Montreal Rocks spoke with Justin Osborne of Susto before the Lumineers show at the Bell Centre on March 17th, 2017. The pendulum swung for Justin from going to church with his family to drunkenly pointing a gun at people out of rage. Through his songs, Justin found a center that would allow him to forgive, let go of the past yet honor it for making him who he is today. His success is due in part to his creative resourcefulness and nudges along the way from world renowned bands. We talk about the past, life’s hardships, being on the road and his love of hockey.
Randal (Montreal Rocks): The first question I always ask is: What’s the most annoying interview question you get?
Justin: I don’t get annoyed by any of them because I’m just happy people care and ask us questions. So I’m not going say these are annoying, but the ones I get asked all the time are about the meaning of the band name, which I don’t mind explaining because the name matters. It was chosen for a reason. That one and people always ask me about the food in Cuba. People think the food in Cuba is supposed to be good but it’s actually terrible because of the embargo. It’s awful.
MR: That’s what everyone tells us when they go to resorts in Cuba.
Justin: Yeah, you guys can go, you are Canadian.
MR: They say the food is terrible.
Justin: The liquor is great!
MR: It’s cheap.
Justin: So those are the questions I get asked, but I don’t mind answering them. If they are on your list, that’s fine.
MR: So that sums it up for me! (laughs) It’s good, I have none of those questions. I wanted to start with the beginning, talk about the Sequoyah Prep School. What did you learn from that time that is valuable now?
Justin: It’s funny that the name is Sequoyah Prep School because I do feel like I learned a lot that helped me do Susto in a more effective way. It was essentially the band I started with my friends in high school and I was in it till I was 26. I was in it almost 10 years. We put 4 records out and I got better at writing songs and getting used to being in the studio. We were booking our own tours and touring all over the US. I got experience booking shows which really helped out at the beginning of Susto. Before we had a booking agent, I was doing everything. I was the manager. I was the PR person. I was the booking agent. I was everything. Even the accountant! I was the only person touring as well. It helped me because I didn’t have to relearn any of the lessons about booking. Booking as in independent artist can be really difficult, so I learned to be more effective and perform better.
MR: Like…speak to my assistant…hold the phone…then change your voice.
Justin: Yeah, I really did! I learned with Sequoyah that to book, it was better if I didn’t seem like I was representing myself, so I created this entire alter-ego and created this fake booking agency called Screen Door Booking. I made a website for it and said we had offices in all these different places, but we really didn’t. But it worked! I didn’t do that with Susto, by the time I was doing Susto, I had made a lot of relationships that I was able to go back and say: “Hey, I have this new project. I know you haven’t heard from me in a year or two, but I’m trying to get back into this. Do you want to have us come play? Can you help?”
MR: I’m finding that a lot of it is all about relationships. Once you get in with the bands…
Justin: It’s kind of like how a lot of things are and it’s definitely like that in music. The longer you’ve been involved, or if you just know a few key people, they can help introduce you to other people. That’s another thing that’s been great with Susto. We had people back in Charleston, like Band of Horses who are pretty well known internationally that helped. I was working in a kitchen flipping patty melts in this bar. They would play my first record over the sound system and the singer’s dad of Band of Horses would come in for brunch. He heard the record and told his son about it. They got in touch with me and the next thing I know, I was quitting my job and going on tour with Band of Horses! People are important. The biggest thing I learned from Sequoyah was how to expand your network. You have to be willing to lean on them and let them lean back on you when they need to. Helping each other out is what I was always about before Sequoyah was over. We would help a lot of the bands by having them open for us. We would help get them started. So, when I was starting a new thing, I would ask: “Can I open for you guys now?” These bands were selling out shows regionally, so the first shows we were playing, they were lending us their audiences.
MR: What lesson did you learn from the Citadel?
Justin: I learned that I didn’t want to be in the military! I learned that I don’t like running. I don’t like getting up at 5:30 in the morning either.
MR: Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a rock-n-roll lifestyle.
