Tourdrobe

Josh Hoge, Photo by Kristin Barlowe

Have you ever heard a voice and thought you could absolutely pinpoint what that person was going to look like? If not, let me just remind you that when Madonna first debuted in the early 1980’s, her original label didn’t want to put her face on her covers. Why, you ask? Well, apparently, the radio stations all assumed she was an African-American artist based on her sound/voice alone. Same thing could be said for Josh Hoge except that we live in a better world now where we don’t care what someone looks like as long as they got the chops to pull it off.

I met up with Josh a month ago as he was collaborating and opening for an old friend of mine, Joe Firstman (more on Joe later). This dude has a great story! Grew up in Franklin, Tennessee and moved to Nashville to pursue his dream. From Nashville, he moved to L.A. (are y’all starting to see a pattern here?) and became pals with Ne-Yo. Josh eventually moved back to Nashville where he signed to Epic Records but there was a whole corporate shift at Epic that left Josh without a label. No worries because my man landed another deal with Blackledge Music.