Joshua Michael Tillman (born May 3, 1981), better known by his stage name Father John Misty, is an American musician. He is known for his satirical lyrics and eccentric performance style.
Tillman began his career in Seattle in the early 2000s. One of his demos reached Damien Jurado, and in 2003 he opened for him on his tour. Tillman began performing and releasing studio albums under the name J. Tillman. The albums were characterized by their folk sound and intimate lyrics. In 2008 Tillman joined the band Fleet Foxes as their drummer during the tour for their first record; he went on to play on their second album, Helplessness Blues (2011). Tillman left the band soon after the record was completed and started a new solo project, now under the name Father John Misty, releasing his first record, Fear Fun, in 2012. The album was a radical departure from his previous output, featuring a more marked, indie rock sound and satirical lyrics. His second album, I Love You, Honeybear (2015), received widespread acclaim, and was said to be a concept album based on Tillman's relationship with his wife, Emma. Honeybear was followed by another concept album, Pure Comedy (2017), exchanging the romantic content of the former for a nihilistic view of society, consumerism, and politics. His next two records, God's Favorite Customer (2018) and Chloë and the Next 20th Century (2022), explore soft rock and traditional pop respectively.
During his career he has been either a permanent or touring member of Demon Hunter, Saxon Shore, Jeffertitti's Nile, Pearly Gate Music, Siberian, Har Mar Superstar, Poor Moon, Low Hums, and Jonathan Wilson, and has toured extensively with Jesse Sykes and David Bazan. As a record producer and songwriter, Tillman has also made contributions to albums by more mainstream artists such as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, Lana Del Rey, and Post Malone.
Joshua Michael Tillman was born in Rockville, Maryland, on May 3, 1981, the son of evangelical Christian parents Barbara and Irvin C. Tillman, an engineer at Hewlett-Packard, who met at a Christian youth group. His mother was raised in Ethiopia, where her parents were missionaries. The eldest of four children, he has a brother and two sisters. Before he settled on a career as a musician, he briefly had ambitions of becoming a pastor because of the performance aspect, when he was approximately six years old. He has commented that his parents strongly emphasized Christianity in his upbringing, to a degree that he has described as "culturally oppressive". He was estranged from his parents for many years, but they have since reconciled.
After learning drums at a young age, Tillman learned guitar when he was 12. He attended a Baptist church and an Episcopal elementary school while growing up, then a Pentecostal Messianic day school. He said he was naïve when he was growing up because there was limited secular cultural influence within the home and no secular music was allowed. Around the age of 17, his parents modified their cultural stipulations; he was allowed to listen to secular music that had a "spiritual theme". For this reason, his early purchases included albums like Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming as he was able to convince his parents that Dylan was classified as a "Christian artist".
Early career and Fleet Foxes (2004–2012)
After attending Nyack College in New York from 1999 to 2002, Tillman moved to Seattle when he was 21. He found a job there working at a bakery, which allowed him to record at night before his 4:30 am shift began. A demo he made eventually found its way to Seattle singer and songwriter Damien Jurado. A year later, Tillman started opening for Jurado. At shows Tillman would distribute CD-R copies of songs that would later become his album I Will Return. During the tour, he also struck up a friendship with Eric Fisher, who produced another CD-R album, Long May You Run. Tillman and Jurado both later signed on for a U.S. tour with Richard Buckner.
From 2001 to 2004, Tillman played drums in the instrumental post-rock band Saxon Shore, touring extensively and drumming on their first two recordings. In 2006, the independent label Fargo Records released Tillman's first properly distributed solo album, Minor Works, and reissued I Will Return and Long May You Run as a two-disc set the same year. In 2007, Yer Bird Records released his more elaborately arranged fourth album, Cancer and Delirium.
After signing to independent record label Western Vinyl, Tillman released two albums in 2009, Vacilando Territory Blues and Year in the Kingdom. Tillman said he wrote the title track of Vacilando Territory Blues to describe imagery he associates with his move to Seattle. His brother Zach moved there as well and is now in the musical group Pearly Gate Music. The following year, Tillman released Singing Ax.
In 2008, Tillman joined Seattle folk rock band Fleet Foxes as their drummer. After extensive touring with Fleet Foxes, promoting their album Helplessness Blues, Tillman played his final show with the band in Tokyo on January 20, 2012.
Father John Misty performing name and Fear Fun (2012–2014)
After leaving Fleet Foxes, Tillman moved to Los Angeles and signed to his next record label Sub Pop. Dissatisfied with the slow and sad music he had previously made, he adopted the performing name of Father John Misty. The first album under his new name, Fear Fun, was released on May 1, 2012. A couple of months before the release of the album a video was released for the song "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" starring Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza. The album was a dramatic departure from any of Tillman's prior releases.
As Father John Misty, Tillman was featured on Kid Cudi's 2013 album Indicud. Tillman wrote an essay about Damien Jurado's recording, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son (Secretly Canadian, 2014). He also wrote the soundtrack for a short film called The History of Caves, directed by his wife, filmmaker Emma Elizabeth Tillman.
The "Limited Run Promotional Poster" was available at the artist's website, and promoted a purported release called New Winter, described as a "Christmas Neu-Jazz Double Album", and quoted several paradoxes and reviews (for example, from The Wall Street Journal, calling it the "new standard by which all seasonal music must now be measured", or from Spin, giving the release 10 out of 10 points and calling it "[e]ssential year-round listening"). The poster text further states that the release will be sold as "compact disc" as well as "[l]imited edition prismatic hologram 6xLP on merlot and emerald semi-translucent 180 gram vinyl with original alternate-side etchings by Josh Tillman available till[sic] supplies last". The poster names five songs that are part of the track list: "Gesture I: Inoculation (Mother and Child)", "Gesture II: Feast of Spirits", "Anacrusis Future Seed", "Naked Fire/The Fifth Season" and "Gemini".
I Love You, Honeybear (2015–2016)
The album I Love You, Honeybear was released in February 2015 to widespread acclaim. According to Tillman, it is a concept album about himself and his personal life. Tillman made headlines by covering Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" and "Welcome to New York" in 2015. He claimed to have never listened to the artist prior to recording the covers. This was done as a parody of Ryan Adams, who had released his own version of Swift's 1989, featuring covers of every song. Tillman released a new song titled "Real Love Baby" on May 19, 2016. He appeared on the song "Saturday Night Inside Out" on The Avalanches' second studio album Wildflower, which was released on July 1, 2016.
Tillman gained media attention on July 22, 2016, after walking off stage at XPoNential Music Festival in Camden, New Jersey, after twenty minutes into his planned fifty-minute performance. Instead of performing his setlist, Tillman walked out and asked, "What the fuck is going on?" He then talked for six minutes about the "numbing" role entertainment plays in our lives and how "stupidity just fucking runs the world because entertainment is stupid." When the audience applauded him he asked them not to and responded by saying, "Maybe just take a moment to be really fucking profoundly sad." He finally played a thirteen-minute piece from his then-upcoming album Pure Comedy called "Leaving LA" which references the frustrations he spoke of during his speech. Tillman then covered Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire" before telling the crowd he loved them and walked off the stage, cutting his performance short. The following day, Tillman explained his performance in an Instagram post, in which he called Donald Trump's speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention a "demonic clown pageant coronation of our next potential Idiot King", which took place the night before Tillman's performance.