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Interview: Joshua Joyce Explores the Space Between Past and Present on Debut ‘A Tender & Violent Nature’ LP feat. Haunting Focus Track “High Tide”

May 8, 2025
William Brookson
Latest posts by William Brookson (see all)

Toronto-based singer-songwriter Joshua Joyce has released his debut album, A Tender & Violent Nature – a collection of poetic, melancholic, and soul-searching folk songs exploring the tension between past and present, tenderness and turmoil. Anchored by the stirring focus track “High Tide,” Joyce’s first full-length effort marries literate songwriting with sparse, cinematic arrangements.

From the dusty edges of Americana to the windswept intimacy of alt-country, A Tender & Violent Nature explores the uneasy dualities that define us. “It’s a record about provenance, about forgiveness, about making peace with what and where you come from,” Joyce explains. “Sand and gravel, so to speak.”

Written during a particularly introspective period in 2024, “High Tide” was the very first song penned for the album, and laid the thematic groundwork for what would follow. “In the interest of keeping things fun and sexy, I had a few months where I’d been thinking quite a lot about dying,” Joyce says with a wry smile. “‘High Tide’ is what fell out of those inquiries.”

The song balances lonesome lyricism with warm fiddle lines performed by Ellen Daly, resulting in what Joyce describes as “the feeling of getting very bad news while looking at a rather pretty sunset.” Producer Rylan Smirlies helped shape the track’s sparse, atmospheric arrangement – allowing space for acoustic guitar, humming chorus vocals, and Daly’s fiddle to create emotional resonance without overproduction.

1. What did you enjoy most about the recording process of this new release?
The first iterations of my songs and the subsequent demos are usually pretty sparse—just a man and a guitar, really. The thing I enjoyed most about making A Tender & Violent Nature was seeing the other musicians I worked with bring their own musicality to bear on the songs, building those tunes into full arrangements, and seeing them become something other and better than what I originally envisioned.
 
2. Share a nugget of advice that has resonated with you most over the years.
I think there’s something to the idea that the audience comes last. Not because they aren’t important, but because it’s so much easier to write something true when you’re looking inward rather than outward, or at least it is for me. I usually don’t think of anybody hearing a song I’ve written until it is good and done, and then you can go about worrying as to whether anyone will actually care to listen to it.
3. Who would be your dream artist/band to co-headline a tour with?
Man, that’s a tough one. A living artist? Maybe Jason Isbell, and I also think Maggie Rogers is really terrific. But if I could stretch back in time? John Prine.
4. What sets your music apart from others in your genre?
When I was younger, I thought I might write novels and I like to think that shows in the songwriting and lyricism in my work. I’ve never really been keen on falling back into cliché and I’m not huge on writing love songs. I am interested in using songwriting as an inquiry into who and what I am in the present moment though, and finding a way to etch those inquiries into some semblance of permanence and then giving them to the world. I hope that shows up on this record, and future ones too.
5. Tell us what your favourite song is at the moment and why.
A couple of months ago, I was flipping through the value section at Kops Records and found a copy of The Supremes Sing Country Western & Pop (1965) for $4.99. The album opens with them singing a version of Willie Nelson’s Funny (How Time Slips Away), and I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever hear. That is the one that comes to mind for me at the moment.

For fans of raw storytelling and finely-crafted folk music, A Tender & Violent Nature marks the arrival of an artist who understands the weight of a quiet moment and the beauty of laying one’s burdens down in melody. If you like your music bittersweet, reflective, and full of lived-in wisdom, Joshua Joyce’s debut is essential listening.

 

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