This new collection marks your ten year anniversary as a recording artist. What thoughts went through your mind when you sat down to pick out the songs for the collection?
That I’ve written a lot of songs without really realising it. I’ve created quite a body of work over the last ten years. But it brings back a lot of memories and at the same time, you go ‘wow’!. Ten years ago I would never have thought that I’d have a best of coming out. Most people just put out a couple of records and that’s it, right? But it’s also a good way of allowing yourself to go ‘okay, what am I going to do next?’ It gives you the opportunity to start over.


How the hell can you forget your own songs?
You make records and you play the songs thousands and thousands of times, over and over again at your shows. When you write an album, you try to write songs that people will gravitate towards. But there’s usually three or four songs that don’t really connect with your audience, so you tend to forget about them. I was going through my catalogue the other day and there were songs there I had forgotten all about. It’s not necessarily bad songs, just songs that aren’t really in my life any more. Or songs that I only play every once in a while. Not b-sides. I’d rather call them b-cuts.


Do you ever get surprised at the requests people call out for at your shows?
Yeah. That happens. You always get fans who know every song you’ve ever written. They call out for these songs and sometimes I’m convinced that no one else in the audience has ever heard of that song. That happens every now and then.


I’ve always wondered about this. Do you, as a performing artist, get annoyed with fans calling out for songs? You DO have set lists after all, don’t you?
It depends. Every night’s different. Some nights you’re in a good mood and you go ‘ok, let’s do that one if the band knows it’. Other nights you get the guy who just keeps yelling out for ‘Love Vibration’ between every song…


Like Free Bird!
Yeah. And even before you play the first song, he’s yelling out for this one song, and you just want to go ‘don’t worry man, we’re gonna get to that song. You don’t have to keep shouting, just chill out’.


This also marks the ten year anniversary of your debut album, Dressed Up Like Nebraska. It’s a damn fine album, but is there anything you would have done differently if you were putting out that album now?
The recording of it I guess. I was very naïve back then. We recorded it in a friends house where the drummer and I would be in one room and my friend would be in another. We worked on it for about six months on and off. I was paying as little as $75 a day to record it. When I listen to it today, I’m surprised. The songs are really basic, but they’re good and people liked them. Back then, when I listened to it, I thought it sounded like other people’s music, the music I listened to myself. I liked it. When you play in bands, you often go, ‘we’re good, but I wouldn’t want to listen to us all the time’. I didn’t feel that way with Dressed Up Like Nebraska.


Don’t most artists have all these romantic feelings about their first album, despite whatever flaws and faults it might have?
Sure. I definitely feel that way. It’s exciting having your first album come out. Mine came out and I was over in England a few weeks later playing gigs. It was like I had gone from my couch to having some succes, people actually talking about me and coming to my shows. It’s an amazing feeling.


Your music has changed over the years and so have the labels that have attached to your music. You’ve gone from alternative country to country soul to latin influenced folk – with a constant growing audience. When did you first feel that your music gained an audience that stretched beyond the alt.country crowd?
Whenever someone tries to label your music, you wanna break out of it. When Dressed Up Like Nebraska came out, and to some extent, Home as well, people were calling it alternative country. My record label was a bit disturbed by it. Alternative country records don’t sell, they said. But 1972 was probably the album that tapped into a wider audience. It caught the ears of someone who likes music but doesn’t necessarily pursue it like you and I would do. 1972 broke it for me.


What’s the greatest lesson the past ten years has taught you?
Stay true to yourself. It’s good to take advice from other people, but be careful who you take advice from. There’s a lot of ‘you should do this or you should do that’, but just sit down and write some songs and do whatever comes naturally. I’ve never tried to stylize somethint to make my modern or commercially liable- I want my records to sell like the records I like. I want my records to fit in with my own record collection. On my second and third record I was kinda getting pressured into doing some things that I didn’t really want to do. Make singles and producing them in a way so that they sounded like someone else. I tried but it didn’t work.


You mentioned earlier that the release of this best of allows you to wipe the slate clean and take a fresh start. What are your plans and does it still involve sounding just a bit country?
I’ve been doing some Brazillian influenced stuff, as far as the rhythms. I’m singing in Spanish, just messing around with some stuff and it sounds good. If you ever get tired of yourself, just sing in a different language. But yeah, it’s more jazzy but at the same time also Afro-Brazillian. It sounds really cool. But country is still in my roots and I still listen to it.


Josh Rouse – The Best Of The Rykodisc Years is out now on Rhino