Josiah & The Greater Good

Looking out at the sea of faces lining the barricade separating the stage from the Bonnaroo crowds, Josiah Atchley couldn’t help but think back on the fateful day his life changed.

It was his 21st birthday, and the singer-songwriter was a gung-ho U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. An impromptu birthday celebration went south, and he found himself in handcuffs; a few weeks later, he was discharged from the branch of service in which he’d dreamed of joining since he was a kid, on his way back home to East Tennessee, his head hung in shame.

But if there’s one thing the talented musician has learned, it’s that God has a way of offering second chances. They may not work out like he, or anyone else, expects, but with determination and the right attitude, they can open the right doors when the old ones close. All it takes is the willingness to walk through them and see what’s on the other side.

“If I’d still been in the Marines, none of this would have happened,” Atchley told The Daily Times recently. “All of this happened because I had to come back home. Because I was here, I met the people in my life today, and I got the opportunities that brought me to where I am. I’m not saying what happened was a good thing, but it’s definitely worked out in a way I never thought it could when it all went down.”

These days, Atchley is one of the hardest working musicians in the local scene, and that’s a work ethic he credits to the U.S. Marines. The son of a local pastor, he started out playing drums, but it wasn’t until he was 16 or 17 that he picked up a guitar. Music, however, has always been an integral part of his life, he said.

“It was extremely important to me from a listener’s perspective; I love music, and I listened to it every day, constantly,” he said. “I was the kid riding my bike with a battery-powered cassette player hanging from the handlebars, playing Three Dog Night cassettes.”

He credits his parents for his tasteful preferences as a kid; when his friends would play the new Black Eyed Peas, Atchley would pull out some of the material his parents loved — Stevie Wonder, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, BB King. Even today, he fuses what he does — straightforward rock ‘n’ roll — with strains of blues and R&B, fat bass lines courtesy of Jon Augustus and Brandon Bowman’s sultry sax runs anchoring his sound with a vintage feel.

He played guitar and drums at church throughout high school, and after moving out when he turned 18, he pursued a career, a solo acoustic career. Just as he began to gain traction locally, he signed with a promoter whose intentions were less than scrupulous; he booked Atchley for four-hour shows even though the young musician didn’t have enough material, and he took a percentage of everything his young charge made before Atchley’s career ultimately went off the rails. Discouraged and dejected, he turned to his fallback plan: the U.S. Marine Corps, something he’d aspired to since he was a kid.

“I have patches, helmets, Marine Corps memorabilia; ‘Iwo Jima’ was my favorite movie, and I was obsessed with it since I was a kid,” he said. “There was this sergeant major who went to my father’s church, and he used to tell stories about his time in Vietnam as a staff sergeant in Recon. The only reason I didn’t go in earlier was because I got distracted by music, but when all that went down, I said, ‘I’ve gotta do something with my life. This isn’t working.’”

He and his brother were barely scraping by, scrounging together change to buy McDonald’s; his former manager erased all of his online content, effectively removing any evidence that he’d had a fledgling music career, he said. And so he enlisted, and was assigned to an infantry division. He excelled in the Corps, and he loved serving his country. Chances are good he would have been a lifer, if not for that unforgettable birthday.

He and his platoon mates had just returned from the field; they started out with some drinks in the barracks, when they decided to make a run to the local Walmart to buy a TV; Atchley’s brother had sent him an X-Box as a birthday present, but they had nothing to play it on.

“So we borrow a team leader’s car, and when we got in, my buddy pulls out a joint,” Atchley said. “I said, ‘What is this madness?,’ and he said, ‘Happy birthday, man — you only turn 21 once!’ I used to smoke before I went in; that’s part of the musician’s lifestyle, so it wasn’t like it was my first time.”

It was, however, his first time smoking synthetic marijuana: Unknown to Atchley, it was actually Spice, and he and his fellow Marine were ill-prepared for the effects. Sitting in the passenger’s seat, Atchley watched a slow motion horror story unfold: His buddy drifted across two lanes of traffic and through the display window of a local car dealership. He panicked and tried to flee the scene — but the car was still in drive, so the two were propelled onto the show room floor.

“So then he puts it in reverse and hits five cars getting out of the parking lot, then slams into the fence surrounding LeJeune,” Atchley said. “He just looks at me and says, ‘Sorry!’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I was just sitting there, watching it all happen and thinking, ‘Wow — there goes my life.’”

To add insult to injury, Spice had recently been declared illegal in the state of North Carolina — and the law had gone into effect that day. As it stands, Atchley is the first documented arrest for synthetic marijuana usage in the state; it was already banned in the Corps, but urine tests were unable to detect it at the time. An arrest by civilian authorities, however, removed any chance he might have been able to slide.

“The Marines instantly found out about it; the people in my platoon tried to help me and pull some strings to help me stay in, but it was just not possible with the press around that event,” he said. “Two Marines crash through a building high on Spice — it was all over the city.”

He talks about it these days with the proper mixture of humility and humor; he doesn’t downplay the gravity of the situation, but neither does he want to hide it. His website and all of his press material touts his military service, something of which he’s immensely proud, but he’s also hyper-vigilant about the Marines code of honor.

“I don’t want anyone thinking I’m hiding anything, and I don’t want other Marines thinking I’m trying to steal their valor,” he said. “I don’t want people thinking I’m trying to hide that side of my story, either.”

At the time, however, all he felt was a deep and gnawing shame.

“I had never been successful at things I had attempted,” he said. “I played basketball, but I wasn’t good enough to do what I wanted to do. I worked jobs, but I didn’t make money. I hadn’t gone to college, so I had no degree; to myself, I was kind of a failure. The Marines were supposed to save me from that, and I failed that as well.”

