We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Josh Rivers. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Josh below.

Josh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I think, in a away, I started as early as I could because I was experiencing the world that I write songs about now. I’m not sure I would have much to write about otherwise. The story has to be lived through first before you can talk about it.

It took me a while to figure out but somewhere along the line I realized that the other story tellers around me, the other people that were expressing their perspective and telling their stories were somehow giving me permission to live my own. I think if I were to go back and change anything I would lose much of what I’ve learned and I don’t think I would want to do that.

Josh, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi I’m Josh! I’m the singer and keyboardist for the band Shades of Oleander. We’re an Indy rock group out of Austin, TX that writes and plays original music. You can stream our music on most streaming services and even watch a few music videos if you wanted to. We’ve had two songs get radio play on a local station as well as a European station. We’ve also had the honor of two music videos played on Austin Music TV. You can catch our shows locally at various places around Austin throughout the year and we are also playing in Corpus in July. The best place to keep up with us is Instagram but we also have Facebook, TikTok, and X.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

It may not always feel like it, but to be honest, I think a lot of people are already doing great things to support creatives in their community. Your own publication is a great example. I think a lot of people are supporting in various ways which sometimes is coming out to a show or an exhibit to physically be there in support and sometimes it’s just ‘liking’ a post or just taking the time to check out whatever work that creative is presenting to the world. I think it’s hard to expect everyone to relate to our creative work even though we may wish it. So I appreciate when people just simply take the time to look at. the work.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

To this day, one of the best interactions I ever had with someone was an older farmer who planned a big party and invited us to play at his farm. After we played a couple of songs, he was so excited he came up in the middle of our set and handed me a blunt. I took a hit, handed it back to him and kept playing. 10/10 one of the coolest things to ever happen to me!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shadesofoleander
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/5hbewiVMAYE4LXRd/?mibextid=qi2Omg
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@shadesofoleander
• Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/2vimU