Josh Caterer

Josh Caterer (born April 12, 1972) is a Chicago-area musician, best known as the lead singer, lead guitarist, and principal songwriter of punk band The Smoking Popes, which he founded in 1991 along with his brothers, Eli Caterer (b. 1975) and Matt Caterer (b. 1968). Caterer has also written and recorded a considerable body of Christian and gospel music. In addition to the Smoking Popes, he founded the blues band Jackson Mud.

Caterer's father was a successful businessman and his mother, the salutatorian of her high-school class, was a homemaker. Although his parents were of a spiritual bent, they were not overtly religious, and the family never went to church and rarely discussed religion when Caterer was growing up.

Caterer graduated in 1990 from Harry D. Jacobs High School in Algonquin, Illinois, a city neighboring his hometown, Lake in the Hills, Illinois, a far northwest suburb of Chicago. After graduation, Caterer held several menial jobs such as a job as a machine operator at a plastics company.

Caterer wrote his first song around 11 years old. During junior high he formed his first band, Slavedriver. His early musical influences included Fugazi, The Smiths, Elvis Costello, Mel Tormé, and Frank Sinatra. As a senior in high school, Caterer formed Speedstick along with his brothers Eli and Matt. This band was the forerunner to the Smoking Popes.

Smoking Popes formed in 1991 and in early 1994 the band opened for Green Day. Caterer referred to his early songs, half-jokingly, as "pop nuggets". His singing voice changed from a punk shout to a vibrato when he tried to imitate the crooning of Frank Sinatra, initially as a joke. His singing is sometimes compared by journalists to that of Morrissey.

The creative mastermind behind the Popes, Caterer composed the majority of their repertoire of distinctive, pop-influenced punk songs, many of which have an intensely melancholy air underneath their driving beat. Lyrics of his early songs evoke feelings of fear, failure, intense despair, purposelessness, and romantic love as a redeeming agent. His later songs are marked by a more positive outlook, and many center upon the uplifting nature of religious faith and upon the importance of examining one's spiritual path. Consistent among both early and later songs is the allusive and metaphorical nature of Caterer's lyrics, often focusing upon man's search for meaning.

...
Wikipedia