Justin: No it wasn’t, but I did learn that mentally, you can get yourself through anything. I was only there for 2 and a half years before I left, but the first year in general is the knob year, the year that you are really nobody. You’re less than nobody! You have to walk in the gutters, your head has to be shaved. You have to walk in an exaggerated pace to make an idiot out of you. It’s really hard to take yourself seriously this entire first year of College. I learned that things pass with time. It’s hard to realize that when you are right out of high school, or in any point in your life. Like knowing that time is coming to go there, me dreading it for so long, even though I’d signed up for it. It’s like going to boot camp. You’re going to get pushed around. They call it hell week, literally, the first week you’re there. I learned that you can get through things, you just have to wait it out and be patient. I think that helped me a lot being patient with my music career because I just turned 30 and I’ve been trying to tour, trying to do this stuff since I was 15. Half my life. In the last two years, it’s just getting to a point where I don’t have to have another job. This is what I do and I can pay my bills.
MR: You already spoke about Band of Horses. What did they teach you, did they give you any good advice?
Justin: Ben, the singer, is the one I’m closest with. He and Creighton the drummer live in Charleston. Ben has challenged me to not let other people influence the art we are making, in any kind of overt way. It’s fine to have other’s opinions and take those opinions seriously, but to just do what we do. When I first met him, I was like: “We just met Band of Horses!” He was talking about starting a label at the time. We were going to put our album out on his label and we were going to be made. Then, he helped me realize that people can do you favors, but nobody is going to build your ship for you. You have to do that yourself. The biggest thing Ben did for me is not doing more. He helped me get in touch with some people, gave me some advice, put us in front of audiences. We haven’t toured with them extensively, only a handful of shows. He helped enough were I could learn how to do it myself. He didn’t hold my hand. That’s really good because nobody is ever going to hold your hand in this business.
MR: Here is a strange one. If you were to encounter Holden from Catcher in the Rye, what would you have in common with him?
Justin: Confusion probably. I’m a big J.D. Sallinger fan and Catcher in the Rye is the one I read last. I got into all his other stuff first, like Nine Stories, The Glass Family and his other books like Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam and Carpenters and Seymour. That’s more where I get into Sallinger, but I do really love the character of Holden. I can’t relate to someone who went to a “Bougie” boarding school or in New York because I’m from, literally, the swamp. I was telling you earlier about how my phone and my bank card don’t even work because I come from a small town. I think just the confusion of youth and love. It’s been a while since I read Catcher in the Rye, but I remember when he got away from school, making his way around the city, finding his sister, and all these random things, looking for something. I’ve been there before. I don’t feel that way now. I feel that I know more who I am.
MR: That’s interesting, it goes with my other question. It seems that you struggled to get out of your religious upbringing. When you leave that kind of a strict environment, I know firsthand, you tend to go overboard to the other side…like the bad side.
Justin: The pendulum, when you pull it, it swings and it goes further the other way.
MR: Your first album talked about that period, but have you found your middle? Have you swung back?
Justin: I haven’t swung back. I’ve just come back to the middle. So much of my life was wrapped up in my faith. My community and my culture was interwoven with faith and church to the point where you could hardly tell them apart. That’s how my family still lives their lives. There is no separation between their faith and their life. It’s all the same thing. When I started to realize, that as far as I can tell, none of it was true, I got really angry. Not just at the greater systems that perpetuate this stuff, but the people that would take me to church, my own parents and grandparents. That anger, it doesn’t come out as viciously in the songs as it did in my life…I went crazy! I wanted to be everything opposite of what I was. But then I realized that this is no way to live. You can’t live in anger and I realized that nobody meant me any harm. They were just doing what they believed was right. I’ve just come to terms with it more and I’m not angry about it anymore.
MR: Maybe you can help us. Can you connect the dots between handcuffs, Acid Boys and May 19th?
