Juneau, Alaska-based Josh Fortenbery is a gravel-voiced singer and guitarist who writes like a poet and moves between genres with ease. Within the 12 tracks on his debut album No Such Thing As Forever (March 8), his attention to lyrical detail sifts through his ennui and existential dread, bringing a magnifying glass to modern anxiety, self-doubt, and complicated family dynamics while exploring country, folk and bluegrass. The next single, “Heirlooms” is out today.
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“I’m grateful for so much of my upbringing, but I also inherited, or maybe adopted, certain family traits I wish I hadn’t,” Fortenbery says. “Once I got to the age where everyone started having kids or talking about it, I wondered what I might pass on. At the same time, while it’s certainly convenient to blame our parents for becoming them, I recognize that an explanation for a behavior isn’t the same thing as an excuse.”
The album’s first single, “Sewing the Same Seam,” imagines self-improvement as a Sisyphean task. Within it, Fortenbery worries about what might happen if he repeats the same mistakes—a relatable thought at the beginning of a new year.
“’Sewing the Same Seam’ is an uptempo existential crisis,” he told The Bluegrass Situation. “Like many songs on No Such Thing as Forever, it indulges in a bit of fatalism while also worrying that I’m capable of more than I admit. I’m a sucker for worst-case scenarios—maybe things won’t get better and not everything turns out alright. And when I linger on those thoughts, it gets easier to convince myself I know what I’m talking about.”
The album issteeped in community and place. Fortenbery—who lived in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Mexico, and Oregon before settling in his adopted hometown—secured a grant from the local arts council, then recruited fellow Alaskan Justin Smith as his co-producer after hearing his work on Annie Bartholomew’s Sisters of White Chapel. Smith loaded his collection of boutique mics and handmade analog studio equipment on a truck and ferried his gear east to Juneau, where the public radio station lent them studio space. All of the musicians on the album live in Southeast Alaska, and many are members of the traditional bluegrass band in which Fortenbery moonlights.
Honesty is a constant presence on No Such Thing and Fortenbery can be downright lacerating when he airs out his dirty laundry. In “Bored to Death,” he’s a mess of contradictions, restless and unsatisfied. Later, “Nepotism” rips that unearned ennui apart. “Bitter” savages the toxic environment of online discourse.
Still, there’s a wry sense of humor that frequently cuts through all the bad feelings. “Another Existential Crisis” weds a joking self-awareness with bright acoustic guitar that recalls Caribbean music.
“It’s important to find a little humor in everything,” Fortenbery says, “because no one will want to hang out with you if you’re heavy and dark all the time.”
Family memories and experiences are where Fortenbery’s storytelling abilities are at their more thrilling. “Heirlooms” rumbles like Leonard Cohen and ponders what undesirable traits—like his father’s temper—he might one day pass down to his own kids. “Siblings” is a heartfelt tune for his younger sister and their close bond. Fortenbery’s late grandmother, an artist who grew up in the deep South and lived in Atlanta, features in a pair of songs. “Nothing” was written in the immediate aftermath of her death and is laced with regret. “I forgot to call you back, to my everlasting shame,” he sings at one point. But her colorful life is memorialized in glorious fashion on “Honey,” where he remembers her as “my decorator, who terrorized waiters / an orchestrator of good mischief.”
“I’m just trying to be honest about my grief, anxiety, and carelessness, and hope that resonates with people,” he says. “I think a lot of folks feel disconnected from the world, not only because of the physical isolation over the last few years but also the increasing digital and cultural isolation we’ve slid into over the last decade. I’m trying to remember what ties me to the folks I love and folks I’ve never met.”
