Shaw says he has made merchandise at his parents house, and the band’s self-titled EP was self-funded as well. “It’s something that’s done out of necessity,” Shaw admits. There are benefits, though, to an indie approach. “It’s a culture that embraces the different and weird,” Shaw says. “So you just automatically feel comfortable no matter what happens. You’re like, ‘Hey, I know this is an intimate setting and everybody’s here just to enjoy the experience. If I break a string, if I sing the wrong note, everything’s okay.’”

Blvck Hippie performs at Philly’s Got-You-Covered Fest at 1054 Philadelphia Street in Cooper-Young on Saturday, January 25th, at 8 p.m.; and at Pagan Mom House with Sun Not Yellow, Madd Well, Wednesday, January 29th, at 8 p.m.