Now I’m in Josh’s suburban townhome, where he’s showing me his huge sausage. I am audibly delighted…but there’s just one problem…
“I don’t have brown sugar,” Josh says.
“You should’ve texted me!” I say. In a literal interpretation of my oft repeated phrase “this town is too small”, Josh and I live in the same zip code. Cue Gorillaz lyric Give me some sugar/I am your neighbor!
Josh shrugs. “Let’s hope I can make the kielbasa without it.”
He dumps a scoop of applesauce, some Dijon mustard, two cloves of garlic and two pounds of sausage into a saucepan that barely contains the bulky ingredients.
“I knew I was going to buy this house when I saw this stove,” Josh says as he turns up the heat. “Gas is the only way to go.”
While the meal-to-be simmers, Josh serves me his back-up recipe: black bean salsa.
“How did you learn how to cook?” I ask as I scoop up a heap of the colorful dip with a Tostito.
“I didn’t really. I cook to be fed,” he says, bashfully exposing a pantry full of canned goods, ramen noodles, and a fridge stocked with hot dogs and beer. “I’m a throw-it-together kind of guy. I experiment a lot. And I like fatty foods, like pasta with my homemade Alfredo sauce. Or Domino’s.”
“I did not just hear that,” I reply. (What is it with good men and bad pizza?!)
“I can’t really eat that way anymore,” he says. “My girlfriend’s trying to get me to make healthier food.”
On the chopping block: most of Josh’s guilty pleasures, including bleu cheese, ice cream, and peanut butter.
“What kind of peanut butter?” I ask.
“It’s gotta be Jif,” he says. “And if I had to, maybe Peter Pan.”
Josh sinks a chip into the salsa.
“Does this have too much cilantro?” he asks.
“Not at all,” I say.
"Maybe I overdid it on the lime juice?"
"It's perfect," I reassure him. Josh does not look convinced. Granted, his palate might be overly sensitive. His mother raised him on plenty of home cooking, but most of it was Midwestern bland.
“Steak without seasoning and a pot of green beans,” Josh says, citing a standard childhood dinner.
Thank goodness Josh’s mom compensated with an eclectic music diet. Duets behind the wheel with his mom were how Josh honed his singing voice.
“When I got older, I realized I could impress girls by singing in the car,” he says with a sly smile.
Josh learned the breathing techniques behind his powerful voice by reading blogs. With trumpet playing experience and basic guitar skills, he knew just enough to form a band with his best friend "Mateo".
“I write the melodies and he finds the chords,” Josh explains.
As for the lyrics, they often come to Josh in his sleep.
“I read that Paul McCartney kept a pen and paper next to his bed in case songs came to him in the night,” Josh tells me. “I have my phone, so if I wake up with a song in my head, I record myself humming it. Most of the time, though, it’s just garbage.”
Josh’s girlfriend provides the lion’s share of inspiration for the quality stuff, also known as “funky songs with deep meaning.”
“I don’t mean to toot my own horn,” Josh says regarding Tollund Moses, “But I have so much respect for us.”
His goal is to “put all my emotion into one lush song that people will listen to intently, like Leonard Skynyard’s Freebird.”
Josh checks on the skillet. The sausage situation does not look promising, but he seems unwilling to declare it a failure just yet.
“What else you got for me?” he asks.
I lean on my forearms on the opposite side of the counter, biting my lower lip. I’m trying to play it cool, but the fact is, Josh is even more attractive up close than he was onstage. Every time the words “Kitty Kat” (as in the aforementioned club where he performed) pass his lips, my (ahem) kitty kat anatomy purrs in response.
Later, when I tell New Dude (whom I’ve yet to break up with when this interview took place) about Josh, I realize how many similarities these men share: the facial scruff, the eyebrow piercing, the troubled drinking history, the ProTools certification (okay, now I’m reaching). Is that what I find so captivating about this guy?
“There’s plenty I want to ask you,” I say. “The question is how much you’ll answer.”
“Anything,” he says.
“Be careful,” I warn him.
“Go ahead.”
“Tell me more about your girlfriend.”
“We’ve been on and off for several years.”
“But you’re obviously ‘on’ now if you’re both living here, right?”
“Actually, since we moved in together, we mostly ignore each other.”
I giggle uncomfortably, but Josh doesn’t join me. He’s not kidding.
“We’ve been fighting about money,” he says.
Josh’s day job is at Delta airlines as a licensed mechanic.
