Q&A: JOSIE EDWARDS AT ALL POINTS EAST 2026
Photos by Cara Kealy
SINCE ITS CONCEPTION IN 2018, ALL POINTS EAST HAS HOSTED MANY DIVERSE AND IMPRESSIVE LINEUPS, WITH THIS YEAR BEING NO DIFFERENT. We caught up with Josie Edwards who delivered an incredible, high-energy performance at this year’s festival.
PETTY: How are you feeling now that it’s been a couple of hours since your performance?
JOSIE: Well I’m super tired now…I feel the jet lag. But it was fantastic. I was just kind of blown away at how well it went because it was my first time playing a stage this big and playing a festival. These guys in my band I just met earlier this week and I was like “can you come to London?” and they were like “sure.”
PETTY: It didn’t show!
JOSIE: Thank you. It was really sweet, I just felt very supported by the audience that was out there.
PETTY: What influence do you think moving from a small town in Indiana, to Nashville has had on your music?
JOSIE: My mum was the one [who] encouraged me to move to Nashville and try [pursuing] music. I was going to stay in Indiana, be an English major and maybe pursue being an author or professor, but my mum was like “well you play guitar in your free time and you’re in a garage band, why not go someplace where you can see what happens?” So going to Nashville was really the catalyst for me to see in myself “oh I think I could do this songwriting and artist thing.” It feels like it comes very naturally and it’s not something I have to try to strive for.
PETTY: What inspired you to start making music?
JOSIE: I would say I kind of fell into it. I wanted to be a writer for my whole life. When I was a little kid I was like I’m going to be a poet or an author then my parents encouraged me to try piano. I didn’t practice it, I wasn’t into that. I tried the banjo a little bit, which was fun, but then I picked up the guitar and was like, wait, this feels right. Like I [felt] it resonating in my body. So then I played some…talent shows at my high school and somebody invited me to start a garage band with them. So yeah, it wasn’t until I went to Belmont for college that I really tried to write a song and work at something.
PETTY: It sounds like you and music were just meant to be
JOSIE: Yeah, it kind of just came together, which is crazy.
PETTY: Who would be your dream artist to share a stage with?
JOSIE: Ironically probably Twenty One Pilots. I’ve been listening to them almost exclusively for the past year since their album came out and I started going through all the back catalogue and I was like I can’t believe I missed this whole phase of my life…They’ve inspired me to experiment and have more fun with my music and not treat it as something like “oh this is a structured song” and kind of play and let myself breathe through it.
PETTY: You describe your music process so beautifully. Your amazing EP that you released this year is called Greetings From Fleet Street, what would you write in a letter to your younger self?
JOSIE: Oh that’s sweet. I would say just keep experimenting and trying all the things. I always felt like I was a jack of all trades, master of none and so I gave myself a hard time, trying to be like “you need to pick a lane and do something.” But honestly everything I’ve ever been into and fiddled around with has come together in [my] career. Like I dabbled in writing, I dabbled with ukulele, and production, and I would write scripts, and make my brothers act and then I would make my own music videos. Everything I played around with has come together now.
PETTY: I went to one of Precious Renee Tucker’s piano anatomy classes a while ago and something that really stuck with me is how the emphasis with performance should be placed on being expressive instead of impressive. It sounds like with everything you’ve tried was a way of you expressing yourself.
JOSIE: Yeah that was a big shift for me too when I realised, because I used to do a lot of open mics in Nashville, when I realised that showing up was for me to enjoy doing this thing that I love, and for other people to like it if they want to. But to take the pressure off of myself like, “I have to impress everybody,” it’s been a game changer.
PETTY: What was your favourite song off of your EP to perform today?
JOSIE: Probably “Chemical Light”. I kind of wrote it with the idea of playing it live, especially the ending. It was supposed to end earlier but I listened to the demo in my car and was like I just want it to keep going, and I want to scream it with the crowd… so it was really fun to do it for real.
PETTY: What’s the next goal of yours?
JOSIE: To be honest, I feel like all of my dreams have come true so now I’m like “ahhhh I’ve got to have new dreams!” Hmm what’s my next goal? To do more of my own headline shows and just get back in the room with the people that [came] when I first did these little shows. It meant so much to me and showed me there was a community around my music, so getting back out there to see them again and say hi.