Photos taken during interview by Josh Coburger and others provided by Josh Teed
For the best viewing experience, select “Show Reader” in the search bar on your device
Josh Teed immediately exuded warmth and kindness, grinning and laughing as he delved into topics that are clearly near and dear to him. I had the privilege of sitting down with him to discuss these passions on May 29, 2026, at ILLfest in Austin, Texas. Combining two juxtaposing ideas, dubstep and classical music, Josh seamlessly weaves the two together as though they have always been meant to be intertwined. While performing, he masterfully drops thundering bass with epic buildups and crescendos and then effortlessly layers a violin atop, which appears to come as easily to him as breathing.
In a world of CDJs and laptops, watching him play live instruments is such a treat and adds a certain je ne sais quoi to his performances. His ILLfest performance delivered a thoughtfully and meticulously curated tracklist that kept the crowd dancing and cheering, leaving them wanting more. I had the privilege of sitting down with Josh Teed on May 29, 2026 at ILLfest in Austin Texas.
Josh and I during the interview at ILLfest (also pictured, the Texas humidity) | Photos by Josh Coburger
If you haven’t had the privilege of seeing Josh live, I cannot emphasize enough that you should do so. You can find his summer tour schedule and extensive catalogue of music online. His latest album and accompanying book Tides of Change, will sweep you away to an alternate realm of epic adventures and quests.
Festival Squad: Thank you so much for sitting down with me. It’s a real pleasure to follow your career and I have to say I love your Tides of Change album and the remix album that came just out. Now that Tides of Change has been out for a while, looking back at the synergy between the music and the novel, did the narrative dictate your musical textures or did the music suggest new plot directions?
Josh Teed: So for this one I ended up writing the music first. I outlined the novel chapter by chapter, the key events of each chapter and then I went and I wrote the album out and now I’m writing the book. In retrospect, I would have done it in a different order. I probably would have written the book first next time and let that really dictate the exact setting and vibe for each track. But this time the tracks were just kind of based loosely on the outlines of the album, or of the book, rather.
Festival Squad: Have any fan interpretations surprised you enough to make you reconsider parts of the lore?
Josh Teed: No, not yet, because I haven’t put the full book out yet. I mean I’ve only put out three… We’re doing one chapter a month online right now because I’m still actively writing it honestly. Turns out writing a book is a lot longer of a process than one would have imagined (laughs). But yeah, I’m actively putting out one chapter a month right now until it’s done with the nine chapters to cover the nine tracks of the album. And then I reckon I should probably have that done by like September.
Festival Squad: You’ve expressed a long-term goal of moving into soundtracking and film scoring. How did writing this album with a cinematic lens change your workflow compared to your earlier work like “Recurring Dreams”?
Josh Teed: So big difference between this one and “Recurring Dreams” was that the “Recurring Dreams” composition with the orchestra elements was really stripped back and it was mostly focused on just the violin itself as the foremost element. And with Tides of Change, it was a lot more of the full orchestra composition using like several different violin sections, viola, cellos, harp, flutes, really working in as many elements as I could and trying to make them all play with each other. But yeah, [a] different focus as far as group context versus the solo violin.
Festival Squad: You won the Florida Fiddle Championship when you were just nine years old. If you could go back and play one of your songs for your nine year old self, which one would it be and what do you think his reaction would be?
Josh Teed: “Learning to Fly” for sure. There’s just some parts of the violin solo that like fluctuate between classical and bluegrass and Celtic, and younger me would have been absolutely geeked hearing all the combinations of those put together.
Festival Squad: When you were nine years old, did you ever think you would ever end up on this career trajectory?
Josh Teed: Not this one particularly, no. I mean it was interesting growing up with it because my mom was a violin teacher and [playing violin] wasn’t even optional for me as a kid. (huge smile) As soon as I could hold something in my hands, I was playing a violin. It was kind of how it went (chuckles). And my interest really fluctuated the whole time when I was younger. I was a kid —I was super into sports. I loved playing basketball and really wanted to pursue that. If anything, when I was a kid, I would have imagined that I would be playing classical music or something in an orchestra maybe. But yeah, going the bass music, EDM or dubstep route never crossed my mind until I was probably 20, no, 19.
Festival Squad: When you’re performing and switching between the live violin and DJing and other live instruments, do you have to actively reset your brain when you swap instruments or has it become second nature at this point?