“It’s like going back to high school with 50-year-old men,” he says. And while the paycheck has purchased a sweet ride and scored him a mortgage at only 25 years old, it’s also cost Josh the dream of making a career out of singing and songwriting.
“All I live for is music,” Josh says. “I can’t get enough.”
To say Josh has a thing for The Beatles is to say that Man Eater has a thing for peanut butter. It’s beyond the point of obsession. Josh's dog is named Penny Lane ("It was that or Eleanor Rigby," he says), there are Beatles paraphenelia plastered all over the house, and John Lennon’s signature is permanently etched onto Josh's right arm.
That’s only one of his thirteen tats, by the way. Among the others are an anchor, an astrological sign for Scorpio, a “skull lady”, a Hawaiian sun burst, music notes, and an eye with the initials of his high school sweetheart who died.
“They all sound so meaningful,” I say.
“Oh, I have a drunk tattoo, too,” Josh says, lifting up his shirt sleeve to expose a jagged L-O-V-E tattoo.
“I asked my friend what one word would describe me and he said love. So that's what I got.”
Based on his relationship history, Josh sounds like a serial monogamist…though his ex-girlfriends have been reliably unfaithful.
“Three out of five cheated on me,” he admits.
“Why would anyone cheat on you?!” I ask aghast. If I had beefcake like this waiting for me at home, I'd never eat meat anywhere else (nudge nudge wink wink)! “You’re totally hot!”
“I’m kind of an asshole,” he says. “And I have a short temper.”
(Hence lyrics like: "She said, 'You’re not exactly perfect. You’re the average kind of reject'.")
Josh wants to take a cig break, so I follow outside, as does Penny Lane. She is one jealous bitch, jumping up at me as though attempting to knock the camera from my hands as I take snapshots of her master.
Josh points out a blood stain on his shoe…evidence of a fist fight that left with him nerve damage on the right side of his face. He points out a scar on his cheek, but it’s clear that’s not the only wound he’s suffered.
“My parents recently got divorced,” he says. “And my dad and his girlfriend live together now. Apparently she was around for a long time before, but I never knew about it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say.
“It’s okay,” Josh replies. “Now I can claim to be a child of divorce. It explains a lot.”
Josh leads me back inside and up to his music room. He shows me his $100 guitar (which I naively “ooh” and “ahh” at until he tells me it’s a cheap knock-off of the real thing), then plays me several songs on a black guitar (Again, I’m impressed until he tells me, “Four chords. That’s all I know.”)
Halfway through the serenade, as I’m photographing Josh mid-strum, my camera switches into recording mode. I’ve never filmed before, so what comes out are mostly sideways images interspersed with the sound of the shutter clicking, but to have this haunting voice in real time, at my fingertips, excites me almost as much as being within groping distance of this hottie. (Cue "I wanna hold your hand.")
Two hours pass and though Josh has been more than generous with his self-disclosure, I feel like I’ve barely scraped the surface of what makes him tick. As we descend the stairs post-private-concert, I ask, “Did you give up on the sausage, then?”
“Oh, shit!” Josh says, hurrying to the stove. The mixture hasn’t burned at all; in fact, it looks just about the same as it did when he started.
“Well, there’s tomorrow’s lunch,” Josh says, scraping it all into a Tupperware. “I’m glad I thought to make that salsa.”
We take a couple pictures together outside and Josh tells me how awesome my idea of the Rockstar Guest Chefs is.
Shortly thereafter, he sends me a thank you text. “I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much,” it reads.
“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” I reply.
Later on, in my attempt to pen this post, I’m struggling to merge two versions of Josh on the page: the responsible, upstanding homeowner and the fist-fighting, beer drinking rock star. Then I get an e-mail. It’s Josh’s salsa recipe. The title says it all: Cowboy Caviar.
**
Like Josh’s kielbasa, my video taping is still in the experimental stage. I’ll post the sole upright clip from our interview below. If you’d like to hear more, and don’t mind craning your neck to the side to see properly, visit Man Eater’s You Tube channel (and while you’re there, subscribe!) for additional videos of Josh’s songs.
For photos from our interview, visit Man Eater’s Facebook Album.
COWBOY CAVIAR
Ingredients
1 can (15 ounces) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (15 ounces) whole kernel corn, drained
2 large tomatoes, chopped
1 large avocado, diced
½ red onion chopped
¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
3/4 tablespoon lime juice
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Method
• Mix all ingredients together in large bowl and chill.
• Serve with chips.
• Yup, that’s it. Simple. Cool. Uncomplicated. Just like the man that created it.
I absolutely LOVE the story and the recipe!!!
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