Josh and I go waaaaaaay back, before he was a global superstar (but very well on his way!) His recordings have become nearly synonymous with the Delilah Christmas program; that smooth, soulful, touch-your-heart sound. It's been a while since we touched base though, so I'm so tickled to have him join me on the podcast today.
Mr. Groban has a beautiful new album that dropped last week, 'Harmony' - it includes some covers, some collaborations, and some brand new pieces that weren't originally intended for the project, but came from the time Josh had in his studio during the spring's lock-down. (The incredible music that has come from this terrible situation reminds us that life is full of silver linings!)
We get to hear all about the album and all about what's going on with the one and only Josh Groban - including musings on how learning to cook and making music have several similarities! Join us! ~ Delilah
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Happy Days from the Welcome Back my Friend to Love Someone with Delilah, my podcast that I love, love love doing, even people that I've known for a long long time. For instance, today's guest, I have known him since he was a very talented, but very nervous teenager. He was a newbie. He and his anxious parents came into my studio right out of high school. I've watched him mesmerized crowds with his voice, his voice that is the voice of an angel. I have seen him stretch, reach, grow in might and maturity and in the ways of the heart. Today's guest is nearly synonymous with the Delilah Show and Christmas. He's a man of grace, of dignity, of unflappable positivity. He's followed by millions. He's adorable. He's got the most beautiful curls and the sweetest smile and a huge art. And if he still gets nervous like he was before his first concert that I went to, you'd never know it. We'll be catching up with my good friend Josh Grobin today, right after we give a round of applause to my superstar podcast sponsor. These are the folks that make this podcast possible each week the kind helpful folks at the Home Depot. We are so happy to have the Home Depot as a sponsor of this podcast. The Home Depot is making holiday shopping that much easier. Shop online with the Home Depot, knowing that the products you buy his gifts can be delivered in john to day or two. Use the home Depot app, which has been updated and made so easy to navigate and find just the right gift. There's ten thousand tools alone to choose from all that can be purchased and shipped right from your phone this year, Make the most of your holidays with a little help from the Home Depot. How doers get more done? Hi? Josh, are you ready? I'm so ready. I'm so happy to talk to you. Hear your voice. Thanks for having me on. I missed you. How are you to my friends? I'm doing well? Thank you? I mean, can you know? Can? Considering everything? I think you know, nobody's doing well well right now. But I've got a lot to be grateful for and have my health and have music, so that those two things I'm very lucky right now. Amen to that. Are you still in the Big Apple? Where are you? No? I mean, I'm in Los Angeles. I've been here. I've been here to the course of the pandemic. I was in Florida when everything went in to lockdown seven months ago and on tour and uh we shut down, and you know, my family's here and and uh I wanted to be able to look after my parents and um, and it just, you know, felt it felt more spread out to be here. This is my original hometown, and uh in New York, you know, especially at that time, felt like it would be very hard to get through this, this in a place so crowded that I missed New York very much. I bet, I bet they miss you. But you're you're at home. Your folks are well, they are, they are well. Um, you know, I'm just I've wrapped them and bubble wrapped and um trying to do the same for myself as much as possible. And yeah, it's been it's been a really crazy crazy you know, a few months finishing an album and writing and trying to learn how to cook and trying to keep myself sane and and and you and your your family, everybody, everybody even been okay. Yeah, as soon as it hit, UM, I packed up the kids and headed to my hubbies rant. For the same reason that you're you're speaking of. I took my in laws because they're in their eighties and I just wanted to be in a safer place and and I already knew how to cook. And so I've got the COVID twenty that I've gained since being shut in. Um, that's not a good thing, you know, it's a badge of honor. I think that it just means that we've been we've been nourishing ourselves and nourishing those around us. Uh, because food and love. So I think that's I think that's uh, that's good. Yeah, well, my my ankles might disagree with you. That is good. But in our family, food is definitely love and I love to feed my family. And so, um, while you were recording an album, I was baking sour dough. You know, That's what happened. I think everybody decided they wanted to be to bake. Also during these last seven months, I have, you know, because I traveled so much. I tour so much. I'm always just kind of getting room service and whatever is the bus after a show, and you know, so I never really had the bug the culinary bug to kind of craft in the kitchen. I was always too impatient. I wanted to eat all the ingredients. That's where I cooked them. And there's something about having all this time too just you know, take a time out. I realized the cooking is very similar to music. You know, you have a lot of ingredients, you have a lot of notes, and they don't all seem like they're going to go together at first, and then all of a sudden, you take your time and you learn techniques and you actually craft something quite wonderful, and then it is. It is nourishing. I like to I like to serve food in the same way I like to serve music. So it's been a fun, fun escape for me. I am very frustrated with a lot of the stuff. I can't even imagine for somebody who's used to touring and performing as much as you are, how much change you've had to deal with. But I have loved the