Father John Misty

Joshua Michael Tillman (born May 3, 1981), better known by his stage name Father John Misty, is an American musician. He is known for his satirical lyrics and eccentric performance style.

Tillman began his career in Seattle in the early 2000s. One of his demos reached Damien Jurado, and in 2003 he opened for him on his tour. Tillman began performing and releasing studio albums under the name J. Tillman. The albums were characterised by their folk sound and intimate lyrics. In 2008 Tillman joined the band Fleet Foxes as their drummer during the tour for their first record; he went on to play on their second album, Helplessness Blues (2011). Tillman left the band soon after the record was completed and started a new solo project, now under the name Father John Misty, releasing his first record, Fear Fun, in 2012. The album was a radical departure from his previous output, featuring a more marked, indie rock sound and satirical lyrics. His second album, I Love You, Honeybear (2015), received widespread acclaim, and was said to be a concept album based on Tillman's relationship with his wife, Emma. Honeybear was followed by another concept album, Pure Comedy (2017), exchanging the romantic content of the former for a nihilistic view of society, consumerism, and politics. His next two records, God's Favorite Customer (2018) and Chloë and the Next 20th Century (2022), explore soft rock and traditional pop respectively.

During his career he has been either a permanent or touring member of Demon Hunter, Saxon Shore, Jeffertitti's Nile, Pearly Gate Music, Siberian, Har Mar Superstar, Poor Moon, Low Hums, and Jonathan Wilson, and has toured extensively with Jesse Sykes and David Bazan. As a record producer and songwriter, Tillman has also made contributions to albums by more mainstream artists such as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, Lana Del Rey, and Post Malone.

Joshua Michael Tillman was born in Rockville, Maryland, on May 3, 1981, the son of evangelical Christian parents Barbara and Irvin C. Tillman, an engineer at Hewlett-Packard, who met at a Christian youth group. His mother was raised in Ethiopia, where her parents were missionaries. The eldest of four children, he has a brother and two sisters. Before he settled on a career as a musician, he briefly had ambitions of becoming a pastor because of the performance aspect, when he was approximately six years old. He has commented that his parents strongly emphasized Christianity in his upbringing, to a degree that he has described as "culturally oppressive". He was estranged from his parents for many years, but they have since reconciled.

After learning drums at a young age, Tillman learned guitar when he was 12. He attended a Baptist church and an Episcopal elementary school while growing up, then a Pentecostal Messianic day school. He said he was naïve when he was growing up because there was limited secular cultural influence within the home and no secular music was allowed. Around the age of 17, his parents modified their cultural stipulations; he was allowed to listen to secular music that had a "spiritual theme". For this reason, his early purchases included albums like Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming as he was able to convince his parents that Dylan was classified as a "Christian artist".

After attending Nyack College in New York from 1999 to 2002, Tillman moved to Seattle when he was 21. He found a job there working at a bakery, which allowed him to record at night before his 4:30 am shift began. A demo he made eventually found its way to Seattle singer and songwriter Damien Jurado. A year later, Tillman started opening for Jurado. At shows Tillman would distribute CD-R copies of songs that would later become his album I Will Return. During the tour, he also struck up a friendship with Eric Fisher, who produced another CD-R album, Long May You Run. Tillman and Jurado both later signed on for a U.S. tour with Richard Buckner.

From 2001 to 2004, Tillman played drums in the instrumental post-rock band Saxon Shore, touring extensively and drumming on their first two recordings. In 2006, the independent label Fargo Records released Tillman's first properly distributed solo album, Minor Works, and reissued I Will Return and Long May You Run as a two-disc set the same year. In 2007, Yer Bird Records released his more elaborately arranged fourth album, Cancer and Delirium.

After signing to independent record label Western Vinyl, Tillman released two albums in 2009, Vacilando Territory Blues and Year in the Kingdom. Tillman said he wrote the title track of Vacilando Territory Blues to describe imagery he associates with his move to Seattle. His brother Zach moved there as well and is now in the musical group Pearly Gate Music. The following year, Tillman released Singing Ax.