Justin: (chuckle) All of them are just me being a sh*thead basically. Man, the handcuffs one is kind of embarrassing, to be honest with you. So, the first record, there are a couple of songs on it that are about a similar situation. “Friends, Lovers, Ex-Lovers, Whatever” and “Acid Boys” are about the same two-month long ordeal that was a breakup that happened with someone I’ve been with for a while and lived with in the same house. I lived upstairs, she lived downstairs, right below me. Valentine’s Day might have happened first and I wrote this card that said: “Friends, lovers, ex-lovers, whatever. I hope you know I will always care.” And my roommate goes: Dude, that’s a Country Song, we’ve got to go write that right now! We were always breaking up, getting back together. This was years ago, back in 2011 into 2012. Eventually, I start seeing other people, she starts seeing other people but we are still living very close to each other. Charleston houses are one room wide and they go back really far. They all have a porch on the bottom and a porch on the top. It’s a design that you only really see in Charleston. There was one time, where she starts seeing this dude and I can hear what was going on downstairs, if you catch my drift. I was really poor and I remember walking to the corner store and thinking: “Man, I just want to get f-ing drunk.” I bought a Colt-45 Malt Liquor for like $3 or something. I just sat there drinking it and ripping cigarettes, waiting for them to come out. I yelled at the dude she was with because she and I were just together, hanging out, doing stuff two days before that happened. I thought we were getting back together. I yelled some sh*t, got him upset. He was drunk too. He came upstairs, just wanting to beat the sh*t out of me. I wanted to beat the sh*t out of him too, but he was bigger than me. So, I pulled a gun on him. The girl freaked out, everybody freaked out. I was like: “What am I doing right now?” Eventually, they left and the cops got called. There were 15 people living in this house, a punk house basically. I told everyone: “Listen you all, I pulled a gun on this dude. I think (girlfriend name) is going to call the cops.” She loved calling the cops. They showed up. I heard a bunch of commotion downstairs. I opened the door upstairs to look down and I saw a police officer at the door and in the driveway, that was right outside the porch, people there with shotguns, pointed right at me. There was the laser thing on me. They asked me who I was and I immediately surrendered. “Yeah, that was me.” They put me in the back of the cop car, but they ended up letting me go because in South Carolina you can pull a gun on somebody who is threatening you in your house, so…that was stupid! All’s well that ends well. I didn’t go to jail, nobody got hurt.
A lot of the songs are confessional. So “Acid Boys”, that story happens in the song because I was just trying to illustrate how crazy I had become, transitioning out of this relationship. I was so ready to get out of it, but once I was out of it, I couldn’t find my footing anywhere else. I just started going crazy, I started doing a lot of LSD with my friends. Not a ton of it, but enough like I felt it was more than I was used to. It ended up being a very good experience. I learned a lot about myself and stripped away some layers of consciousness that didn’t need to be there. But I still was going out of control, being really reckless. I was doing things like pulling guns on people. I just referred to my friends as the Acid Boys because we were all lost, doing the same thing. I sang that whole song freestyle. I freestyled it in the studio, the lyrics just came straight off my head. I, stream of consciousness, just referred to my friends as Acid Boys. It stuck and I got it tattooed on my knuckles. That was part of the backlash from my parents, getting Acid Boys tattooed on my knuckles. The five nineteen I have is totally unrelated. I don’t want to talk about it and have you think it’s all about drugs. Five nineteen, I’d rather not.
MR: Things can be private too.
Justin: It’s just not all my story, you know. I have the tattoo to remind myself of something, it involves other people…
MR: You don’t want to open up their wounds…
Justin: Or throw them under the bus, anything like that. I don’t want to incriminate anybody.
MR: That’s very honourable of you, that’s cool. Maybe we will go to something more positive. If someone doesn’t know your music, what would be your choice for the first song they should listen to?
