Part-time poet turned melodic storyteller, Chicano singer/songwriter Josiah Flores puts music to the parts of life most tend to hide from. From the foothills of south San Jose to the foggy avenues of San Francisco, he calls the Bay Area his home. Influenced by the likes of Stoney Edwards, Freddy Fender, Willie Dunn, and Waylon Jennings, if one were to sit in a dimly-lit corner of their local watering hole, hunched over a beer, they would find Josiah’s songs sitting down next to them.
What first started off as a solo project, Josiah has now brought some new players to join him on his second full length album, Doin’ Fine, a collection of songs that explore themes of change and transformation. The band includes Esther Gonzales (dobro, lap steel), Sydney Peterson (bass), K. Dylan Edrich (Fiddle), Ainsley Wagoner (piano, keys, background vox) Jacob Aranda (pedal steel), and Marisela Guizar (drums), musicians all based in the Bay Area. The album was produced and recorded on Otari ½” 8 track by Alicia Vanden Heuvel, at Speakeasy Studios SF, her record label and analog recording studio of the same name, in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Growing up religious, Josiah cut his teeth in his church’s youth group band, learning early how to communicate songs to an audience, as well as lead a band. This led him to writing his own songs and poems and performing them at whatever open mic would let him, guitar and harmonica in hand. The album’s opener, “Wishin’ I Don’t Care,” mimics the simplicity of a hymn from a Johnny Cash Gospel album, with lyrics that reflect Flores’ personal experience.
“Young, Dumb, & Full of Beer", the album’s first single, is reminiscent of the old drinking songs in the style of Hank Williams. It follows a narrator wanting to save his relationship, but who keeps finding himself in his own cycle of self destruction. Sonically, the song mimics a conversation after a late night in a saloon, with an almost drunken call and response between the fiddle and dobro. Wagoner’s harmony harkens the response of a disappointed lover, while Flores’ pleads half-heartedly for understanding.
The second single “Southside” is celebratory uptempo driver, with all the elements of a classic outlaw country song, about the part of town that Josiah grew up in, South San Jose. In his own words, “It’s the part of town where city and country shake hands, or fists.” Flores brings electric guitar, a driving beat, and themes of the open road, fierce independence, to this song about returning to his hometown. “There’s something in that Southside wind / Seems to blow my pain away.” Though he no longer lives there, returning home is a journey in itself, a way of heading back in order to ground himself. “Though the roads have changed, the spirit is still the same,” refers to the fact that no matter how much urban development or tech monstrosities attempt to reshape the geography, the “Valley of Heart’s Delight” will always have a natural and spiritual beauty that can’t be cemented over.
The third single, “La Lucha,” takes the stripped down protest style songs of Woody Guthrie or Willie Dunn, and dives deeper into Josiah’s family history of migrant farm working, exploring questions of ownership. Starting off with, “I picked your berries, I thinned your beets / made my hands bloody sweeping your wheat,” the listener quickly realizes the song is a conversation, with the “you” being the “owner” of all the things the narrator is listing.
“My grandma would tell me stories about how families would pile into railroad boxcars and be transported farm to farm this way. Once they reached the farm, they would hop out, work the field, get back into the boxcar, and then head to the next farm. She said trains would be so packed that you couldn’t even lay down, so she got used to taking little naps standing up. This kind of resilience and perseverance is not only inspiring, but makes me proud to come from such strong people.”
Flores’ songwriting on Doin’ Fine explores themes of individuality, ownership, departures, family history, personal change, and redemption through folk country songs from a Chicano perspective that range from intensely raw to joyfully playful to full on honky tonk. The band’s accompaniment propels the storytelling into a space where one isn’t alone, but where the themes come to life in song. There is a poetic beauty throughout the album, where Flores’ works through an examination in song of the central thematic questions of “How do I walk away? What does intergenerational trauma look like? Can I change? Can I return?”
Doin’ Fine comes out May 30, 2025 on Speakeasy Studios SF. Produced, recorded, and mixed by San Francisco’s own Alicia Vanden Heuvel (The Aislers Set), the album sits well in the folk/ country/ outlaw/ honky tonk sonic landscapes, but thoroughly rooted in life in the west. It ushers you in calmly, jangles you around a bit, sits you down to think, and ultimately leaves you feeling like you want to ride the rollercoaster again. Flores has given us a beautiful and heartfelt album that breaks new ground in the tradition of American country folk music, taking the listener on a poignant, poetic, thoroughly relevant, and well-crafted musical journey.
