His last album, the acclaimed Nashville, was a love-letter to his adopted home town of Tennessee, where he’d lived and worked for years.
Josh Rouse’s latest, Subtitulo, couldn’t be more different in its inspirational backdrop. Recorded in Puerto de Santa Maria in the south of Spain last summer, it’s an homage of sorts to his new home on the Mediterranean coast where he now lives with his Spanish girlfriend.
“It’s Spanish sounding but I’m not a big flamenco fan or anything,” he says. “It’s more of a rural folk album than a Spanish album.”
A largely acoustic solo effort, the low-key backing was dictated by the lack of available session musicians locally, he explains.
“We wanted to make a summer record and I was writing a lot of songs on a nylon stringed guitar. In Nashville, there was always plenty of musicians around but out here I had to take a different approach. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had. There was a swimming pool at the studio and we ate and drank outside, so it was recorded in a very laid back atmosphere.”
Rouse ended up in Spain more by accident than by grand design.
“I was dating a Spanish girl and we had originally planned to go and live in New York. But we decided on a whim to take a flight to Spain where we rented an apartment. We’ve been there ever since.”
Songs such as ‘Quit Town’ reflect the isolation he often feels living in the small Mediterranean community.
“It’s a lot of different here, there’s definitely that feeling of isolation. But in other ways it’s not that different – they play American and English music much more than you’d think. I hear more U2 on the radio in Spain than in America. But I’m used to it. I’m from a small town of 500 people in Nebraska where there was just a couple of bars and a store."
Rouse has been turning out critically acclaimed albums for the past six years with varying degrees of success – does he ever get frustrated with what seems like slow progress?
“A big hit is not on my agenda,” he proffers. “To have a hit you’ve got to be lucky and the rest is down to marketing. But I’ve garnered enough fans to keep doing it. I think it’s healthy at the moment in America for someone like me. Jack Johnson has been selling millions of records and José González, who opened for me in Sweden four years ago, is in the top 10. But I’m doing pretty well – some of the big cities I can play big places and everywhere I go in the world I can play for three or four hundred people.”
And has his extended absence from his home country changed his perspective in any way?
“I guess every time we go back we notice how different it is,” Rouse reflects. “I didn’t realise how over-saturated with products the country was. America is the consumer capital of the world. But I miss being over there and everything being familiar. English is still my first language and you have those references. It’s a nice comfort to know it’ll always be there.”