The Marines, however, didn’t fail him: He came back with a discipline he didn’t possess before going in, as well as a determination to pick up the pieces and move on. He got two jobs, one landscaping and another waiting tables, and his guitar sat untouched for months — until the restaurant in which he worked decided to start booking live music. He thought he might have a chance, since he was employee; to dust off his skills, he took his six-string down to Market Square in downtown Knoxville and started busking.

“That’s when my first bandmate came cruising by me on a bicycle while I was playing ‘Billie Jean,’” he said. “He was like, ‘Hey, man, you’ve got a pretty cool sound; I just moved here from Jersey, and I used to play music there, and I would love to break into the Knoxville scene. Can you help?’ It had been while since I was involved, but we got together, and we clicked, and with him, I had all the experience I needed to book a gig and have three hours of material.”

His TGI Friday’s manager booked him, and his new friend — Ben Reynolds, who now plays in the band K-Town Music — bought him new equipment. Together, they did the show, and in the audience was Cora Elmore, a former music industry employee who was so impressed she bankrolled his first EP — “Scoundrel,” recorded with local studio wizard Travis Wyrick. Things began happening real fast, and Atchley refused to take no for an answer: When original music venues declined to book him, he took his act to local bars, playing the covers circuit in Knox and Blount counties and growing his fanbase. When those venues took a second look, they saw a guy with a healthy following who was unafraid to throw fans his original music as well.

A couple of months ago, Atchley and his band — now billed as Josiah and the Greater Good — opened for the classic rock band Kansas; shortly thereafter, they won the city-wide “Road to ‘Roo” competition, playing for a spot at Bonnaroo. At the state competition in Nashville, they lost to Roots of a Rebellion, but they put on such a fierce show that organizers offered him them a Bonnaroo slot anyway.

Which led to that on-stage moment, surrounded by fellow musicians so good he calls them “killers,” soaking up every second of a comeback that’s been four years in the making.

“I tell people that if I hadn’t smoked that joint of Spice, I wouldn’t be doing what I love every single day,” he said. “It blew my mind when I was put out of the Marine Corps; that was the one thing I wanted to do right. When I graduated from boot camp, my parents cried, and that doesn’t happen. My dad was a preacher, my mom a published artist, so you better believe there’s a lot of pressure for you to be somebody. But hindsight is 20/20, and I look at it this way: A young, undisciplined musician went in and got every single tool he needed to come home, pick it up and do the damn thing.” - Steve Wildsmith

Video from the bands time at The Roo. - Steve Wildsmith

As we’ve been doing for the past several years now, we’re making it our mission to help you get acquainted with as many bands as we can from Bonnaroo‘s impressive 2016 lineup. In addition to the main stage acts, we also want to be sure to give the Club Stage bands some love, so, for the remainder of our coverage, we’ll be doubling up with a second daily spotlight. They might be the smallest artists on Bonnaroo’s bill, but the Club Stage boasts some of the best and most exciting up and coming acts around. As with our main stage previews, we’ll start from the bottom and work our way up. Keep reading for your Bonnaroo Club Stage Band of the Day…

LEARN

A band we were first introduced to in the Road To Roo Tennessee state finals, Josiah & The Greater Good have made their way onto the 2016 bill despite losing in the finals to Music City residents Roots of a Rebellion. No matter, because there’s plenty of room on The Farm for the Knoxville based five piece and their blues rock, reggae-tinged vibrations.

Marine turned musician Josiah Atchley and his backing band The Greater Good got their start playing around the University of Tennessee, where they quickly built a reputation predicated on their awesome high energy live shows and improvised extended jams. Now, they’ve continued to gain momentum throughout the Volunteer state and are currently working with Grammy-nominated producer Travis Wyrick on their soon to be released self-titled EP. With a slew of dates all over the region this summer and fall, including Bonnaroo, it seems Josiah and his crew are ready to go national. Make sure you check out their set, and help support another Tennessee-based band at the best festival in all the land. - Jacob Ryan

Knoxville, Jul 5, 2019 (Issuewire.com) – Call it indie or a classified distinction of genre categorization, Josiah & The Greater Good is a band here to glam up the scene with their vivid introspection of rock, blues, soul, jazz, funk, and pop traces that all come together with a lyrical flow of mesmerizing themes. Their newly released song ‘Shot Down‘ follows the league of rock riffs along with the elements of funk and groovy timbre depicting the saga of obsessive one-sided love. The lyrical intensity of ‘Shot Down‘ is both figurative and metaphorical as everyone shares empathetic belongingness with its musical progression. The many crevices of melodic and arrangement dynamics of ‘Shot Down‘ rounded beautifully with the subtly of soft saxophone make the perfect flavoring of a band that has the independent creative flair to them.

Hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee, Josiah Atchley is a marine-turned-musician, who along with his band comprising of Frank Sheadrick Jr on drums, Jon Augustus on bass, Brandon Bowman on saxophone, Joey Pierce on lead, Mark Radice on keys, and himself as the frontman and rhythm guitarist has created the best combinative musical efforts with Josiah & The Greater Good. Their popularity has already traveled miles that gave him the exposure of sharing the stage with musical head-turners like Tom Keifer, Kansas, and Fastball.

Josiah & The Greater Good‘s biggest inspirers including John Mayer, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, and others have shaped their sound into one of a kind. With their other hits including ‘Gypsy’, ‘Broken Man’, and ‘Otherside’ and their upcoming album ‘Relapse’ up for a release, their cultural growth is only expanding to a more commendable one. Follow their work on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, and their own website right away.

To listen this track click the given below link :

https://open.spotify.com/track/6IzYXiWOkJhZAsEzhYSwqO - StockNewsDesk