slow down and the opportunity to spend more intense time, intimate time with my family. M hm, I you know, I think they're there. We we all for our own mental health. We have to find silver linings in this tragedy. Of the year that we've had. And I know I speak for so many people in the music and touring and theater industries. Uh, this has just been an absolutely beyond devastating time for for everybody who relies on every facet of live performance, the cruise, the people who are are you know, help us get from pointing to point b, everybody in the travel industry, everybody who works behind the scenes, in front of the scenes, um my, my Broadway brethren. Uh, it's just been it's been a time of such such a rug being pulled out and so um you know, it has been so so hard, and I do hope that the silver lining for everybody getting through these hard times is hopefully that we just take stock in what the simple important things are in our lives, you know, to have a to have a mandatory time out for everybody that there is no there is no hedonic you know, treadmill to keep running on. We all have to we all have to take a step back and take stock. There's a lot of gratitude, there's a lot of focusing on our families and our friends, on connecting, on having a call that's more than five minutes long. Um, And so you know if and when, because we will get through this. I hope, we hope we we hang onto whatever slivers of good that came from from the time out in the quiet. So there's a sliver of good that's coming out the end of November. Your new album, Harmony, I can't. I almost called it that I chose Harmony of the sliver of good would have been would have been a good. Uh, sliver of good would have been great. Um, Harmony probably describes it a little bit better. Um, you got some timeless songs on there. You've got some new songs on the air. I just got to listen to the Impossible dream that is on there, that is so dreamy and so layered with richness. Um. And and just so tell me you start, how many songs did you have done when when COVID hit? So we had to we had the album about half done when COVID hit. Um. And you know that the album prior to this one was very personal. I've done a lot of writing, and I just on this one, I really wanted to, you know, interpret sing my face off and just sing some songs that I wanted to sing for a long time. The fans have been requesting you know, for years and years and years and try to find kind of new relevance and freshness in these classic and timeless stories and melodies. And so half of them were done. And then when everything turned to one eight Um, two things happened. One was that finding songs that were classics all of a sudden, as as these amazing songs often do, had new fresh meaning in the times that we're in, you know, choosing a song like impossible Dream of both sides now, Um, I sang them with way more I think, meaning in relevance to today's and I would have if I had started to sing them five or six months ago. So um. And then the original songs weren't supposed to be on the album. I you know, I think there's a lot of us when we have a lot of time to just sit and right, a lot of feeling came out musically that we're unexpected. And I gave them to the label and I said, you know, these are these came out and I wasn't expecting them to make it, and they, to their credits, said these are right for right now and um, and so the album took some turns, as I think everybody's lives have taken and so harmony is really about trying to trying to come together with songs both original and classic that that made me feel better to sing them, and hopefully people will feel better to listen to them. So you had months of shutdown, you had months with your family, you had months of introspection, you had time to write, to record. Tell me, yeah, yeah, sweatpants are not my friend. They lie, they lie to me. You know, I spend so much time wearing a suit in my life that that like that before all this, the moment where I got to actually crawl into some sweatpants, I just was like, is this Christmas? Like, what's going on? Is it the greatest feeling ever? And I am so I'm going to do a bonfire when this is all done, of just all of the sweats and socks and snuggies and whatever else I lived in this last seven months. I'm going to just I'm gonna dance around the flames. I started doing a podcast live broadcast every day, uh before I go on the air. I tried to do it five days a week. You know, it's hit and miss, depending on what's going on. But I think that was good in that I actually have to put makeup and and comb my hair every day because I don't know that I would do those things otherwise. Is you know that the sneak attack. I don't know if you had to deal with this, is that sometimes um, for for me with with with interviews and things like that, something will I'll think something is going to be a phone call and it winds up being a zoom. I wasn't prepared for a zoom, So I'm I wind up having to like very quickly like what did on my hair? Or like put on a better you know, a better you know shirt while I'm still wearing pajamas on the bottom half, Like the sneak attack. Zooms are really u quite quite quite hard. So I am the cameraman, and I try really hard not to ever show that, you know, up top, I'm wearing a blouse and a jacket and and down below I've got on the grungeyest sweatpants I own. You know, At some point, I don't know if this whole thing will continue at the old joke of like, well, you know that meeting could have been an email. That is where we're living right now, is that every meeting is an email. Everything a zoom. I've got such zoom fatigue right now. I mean, I'm so grateful to have connections with my friends and family and will do like a you know, we'll we'll open a bottle of wine and have a Friday afternoon, you know, just kind of catch up. And that's always great. But man, I just my eyes are burning out from all the time staring at a screen. For the most part, I'm like, no, no, can't hear you. Yeah, exactly, And the fact that I'm working out of a barn now makes that pretty