Josh Teed: So I’ve got it down to a point where it’s not a necessity to do so. When I fluctuate between different instruments, like the violin and the mandolin, which, has the same tuning as the violin, so my brain can just stay there. And I play the didgeridoo sometimes, which is just a monotone instrument. I don’t have to think about tuning at all, just focus on my breathing. I don’t have to switch my brain too much between different tunings or anything, but it can get a little hectic when I do; I used to like work in guitar and keys sometimes too, and then there would actually be a little moment where I’d have to switch over and try and think about it, because I’m not so fluent with the those ones. [With the] violin, I’ve been playing it so long that I don’t have to think about it at all. It’s easier than talking for me, but going into something else where I have to consciously think about what I’m playing is definitely a switch in the brain.
Festival Squad: I am not a musician, so that whole realm is unfamiliar to me, so thanks for explaining the process.
Josh Teed: Oh, I love chatting about it (laughs).
Festival Squad: You’re headlining the Mishawaka in Colorado in August with a live ensemble, which feels like a natural evolution of your work. What is the core vision for the show and what drew you to the specific musicians you hand selected to bring the show to life?
Josh Teed: So the core vision for the show is to focus on the more orchestral and cinematic pieces that I’ve written. At this point my discography is 100 tracks plus, so I have a lot of things that I can go back and dig up and find what I really want to focus on putting together for the whole accompaniment. It’s not going to be focusing on any particular era of my music, just all the pieces that I think could be most cohesive that I’ve worked on over time and for working with the people in the orchestra — I feel really lucky. It’s a lot of people that I’ve had the opportunity to play music with before.
It’s going to be my friend Kevin Starfox playing sax and trumpet. Brennan Forrester from Evanoff is going to be playing keys and my friend Jobe Wagner is playing drums. (Big smile) he’s phenomenal and absolutely rips it (chuckles). Those three guys are local to Colorado and then I have a bunch of friends coming in from out of the state as well. My friend Christian’s coming down from New York to play cello. He’s one of my favorite acts I’ve seen live, still. And the only time I ever saw him play was maybe five or six years ago when we got to jam together, but he plays full live improv electric cello and live loops it and turns it into electronic beats —it’s incredible, his mindset’s already there. Hearing him transfer over to what we’re doing in this project is going to be really cool. And then my friend Siren is coming out from Arizona to play electric harp with us and she’s also in the same realm. On her own time she plays over electronic music with a harp. I tried to focus on people who I know have a background in this style of music so it’ll be a natural progression for them to kind of hop into it.
Then aside from that, my friend Kara and her friend India are coming to do like choir vocals and then we have my other buddy Nick coming to play violin as well.
Festival Squad: Wow — how many people is that?
Josh Teed: All in all with myself included, it’ll be nine. And a typical chamber orchestra ranges between like eights and twelve. Oh, it’s going to be special (biggest smile yet).
Festival Squad: All right so now that you’ve premiered the full live ensemble at Hydroponic Festival, how did it feel to finally bring that vision to life?
Josh Teed: Oh it was awesome. The people that we got to do it with made it what it was — it was really fun. Over the years I’ve messed around with a lot of different assortments of people like in New Hampshire I started off doing it with my friends Greg and Tyler, who were playing bass, guitar and keys, and we jammed on that for some years. And even when I go back to New Hampshire I still get up with those guys and play some music. But then coming down to Colorado over the years, I’ve always played with who’s playing drums with me for Mishawaka. We’ve done a good handful of shows now. We did Meow Wolf together and we did the Planetarium in Boulder together — that was a really special show too. I played with him all over Colorado and then Kevin Starfox and I played together a bunch over the years. We have really good synergy playing together and the same with Brennan, too, from Evanoff. He’s the one that I had the least experience playing with, but even still like we’d have a good amount of time on stage together jamming so, there’s already like some preexisting synergy. They’re just really good people who have a deep love of music and a nice enthusiasm for life. It makes it really, really fun to work with people like that. The synergy with us on stage at Hydrophonic was amazing and the crowd there was unreal too, and so was the whole vibe of it. For a first year festival, you couldn’t ask for any better — it was just so fun.
Festival Squad: Now do you guys rehearse before you guys do a live show?
Josh Teed: Yeah, for that one we got three good rehearsal nights in prior. And then for the chamber orchestra, we’re going to be doing biweekly Zoom meetings going up to it because everybody’s all over the country, so it’s really hard to get everybody in the same place for it. We are going to try and get everybody in a couple of days beforehand and get at least one good practice day in.
Festival Squad: You are returning to Sacred Acre in Alaska this summer. What is it about the energy of that specific remote environment that makes it such an essential stop in your touring cycle?
Josh Teed: This is only the second time I’ve ever done it. I wish it was more of an essential stop for me. I mean I love it up there. There’s a natural connection between nature and creativity, right? And they feed off of each other inherently, going back there as long as art has existed and people have brought a spark out of nature. I think it’s just really hard to beat that level of immersion in nature up there. You’re right on the bay, you can see the icebergs on the other side, you can see the volcanoes out in the distance and you’re just out there in the woods in Alaska and it’s really magical. The people who are up there don’t really get a whole lot of opportunities to go out and do that, but it seems like there are more now, but you can tell they really relish the opportunity to get down in their hometown.
