Q&A With Josaleigh Pollett

[Q&A publishes twice a week and is a set of pre written questions sent to interested people. Josaleigh and i did this over Zoom instead of email, and it was a delight. Please check out Josaleigh’s 2023 record “In the Garden, By the Weeds,” one of my favorite recent records]

Tell us how you came to love and collect vinyl

So my vinyl listening and collection journey really started very, very young. My dad and my mom both have just like, huge record collections, and both listened regularly to vinyl at home all through my childhood and all growing up and when I was, like, 17 or 18, one of my first jobs was at a record store up in Ogden, Utah, which is where my hometown is. And it was just always  this place that I admired so much, and would go buy stuff from all the time. And I just thought, everybody that worked there was so cool and I was obsessed with everybody there. I would like, scavenge all of their picks of the week and everything. And I just weaseled my way into a job. I was there enough that when they were hiring for a part time person, I was just somehow able to sneak my way in. I worked there on and off for four years through college. It accelerated my collection and listening and obsession stuff. My habit of listening to new releases every Friday…started then, because we get a shipment of new CDs every Friday.  Well, what you do is you listen to everything that came out [that day], and see what you like. The internet has just made that more (and) more overwhelming sometimes. But I started buying vinyl of all of my favorite things, and I now have a pretty decent-sized collection, one that really sucks to move, so I really like to avoid moving.

And I think now my relationship to buying vinyl is…because there’s so much music that I love, it’s just like there’s not enough money in the world to be able to afford buying everything you love on vinyl. So I try to set aside a little money every month, whatever my favorite albums of that month are, I’ll try and buy one or two of them. Sometimes, if it’s a Bandcamp Friday or something like that, I will splurge and buy way too many. So I have new vinyl coming in pretty regularly. 

What one record in your collection would you be most eager to share with new friends?

I loved this question…because it was really hard to pick one thing. There’s so many things, and it just depends on the person and what the vibe is and what time of day it is. But I ended up picking the newest Destroyer record (Labyrinthitis) just because I think that this album is so surprisingly dancey, and also deeply emotional and so fun and beautiful. It is one of my favorite records. It’s really nice background music, and also can be a centerpiece if you tune into it, I seriously cannot get enough of that record. I still listen to it, like, at least once a month since.

What’s your most prized possession in your record collection?

This artist will cover a lot of the questions. I thought of the same record for, like, many of them. Jason Molina of Songs:Ohia and Magnolia Electric Company is one of my all time favorite artists. I’ve just been in love with his songwriting since I was a teenager, and I find so much inspiration from it. My songwriting tends to be really inspired by his songwriting. Ever since I heard it, I’ve just been like, oh, this is, these are the kind of songs that I want to write. And when I was working at Gray Whale, which is the name of the record store that I worked at, I found somebody who traded in this first pressing of “Didn’t it Rain” which is one of my very favorite Songs:Ohia records. And it is, like a little dusty and a little warped, but it still sounds perfect. This is just one of my favorite albums of all time. And because he’s now since passed away, and I feel like there was such a big resurgence of people getting really excited about his music after he passed away, I feel like everything that came out like in that first run of things, from when he was alive and everything’s getting pressed. Back when he was still making music, and, like, still touring, feels like so special to be able to have a piece of and I actually have that one, and then I have another one, “Fading Trails” which is also the original pressing, but also [the] question about being like a completionist with any vinyl when I worked at the record store, I felt like I needed to. I felt this pressure of like, well, I have three Phosphorescent records, so I need to buy the rest of his catalog, and I think I just burned out on that so quickly. I gave myself a lot of grace. I just don’t love everybody’s every album, and even my favorites, like Jason Molina, now that he’s passed away, like his label continues to put out big box set collections and reissues all the time, and that just feels so overwhelming to me, and like, lots of cool stuff there that I would probably enjoy a lot. But it just makes me feel like I’m stuck in this, like capitalist grind when I’m like, Oh, this could just go on forever. I’ll never be a completionist this way. I stopped buying variants too, because, yeah, they put out too many variants. 

What’s your favorite album to listen to on headphones?

I really think that any Bjork album counts as that for me. I really love Homogenic or, I hope I’m saying that right. I’ve never actually said it out loud until this exact moment. One of my favorite records by her, especially the song “Bachelorette.” I will just, like, put headphones on and sit in front of the record player and just blast it. And I just barely got started getting Bjork on vinyl, because it was kind of a pain to get some of the international releases over here. And then my local record store started carrying some of the UK imports, but they were able to get them a little cheaper, so it wasn’t so expensive. And so I didn’t have any Bjork on vinyl until like, two years ago, and now I’ve got a few, and they’re also good, and they were ones that I’d only ever listened to on streaming. I had a CD of Post in my car for like, 15 years, and like I It feels so good to listen to it on vinyl, because it’s just like experiencing it in a whole new way.

