We were lucky to catch up with Joshua Williams recently and have shared our conversation below.
Joshua, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?
I am extremely happy as an artist/creative. I am happiest when I’m on stage performing. That is not to say that the journey isn’t full of doubts or reconsiderations along the way. When i first left my job at Florida State University back in May 2017, I was full of enthusiasm about my decision to pursue music full time. Life quickly punched me in the mouth and the thoughts of “what have I done” and “have i made a mistake” were weekly topics of thought for me. Im an R& B artists, but I perform in corporate bands playing in weddings almost every weekend. While the corporate gigs help pay the bills, it is not the dream I had in mind. So thoughts of maybe I need to get back to a “regular job” would sneak back in because singing at weddings every weekend is not what I intend to do to make ends meet. While it is fun at times, its not as rewarding when compared to the times I’ve gotten to perform at a club or lounge singing my own songs or headlining my own show. Even more recently, in January of 2020 i dropped a project that I thought was pretty good and had initial signs that it might have promise then boom!! the pandemic hit. So i tried again and released my 3rd Project last August. From August til about June of this year, I thought maybe it was time I started considering other alternatives. I have some friends recently ask about me getting back in education and teaching again. Being an independent, not too well known but trying to become known artist is tough. Requires an enormous amount of patience and steady belief in yourself. Admittingly sometimes it gets hard to perserve and stay the course. Nevertheless I always resolve that I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.
I currently have a single off the last album titled “Nasty” which has been gaining momentum and has become extremely popular thanks to the wonderful people who use TikTok. So it has reenergized me to stay the course and I’m glad that I continue to do so.
Joshua, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Joshua Showtime Williams, I am an R&B artist, musician, dancer all around entertainer. I call Tallahassee, Fl and southern Illinois both home but Tallahassee is where I got my professional musical start. I grew up in Church singing, so its something I’ve done all my life. However is 2015 while living in Tallahassee, a friend invited me to have an unofficial audition for a band called Tallahassee Nights Live(TNL), which is one of North Florida’s beat live music productions. From there, I began to develop and learn my craft as an artist and entertainer. I had some good shows and I had some bad shows but TNL served as an essential foundation for me as an artist overall and I wouldn’t be to this point now without them. So just a quick moment if I may to shout out Darius ‘Doc D’ Baker and my entire TNL family! While im no longer in Tallahassee, I still perform for large events, small events across the country using the lessons and trainging provided to me through that experience.
In addition to being a performer, i am a songwriter as well. I have 3 projects that I have released. All are available across all digital platfroms under Joshua Showtime Williams. Listening to my music will give you today’s feel the nostalgia of 90s R&B, which is one of the things that helps me stand out and what my followers say they love most about my music and sound.
Currently, i have a single out titled “Nasty”. It is my most popular song to date and I’m really excited about this one. It has been picking up momentum through tiktok and its streaming numbers have begun to climb rapidly. So I’m really proud of it. I released my very first music video to this song and itt Currently has 250k views on youtube after just a month, while the song itself has almost half a million streams across all the platforms combined. So if you haven’t heard it yet, it is indeed for the grown and the sexy it is called Nasty by Joshua Showtime Williams. I’d greatly appreciate it.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding thing as an artist for me is getting messages from people saying how much they love my original music! I sing plenty of covers but there’s nothing more satisfying when people not only think you sound good but can relate to the message/content of your music. It’s humbling, keeps me going, I’m encouraged by it. Then to perform said songs and people actually singing along and knowing the words. Nothing better than that feeling!
How did you build your audience on social media?
My audience was built on social media through time. I was simply posting, and posting often. The beautiful thing about social media is that is really one large community. So one person would share a post here, another would share something else. Over time, I gained more followers through word of mouth. Until one time, I had a couple of pages with extremely large followings repost some content of mine and then i saw my audience begin to grow rapidly across social media. So if you’re just starting, my advice is post quality content(put some thought into what you’re doing), use the right hashtags, and stay consistent. The videos that popped for me I never once thought those would be the videos that would get shared the most etc. So keep posting, you never know which post is going to hit big for you.
Contact Info:
- Website: Jswmusiq.com
- Instagram: @jswmusiq
- Facebook: Joshua Showtime Williams
- Twitter: @jswmusiq
- Youtube: Youtube.com/@jswmusiq
- Other: TikTok: @jswmusiq
Image Credits
Delan Ellis – Echo Exposure