Justin: I have a really hard time with that one. One thing I like about our music is that it changes from song to song. I feel that sometimes our music can be too Country for people, but if you like Country Music, then maybe start with “Friends, Lovers, Ex-Lovers” or “County Line”. But if you aren’t really into Country Music, you like more Indie Rock or even more experimental stuff, then “Dream Girl” is a good song to start with. Off our new record, “Far Out Feeling” is the opening track to our album, it’s kind of all over the place and really fun. It’s a cool one to start with. I don’t know how to answer this because I don’t know what I want to be our first flip forward, you know. We just make the songs how we feel they will work as an album.
MR: I really enjoyed the Susto Stories. It was a great way of mixing a performance with a little background of each song.
Justin: The first couple we did, I feel came out a little lame, because we weren’t sure how we were going to do them yet. The performances, I was really happy with how they all turned out.
MR: I liked it because you got to know more about what is behind the song. But on the second one, you talk about appreciating your soberness and your health. What do you do on the road to keep somewhat of a healthy lifestyle.
Justin: It’s funny because when we did that, I was on this kick. I get into these kicks, and I feel that some things I say gets reflected in some phase I’m going through. But I still stand by that because when I first got on the road, it was just another place for me to be horrible to myself. I was constantly drinking and smoking and doing whatever else was available. Then I learned, after playing show after show after show, being out late, being up early…this is my job. This is my body too, the only one I’m ever going to get. Just to take it easy, so I got into this phase during our second West Coast run and I said: “You know what? I’m not going to drink alcohol. I’m not going to smoke cigarettes at all. I’m going to work out every day. I’m going to eat better.” I did that. I would drink sometimes, but only on days off. It also affects your performance because if you change your routine and you are on the road, it can really affect you. Your body responds to that and I found that it was actually worse on my voice because I was doing too much exercise in climates where I was already dehydrated, like out West or in the high deserts. But I definitely felt better. “Wasted Mind” isn’t all about that, but it’s also about finding yourself in this business you want to be doing all the time. I got into music because I love music, but also because I love travelling and touring. I realized that you are really only in and out wherever you go. It’s still cool, you get to see all the landscapes and you get to see things change, but you don’t really get to stay in places.
MR: Cuba was different.
Justin: Cuba was different because I lived in Cuba.
MR: We lived in Mexico for 5 years, but for you it was 5 months. But it is enough to soak it in the culture.
Justin: Five years is a lot more than 5 months. There is a lot about Cuba I don’t know or maybe think I know but I’m wrong about. That’s been a few years now too. It’s definitely different on the road when you are just in and out. When you go to places over and over, you start to know some people and get to know the places more. I’m so excited to do shows in Canada, because personally, I love Canada. We all do. We have a better record deal in Canada than we do in the US. It’s cool to grow these markets and hopefully keep coming back. The great thing about being on tour with a band like the Lumineers, is that they are going to put you in front of thousands of people, even as the first band. Hopefully when we come back, one or two hundred people will come see us. It’s a great opportunity and we are just really glad to be here and glad to be doing so many cool Canadian dates. So many cities I don’t think I would have ever gone to otherwise, especially Calgary and Edmonton. I’ve been a hockey fan my entire life. Just getting to play in the stadium where the Canadians play…I love being in these NHL arenas. I grew up as a kid in South Carolina where we never saw snow. I would go in my driveway and play street hockey all day and watch it. My parents weren’t into hockey at all: “What are you doing?” they would say. Eventually I moved to a bigger town that had a minor-league team and I went to all the games. I’ve always been a huge hockey fan. All my favorite teams are Canadian. I hate to say this in Montreal, because I do love the Canadians, but my two favorite teams are the Maple Leafs and the Canucks. Based solely off the branding, I think. But, we are not playing either of those cities, so I’m not going to my two favorites, but I’m still just so happy, it’s magical to me.
But, I still do like to travel. I still really love what I do. I don’t have any regrets about doing it.
MR: No regerts!
(chuckles)
Justin: No regerts!
Review & Photo – Randal Wark is a Professional Speaker and Business coach with a passion for live music. You can follow him on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
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