Curiosity, Guitars, and God: An Interview with Josh Scott, Part 1

Josh Scott: A lot of the root of JHS is, it’s kind of anti… It’s counter-cultural ’cause it’s me going, well, these are guitar pedals, can we chill out?

[music]

David Zimmer: Welcome to Sound Plus Doctrine, the podcast of Sovereign Grace Music, where we explore what the Bible has to say about music and worship in the church, and encourage those who plan, lead, and participate in their Sunday gatherings each week. Hello, and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. My name is David Zimmer.

Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.

DZ: And we have a very special guest with us via Zoom today.

BK: Via Zoom, Josh Scott, owner, founder, president of JHS Pedals.

DZ: Wow, that makes him sound so famous.

BK: Well, he is. Josh, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

JS: Good to be here. Really excited to talk with you.

BK: Well…

DZ: It’s great. We’re so happy you’re here. This is awesome. We can’t wait. I think this is gonna be two podcasts because we have so much ground to cover.

BK: It could be like 10 podcasts.

DZ: Probably.

BK: But we’ve got to limit ourselves. That’s almost a whole season.

JS: I only have eight hours today.

BK: Okay. Josh, we are so blessed that you could be with us today. I’m gonna just tell a story about how I came to know you. I did not know who you were a few years ago, sadly, to my shame and to my lack. But a member of our church, we were just talking about this, Joseph Habib, knew we held these conferences, the Worship God conferences. And he said, you should get Josh Scott to come here. I said, Josh Scott? