The SiBL Life -Growing from Seed to Shooting Star with Joe Fiveash
Josiah Levon Fiveash likes the game Jackbox.
“The game Jackbox is where you try to tell if what someone says is the truth or a lie, so the goal is to be as elusive as possible,” explains Fiveash – who goes by Joe, with Sire as a nickname, and SiBL as his stage name. “So I say, ‘I sing because I’m happy,’ then ‘I sing because I’m sad.’ It’s hard to know. I’ve always used singing as a coping mechanism. It was born out of soothing me. It gets me out of thinking.”
Saying he was “delirious” from exhaustion, having just finished a 3-hour gig after working the overnight third shift at West Georgia Hospital, Fiveash talks about musical experimentation, the power of trust, and what comes next during an interview in a historic white cabin on the grounds of the Columbus Botanical Garden, where he performed for part of their Shine holiday light show.
The Shine gig was the last in the 28-year-old’s series of intimate performances, each custom tailored to venue and audience. For this one, SiBL performed in a trio and applied experimental interpretations — both in terms of the tunes’ arrangements and his vocal phrasing — of Christmas classics such as “Christ is Born” and “12 Days of Christmas.” The crowd, consisting of some friends and curious onlookers, responded with a smattering of applause.
This was a far cry from the vibe SiBL cooked up earlier in December at his ‘Till It Kills You’ stop at Blue Canary Records (1250 Broadway). There, the crowd suited the bohemian downtown setting, and was tuned in and turned on for a full-tilt show of surreal sensations. SiBL, backed by a killer quartet featuring Dany Dickerson (keyboard), Emmanuel Black (drums), Darren Johnson (guitar) & Miguel Juarez (electric guitar), the hip audience enraptured by his mesmerizing, mystical approach to both the music and to how they engaged in it. The Blue Canary experience ended on a high note, with SiBL improvising based on words shouted from the audience before leading a soul-stirring call-and-response to being his friend (Yeah Yeah YEEEAAAAYUUUUHHH!) or his foe (No No NNUYOOOOOOOO!).
To an outside observer, these two performances seem to be polar opposites. To SiBL, it’s just two parts of the same thing.
“It’s the same to me because the musicians in Columbus are crazy talented, super creative, and we trust each other,” he says. A vibrant, if a bit manic, energy beams out of him when he speaks about making music, his drained delirium be damned.
“When it comes to doing things differently, like tonight,” he continues, “We just lean on what we do best. Everything we did as far as the Christmas music, it was all impromptu. We just followed along with each other, because of that trust.”
His show at Blue Canary Records?
“That turned into a wild writing session,” Fiveash explains. “Just trusting each other and having fun. It’s always fun because when you improvise like that you never know how you’re going to create a theme and write a story off what someone gives you. Being able to do that — to quickly execute that as best you can, lyrically and melodically? Oh my gosh, it’s an adventure!”
Miguel Juarez has been along for a lot of those adventures with his friend Fiveash. Now an accomplished guitarist and president of the Columbus Jazz Society, Juarez reflects back to years ago when he, fresh out of the Army, put himself out there on Craigslist as guitarist for hire. A local R&B group called Lyfe Unltd, which included Fiveash’s mom, responded to his post and, over time, Juarez became friends with her family, mostly through playing at their church.
“It’s always great playing with Joe,” Juarez says during a recent phone interview. “He puts down a solid foundation of music and makes the process of creating it with him a whole experience. It’s very open. A lot of times, these scenarios are dominated by large egos, and you have to execute exactly the vision presented. With Joe, it’s actual collaboration. He throws it out there and sees where it goes. A big part of that is how tight his core group — Manny Black, (drummer) and Darren Johnson, (guitar) — already are. And trust. We trust each other.”
Juarez confesses to being a bit introverted, so he feels he has to “put on a mask” to play guitar on stage before an audience. “A lot of musicians have a very different personality from the one you see on stage. Not with Joe. He’s a lot more authentic. What you see on stage with him, it’s the same if you’re hanging out in the living room. He is a true artist, always, no matter the setting.”
Joe Fiveash’s first stage setting was church, where he began singing at age 4. He credits his mother, Jorrita (“a beautiful woman, her name means Pearl of the Sea”), also a singer, for fostering his start. Next, his brother Anthony taught him guitar before Joe moved on to piano and violin. Joe’s voice remains his favorite instrument, especially when used to improvise.
“I’ve been told I have three different voices,” he says. “I can go from down low with a guttural bohemian tone up to falsetto, which is my bread and butter.”
Fiveash first made a splash in the music scene with Siantz, a duo with his brother. The name bridges Joe’s ‘Sire’ nickname and Anthony’s. Their music built a bridge between their two tastes. “My brother and I have a very interesting tension in regards to our music choices,” Joe says. “I am very folksy, and people like Fleet Foxes are what I love to listen to, what brings me joy. My brother is into R&B and fun pop beats and listens to Drake and H.E.R. He used to say, ‘I was the mountains in his city and he was the city in my mountains.’”
And now with SiBL? “It’s just me experimenting,” he says.
SiBL plans to drop his first EP this month. Its title, 536 AD, is named for the point in history that marked the darkest year in the Earth’s recorded human history, thanks to a massive volcanic explosion. That cataclysmic event parallels the COVID pandemic shutdown of 2020. “After COVID, things didn’t go like I wanted them to go,” Fiveash says. “I had all these experiences that were a rush of negative, negative, negative at that time in my life. So that mood of the album is very dark and edgy. I wanted to really express that aspect of who I am.”
With songs such as “Columbine” and “Stormy Weather,” 536 AD is, on the surface, dark. Some of it inspired by Joe’s job working overnight at West Georgia, which treats behavioral health. One of the songs, “Orphan,” is about being all alone.
“Most of the patients are just people,” Fiveash explains. “The fact is, who we are as people is born out of our experiences. People that some call ‘bad’ or ‘crazy,’ there was, 9 times out of 10, neglect, a void, a pain, a level of suffering we can’t even imagine that got them to that point. It’s an empathetic realization that even though people made bad decisions, what would you have done?”
With a new album and full life to live in music ahead of him, Fiveash has some goals. Some specific, along with some more abstract ambitions. “I want to play South by Southwest,” he says when asked where he wants this music to go. “I want to do a Tiny Desk Concert. I don’t want to be famous. I just want to pull people out of sadness and pull them into something deeper than what society is offering them.”
But it’s important to keep a level head, Fiveash stresses, throughout life and in any creative work.
“Don’t forget yourself in the process,” he adds. “The process is definitely more important than the goal. From seed to sapling to tree, you are perfect. It’s the journey, not the destination. And you will always be exactly where you need to be.”
Look for more from SiBL by following his handle @SiBL on all social media platforms. You can listen now to 536 AD anywhere you listen to music.
By Frank Etheridge