Josh Tillman | |
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Tillman performing as Father John Misty at the Fuji Rock Festival in July 2017
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Background information | |
Birth name | Joshua Michael Tillman |
Also known as | J. Tillman Father John Misty |
Born | May 3, 1981 |
Origin |
Rockville, Maryland United States |
Genres | |
Instruments | |
Years active | 2004–present |
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Joshua Michael Tillman (born May 3, 1981), also known as J. Tillman or Father John Misty, is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and drummer. Maintaining a steady output of solo recordings since 2004, Tillman was a former member or toured with Demon Hunter, Saxon Shore, Fleet Foxes, Jeffertitti's Nile, Pearly Gate Music, Siberian,Har Mar Superstar,Poor Moon, Low Hums, Jonathan Wilson, Bill Patton, The Lashes, Stately English, and has toured extensively with Pacific Northwest artists Damien Jurado, Jesse Sykes, and David Bazan. He has also made contributions to albums by popular artists, including Beyoncé,Lady Gaga, and Kid Cudi, and has produced one album for Matthew Daniel Siskin, known as Gambles.
Tillman grew up in an Evangelical Christian household in Rockville, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. The oldest of four children, he has a brother and two sisters. His father was an engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Before Tillman 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 comments that his parents focused on the spiritual aspects of his upbringing, which he describes as "culturally oppressive". They were estranged for many years, but they reconciled. After learning drums at a young age, Tillman learned guitar when he was 12.
Tillman was raised in a Baptist church, attended an Episcopal elementary school, then a Pentecostal Messianic Jewish day school. Tillman said he was naive when he was growing up because there was almost no cultural influence and no secular music allowed. Around the age of 17, there were new stipulations from his parents – he was allowed to listen to secular music that had a "spiritual theme". So his early purchases included albums like Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming as he was able to establish that Dylan was classified as a "Christian artist".