MAILING LIST

I remember the first time I saw Josh Lederman perform. It was just him, his guitar, and his poetry on stage. I was one of maybe fifteen people in the Kendall Cafe in Cambridge, MA on a cold, rainy, shoulda-stayed-home night in 1998. He was book-ended by two earnest yet forgettable folk singers, who fingerpicked through songs about meeting their boyfriends, losing their boyfriends, making up with their boyfriends, etc. He sat down and sang:

"Well our cars are all smashed up and our teeth are all gnashed up.
It hasn't stopped raining since the sky opened up.
Well our brakes they all locked up and our daughters got knocked up.
And their boyfriends ran for their lives on this cold Sunday night."
(When We Were Still Young)

Josh was the antidote we were all looking for.

Josh's songs remind me more of short movies than traditional songs; they're filled with character actors, beautifully scripted parts and lush (if somewhat melancholy) scenery. I see Josh in the dark corners of his verse; and perhaps, more importantly, I see myself in there too:

"I fell inside a ditch and all the women saw me fall
They had me by the laces as I slid down that wall...
And as it snapped and the ground hit my back,
My eyes held a blue sky that should have been my last..."
(I Fell Inside a Ditch)

It's the kind of music that speaks so specifically to a place, or an emotion, or a condition, you feel you've been given a glimpse into Josh's head, complete with memories, scars and non-sequiturs. He pursues the line of the lyrical beat poet, drawing from a thousand different traditions: the roughshod survivors in Shane McGowan's songs, the troubadours of vintage era country music, and the lyrical sentimentalists of good fiction:

Well the morning's old coffee, cause I've been up all night dreaming,
Your smile was still beaming when you left here at three
Now your daughter's in school and your husband's off somewhere
And I hope that it's quiet where you are so you can sleep."
(Stolen Flower)

After that night in Cambridge, me and two other guys at the bar joined Josh's band. We call ourselves Los Diablos and we've been compared by music critics to The Pogues, The Old 97s, Son Volt, Tom Waits, REM, They Might Be Giants, The Feelies, Junior Brown, and Jason and the Scorchers, to name just a few; this is a polite way of saying we sound like everything and nothing you've ever heard. One thing I'm pretty sure of, however, is that somewhere down the line, it will be a mark of distinction for Boston bands to be compared to Josh Lederman y Los Diablos.

- R.P. 2003

Praise for Josh Lederman

"(Lederman's voice) gives his group's three albums and live shows - which are raw sprung, loose affairs - the same sweet, sympathetic appeal that Tom Waits had in his early years."
- Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix

"Lederman is a marvelous songwriter. Poetically old-fashioned in approach, pleasingly demented in execution."
- Ed Bumbardner, Winston-Salem Journal

"Lederman has a soaring, soulful voice and songwriting chops that could make Shane Macgowan blush. Josh Lederman y Los Diablos make the finest Jewish-Celtic Folk Pop available."
- James Heflin, The Valley Advocate

"Josh Lederman, leader of Los Diablos, writes old-fashioned songs. The kind you get drunk to, get married to, get divorced to and request to have played at your funeral. They're tales of down-'n-outers. They offer the minute details that often tell you more about a character than the grand, sweeping gestures. Perhaps most importantly, they have the good sense to enter the room briskly, make their point and then get the heck out of the way, leaving you enough time to go to the bar for another beer before they launch into another one."
- Jeff Miers, The Buffalo News

“Sad songs say so much. Soak them in whiskey and set them to raucous Irish wedding music and they say even more. On paper, [Los Diablos'] melodic hash of Celtic waltzes, Turkish rumbas, banjos and folk rock should be a sloppy disaster. On stage, it’s anything but.”
- Pete Humes, Style Weekly, Richmond, VA

• Visit the official Los Diablos website