Josh Langston Offers Insight On His Americana Music And Career During Class Visits
Singer-songwriter Josh Langston visited students in Performance Studies classes on Oct. 5 to discuss his work and life in the music industry.
The Texas A&M School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts co-presented a concert by the College Station artist and his band at Grand Stafford Theater the following night during First Friday in Downtown Bryan. Langston recorded his forthcoming album “Tastes Like Sin” at the theater.
Lecturer Cory LaFevers, who teaches History of Country and Western Music and Seminar in Identity, Intersectionality and Performance, invited Langston to provide insight on what it’s like to be a professional Americana artist. Langston also performed songs including “Still Hurts When it Rains,” “Living It in a Song” and “Tastes Like Sin.”
LaFevers said his goal was for students to have a sense of how the music business operates for professional musicians today.
“I want the students to see a lot of the issues that artists may have been dealing with in a certain decade, they are still dealing with them today,” he said after the class. “Maybe it looks a little different, but it is still there.”
A native of Long Beach, California, Langston started performing in College Station at 21 after his father retired from the Air Force and his family moved to Texas.
“The first venue I ever played at was Zapatos Cantina on Northgate,” Langston told the class. “I grew up in the shadows of this university. My mother retired from the Geology department and my uncle works right here in Oceanography, and my father worked at TEES until he died. We are an Aggie family for sure.”
After graduating high school at Allen Academy in Bryan, Langston went to Central Christian College in McPherson, Kansas, on a golf scholarship. After the first semester, he decided to pursue golf professionally and moved to Nebraska, he said. He later moved back to Texas and started writing his own music.
During the lecture, Langston’s producer Rob Hitchcock, who is also general manager at Grand Stafford Theater, asked Langston to discuss the level of commitment that is required to make it in music, and the sacrifices that come with that.
“I think it just takes everything you have,” Langston said. “If you are going to be an artist, you’re going to have to have some money. The days of us building a fan base without any budget has gone to the wayside. With social media, you can put your music out there very easily. But I think that has also made it to where to get through the noise, you have to have some budget for sure.”
Once Langston moved to Nashville and started to tour, he became friends with Manuel Cuevas, a Western-ware fashion designer who worked alongside Nudie Cohn of “Nudie suits” fame.
As the head designer at Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in the 1960s and into the 1970s, Cuevas created suits for Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Porter Wagoner and others. LaFevers said he recently introduced the history of Nudie suits and the impact they had on music to the class.
Cuevas and his son Manny Jr., who now runs the shop, made Langston a suit jacket that he wore during his performance at Grand Stafford. The black jacket is full of rhinestones, embroidered dice and music notes with a cross on the back.
“I still go to their house for dinner sometimes, and Manuel has a mannequin that is about 6-foot-2, and he said that is Johnny Cash’s mannequin,” Langston said. “They had it made to exactly his size so he wouldn’t have to come in for fittings. I also have a pair of boots Manuel made me that are alligator belly. The leather was dyed and tanned by Louis Vuitton in Italy.”
A student shared that she was interested in the fashion of country, and asked Langston how he decides what to wear onstage.
“There are a lot of factors that go into that,” Langston said. “What’s clean, where I am, the venue. But my style stays the same and it depends on how I am feeling. If I’ve been performing for 13 days on tour, there is no telling what you might get from me fashion-wise.”
After growing his music career in Nashville, Langston moved back to College Station. “Tastes Like Sin” is set to debut in March 2024.
A student asked Langston his thoughts on being authentic versus building a brand.
“I am just me,” Langston said. “My brand, I would like to think, is very authentic. I am just this, this is how it comes out. I don’t spend my time trying to be somebody else.”
Following the lecture, LaFevers said he wanted students to learn how to market or create a brand and learn how songwriting is connected to style and performance. He also wanted students to understand how music was released in the 1950s versus today, and the impacts of those changes.
“Even if they don’t listen to country, they are familiar with streaming platforms. They are familiar with Tik Tok and how artists they listen to now navigate that,” LaFevers said. “They get to see Josh working in the realm of country or Americana and being successful at it, despite all of these changes. That is the connection I am hoping students take away from this.”
After the class, Langston said he hopes students were able to see that having a career in the music business is attainable.
“It’s out there,” he said. “So, chase your dreams.”
