Josh Macumber

The road that Halifax based singer/songwriter Josh Macumber sings about on the lead single from his debut album is one he knows every mile of, inside and out – From the smooth patches and the rough spots to the sudden twists and turns that can take your life away from right underneath you.

But Macumber’s knowledge of the road doesn’t come from watching the world go by from the comfort of a tour bus. It comes from his putting in over a million miles behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer. Miles you can feel falling away behind you on both ‘That Road Won’t Lead You There’ and Macumber’s ode to his ‘old blacktop friend’, Nova Scotia’s Glooscap Trail, on ‘215’. More importantly you can feel the truth behind Macumber’s songs, and the fact that he’s lived every line of them back to front.

Less than a year after his debut at Tootsie’s Macumber found himself in the studio recording live off the floor with an impressive cadre of players: bassist Larry Paxton (Kris Kristofferson, Roy Orbison, Chet Atkins), slide guitarist Michael Johnson (the voice behind Bluer Than Blue and This Night Won’t Last Forever, Keyboardist Michael Rojas (Big and Rich, George Jones, Hank Williams Jr.), drummer Mark Beckett (Vince Gill, Kenny Chesney, Charlie Daniels Band) and guitarist Richard Bennett (Neil Diamond, Mark Knopfler, Billy Joel). He also found himself being part of an historic musical event, Godard’s bringing guitar greats John Jorgenson (Elton John, Barbara Streisand, Bonnie Raitt) and Brent Mason (Alabama, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson), to record together, face to face, for the first time on the studio floor.

The result is a record that, like Macumber himself, speaks straight from the gut, but somehow manages to be cautionary and hopeful all at once. Music as genuine the man who performs it; a man who, in spite of it all, still gives everyone the benefit of the doubt in the hopes they’re as well meaning as he is. “It may be gullible,” he says bluntly. And perhaps it is, but it’s also inspirational – Not just because Macumber has a way of looking at life that says he expects it to get consistently better, but because he’s living, breathing proof it does.