easy. Actually, well that's cool though, I mean, that's that's awesome that you get to have a kind of a haven there to to do that. I'd love barn sounds happen. How are the animals? How are all the animals? The animals, the horses, the cows, the dogs, the cats, the kids. Everybody is good, all the critters and animals. Animals don't under I don't think they fully understand how much they're helping us right now, Like all of our pets, I think should get some kind of metal at the end of all this, for that's a therapy they're giving us, and they have no idea. The pound the animal rescue place. Um, we have a no kill shelter in our area, and every time I would go there, it would be so full, and it would break my heart because you know dogs that that you know are just sweet dogs that are in there for days or weeks on end, they have been empty. Like a dog comes in, it gets adopted immediately. Um, because people are realizing what wonderful companions are for babies are. So that's that's one good thing. That's a silver lining. That's a that's every animal we can into our homes right now and and and take them in. Yeah, I agreed. You want one of my ten horses, one of my cows. I got a pretty modest sized home here. I'm not sure I could look is it a miniature pony? I could set a miniature pony in my kitchen. That would actually be much better than a garbage disposal. I think if I just had a little pony. No, No, goats. Goats are better than garbage disposals. Goats will eat just pretty much anything. I could give you a miny goat. I've got many goats. I've got goats are only like two ft tall. Oh my god, this is I mean, this is this is I truly, I only came on to talk to you and have the interview, but to get a goat out of this. To get a goat out of this, you could You could open a bottle of your wine. You could sit back. You could um give the wine cork to the goat. The goat would eat the wine cork in about three seconds. They really do eat everything, right, I mean you tows and toilet papers, they eat everything. They eat everything. You You can have the nastiest, rottenest apple that fell off the tree and throw it to the goat. They're like, oh, yes, this is fabulous, And I'm like, really, I could use a couple of goats when I experiment recipes. I think they they're they're probably probably the only ones who would eat it. You could experiment, you could burn it, you could like put way too much whatever in it, and the goats would love it. They would be thrilled. Long fire. I'm gonna feed all my sweatpants to these new gift goats that I'm about to get, and it'll feed the soil. At some point. You know, you are synonymous. You and I are synonymous with Christmas. When people think of Christmas, they think of the Delilah Show, and Josh Grobin, that's what they think of the Santa Claus is in there, and hopefully Baby Jesus. But you and I are synonymous, Josh. With Christmas. Well, I mean, man, it's been it's been incredible to have had such a connection with that time of year because I just love it so much. And I was raised, you know, having just some of the most amazing and warm and loving Christmass And when I made a Christmas album, I couldn't believe, Uh, I couldn't believe it did as well as it did. I thought it was going to be a side project. And and so I'm I'm I'm thrilled with that, truly, year after year for this holiday, you've stopped by, You've had pie. Now because of COVID, we don't get to do the the in person thing, but we still get to do the show. So thank you for stopping by. My family is here, and um, you know, we've all we've all thankfully had a chance to to get together and share some precious moments together for this holiday as as I know, as I hope many other families are able to do, and I know so many more families are not able to do so, I'm very grateful for that. Tell me in your listeners something that in um a year of surprises, tell me something you are truly grateful for. I'm grateful that my family is healthy. I'm grateful that I've been able to to see so many extraordinary people show us that they are stronger than we all ever could have imagined we could be. And I'm grateful to have the hope that we can all get through this and be better for it. And um, yeah, hopefully I'll be grateful that my my Pi Cris gets a little better in the coming weeks. But I'm not going to hold on hope for that one. Yeah, I gave up on that. You know what I do now? I buy boxed pie crust mix. You can buy it in your box. You just add water, you stir it up and it's almost as good as GM's part of myself. I'm too type A. I just I feel like that's cheating, but no, it's it is cheating, and I don't care. There are some things I won't cheat, you know, I would never cheat when it comes to my family, my husband, But pie crust, pie crust, I don't care. It'sn'tly cheating, It's only cheating. The goats will now no longer get to eat the terrible crust. Such a joy to know you and Tom and to to talk to you all these years and have your support. Never forget driving up to the house wherever you were recording, and and flying into flying into Washington, and and and speaking with you and playing my music for you for the first time. And now almost seventeen eighteen years later, I can't believe. I can't believe how much has happened. And I'm so so thankful for your friends. So thank you for that. Thank you, God, bless you. Happy holidays, thank you, love you so much. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Always it is always a pleasure to catch up with Mr Josh Grobin. Has been a pleasure to walk alongside you on this professional path, cheering your accomplishments, welcoming each new project. I have loved playing your music Josh on my show. You are so beloved and I know you know this by my listeners. I met one of your fans, Josh, who has a tattoo of you on her arm. That's how much she loves you. Harmony came out November thirty. It's available wherever music is sold at it to your winter playlist. Make sure it's a part of your life soundtrack I Will See You Soon on the air and right here on our podcast, Love Someone with the Lilah