What’s the weirdest record you own?

I brought a weird one that was a gift from my dad, and it’s this Marx Brothers vinyl that he found probably in like, some thrift bin somewhere. And I grew up watching the Marx Brothers pretty religiously. I watched all their movies when I was really young. And I think they’re just, like, so funny and so good. And this vinyl is so silly, because it’s like, when was it pressed? Let’s see, there’s not a date on here but it’s got to be old. Maybe 60s, 70s. I don’t know when this was pressed, probably earlier, because, I mean, the movies [were in] the 40s. So this is old, but it’s so cheesy, because…it’s clips from the movies, but it’s announced by this very big Mr. Moviefone announcer guy, and he’s like, explaining the joke before every joke, and it ruins it completely. This is not fun to listen to. It’s not good. Like, the clips are great. But every time I think about listening to it, I’m just like, I’d rather just watch the movie. Because the guy is like, listen here to Groucho be snarky about the size of his wife, and it’s really ridiculously so dated and so silly. But like this, like, the art on this is really fun. The art is very 70s.

Tell me about a record you received as a gift.

So it’s like, the way that I got this record. So it’s, it’s a repressing of The Flaming Lips’ Transmissions From the Satellite Heart which is one of their first records and my dad, he’s loved The Flaming Lips my entire life. He loved them so much when they first came around in the early 90s, and they’ve just been a band that he’s always really adored and I like a lot of their albums, but not all of them. I certainly loved them a lot more in the early 2000s than I do now. They can be a little overwhelming to listen to now, I think, but still very fun. 

I brought out this record because I just think it’s funny how I got it. So when I was like 19, I dated this guy long distance that I had met on the internet. In the early days of blogging, I had a tumblr, and I met this dude, and we  had a purely online relationship, and met in person, like twice, but one of the times he came to visit, he gave me a version of this record that was a very first pressing; it was translucent vinyl from 1993 and it was just was so important to him, and he deeply, loved it so much. He gave It to me, and then we broke up, and I didn’t hear from him for years, and probably, like, eight or nine years later, I get a box, like a vinyl box, in the mail, and inside it is this brand new, sealed version [of the Flaming Lips album] with a note from him saying, I gave you the original pressing of this, and it’s really important to me, and I didn’t want to just ask for it back and leave you empty handed. So here’s a new pressing of it, if you wouldn’t mind shipping me back the first one. He’d included a little prepaid postage thing. So it was very minimal effort on me. And I just think that that’s like, if you’ve ever given an ex something that’s meaningful to you, that’s such a thoughtful and respectful way to get it back, like, a decade later.

Amazing. I would have been like, yes, I will go right now and send it to you.

Right exactly. I was like, this is the kindest thing. Like you did not have to do that. You could have just asked for the one back. I never would have, like, even been mad about it. I think that’s so cool.

And now you’re going to tell us about your favorite live album that you own.

[I]t is one of my very first pieces of vinyl that I ever got, it’s Joni Mitchell’s Miles of Aisles and it’s from 1974. She did this, like a big live version of a bunch of her greatest hits, mostly. Joni Mitchell’s always been one of my very favorite songwriters, and my mom gave me this record,I think I was pretty young, like 14 or 15, and she was like, you like…you’re gonna shit your pants when you listen to this live record, it’s the best possible version of her. And she was absolutely right.

I sometimes have a little bit of an aversion to live records.I love going to see live music, but listening to something live at home is not always my favorite thing. But that one has always just been such a comfort to me. Where it’s like, the crowd noise and her stage banter is just so good. I love it so much, but it’s funny because I have, there’s a song on [my] record that I wrote or released in 2020 and the track is called “Miles of Miles” and it’s because when my ex husband and I got divorced and we split up our record collections, that was one he sneakily, intentionally or otherwise, I’m not sure, but put into his own record collection. It was in the weeks after we were splitting up, I went over to his apartment, because it’s always that  terrible time after a breakup where you’re still talking when you probably shouldn’t be, and like, Gary’s here to check in with you, and it’s like you should not be doing that. And I was there, and I had, like, ridden my bike over to his new apartment, and I was looking at his records that were sitting on the floor, and he was putting them away. And I was like, you motherfucker, that is my Joni Mitchell record. Like I have a copy of that, and that’s the version my mom gave me, and it’s my favorite record. I can’t believe you’ve done this, and I huffed and grabbed it and took it home with me and pedaled my bike all fast, just like crying and processing my divorce and being so angry. So one of my favorite records, and also one of my favorite get my record back stories.

Josaleigh Pollett makes tender and thoughtful DIY indie rock in Salt Lake City, UT. Their most recent album, “In The Garden, By The Weeds” came out in July of 2023 and is available all over the internet.