I got to play two times the first year too. It was really fun. [I played] a downtempo set during the day and a late night heavy set in the first year. It was so fun. Yeah. I’m really looking forward to going back up there, and I’m bringing the whole family this year. My mom and my dad are coming and my girlfriend’s coming, so it’s going to be a nice trip. We’re going to bump around because my mom grew up in Anchorage, so this is the first time she’s ever gone back. So we’re going to go for a little tour around.
Festival Squad: As you prepare for your debut at Elements Festival in Pennsylvania, what are you most excited to explore musically when you bring your sound to this new crowd and landscape?
Josh Teed: So Elements I’m very, very excited for. It’s one that’s been on my radar for a long time, growing up in the Northeast. I was always hoping I get a chance to do it and I’ve kind of lived my life on the motto of “all things in due time,” so I’m glad it’s [happening] at the time it is because I feel like I have a way wider range of music now than I would have at any point prior to this, so I can really kind of go all over the place with it, right? It’ll be cool too because there are a lot of familiar faces up there. People from the Northeast travel a lot for festivals because they’re kinda of spread out. I think for that reason specifically I’ll play some of my older stuff for the people who will know it there, mixed in with a lot of the new orchestral / cinematic stuff.
Festival Squad: You have been vocal about the importance of visual art and murals as a part of the festival experience. How does the visual aesthetic of a festival, including the art installation or live murals, influence your own creative head space before you step on stage?
Josh Teed: I think as an artist, I really try to have a full appreciation for the widest range of art, right? Music is only a small little sliver of it and the beautiful thing about festivals, when they’re done proper, is that every aspect comes together to create a cohesive environment; that can really give you a lot of creative inspiration. I’ll come home and I’ll write, draw, and write more music. But in the moment, when I’m there, soaking in all the different vibes, it just makes a beautiful puzzle of everybody’s energy. When you kind of get a gauge for the vibe and what people are feeling as a whole coming into it, that definitely influences where I take it musically.
Festival Squad: So between the release of your remix album, Tides of Change, and the transition into this orchestral live show, you seem to be rapidly evolving your sound. Does the remix culture within the bass scene play a role in your own tracks or do you prefer to keep your studio creations as final close statements?
Josh Teed: I like to produce with the idea of playing out the whole track in mind. I’ve had this vision for a long time of putting together the live chamber of orchestra ensemble kind of situation. For the last maybe year-and-a-half to two years producing with that exact scenario in mind. I have a bit of a love/hate thing with flip culture as a whole because I feel like — it’s really interesting, right? In hip-hop history, which is really what this stems from: the beat structure all comes from hip-hop and house music and resampling of old tracks and things was instrumental in it. It was huge, huge, huge, huge. But people who did it back then took the cuts of music that they really enjoyed and appreciated and reworked them was something of their own and it had that element of TLC to it that really made it magic and made it special. Today I feel like there are people who do it, right?
People who still do it phenomenally and do it really well. But when you’re talking about the overall umbrella of “flip culture” in bass music, I feel like a lot of it happens because people are looking to hop on whatever is hyped, whatever train is going to get you seen by doing this and this. And it loses a lot of the soul out of it that comes from that derivative version, right? That was because people were loving these tracks so much they wanted to put their own twist on it and do something different, and because they loved the original source material. Now people are just doing it because they feel obligated to do it, not because they really have a passion for what they’re flipping per se, if that makes sense.
Festival Squad: It does. How does remixing work? Again, I’m not a producer, so when you were looking to have Tides of Change album remixed, did you seek out these artists and ask them to remix or did they come to you?
Josh Teed: Absolutely — I made a list of people, like a three or four year tiered long for each track of people whose sounds that I thought would best fit each track and then I went down the row reaching out to people.
Festival Squad: I’ve always wondered that, but I’ve never known- We’ll be in the artist about it.
Josh Teed: Going back to flipping — I just wanted to put it out there that it’s not something that people should look down on, right? Because like I said, it’s a huge part of the history of the art, right? And if you’re looking down on that itself, you’re doing a disservice to the whole thing. But I would just encourage people to flip things and remix [songs] that they really enjoy and are passionate about it, as opposed to just doing it because you feel obliged to. So whenever you do something that you just feel obliged to do, you’re not going to have the creative energy behind it that you would have over something that you’re doing because you’re passionate about, right?
Josh’s website can be found here with all of his tour dates, festival appearances and music.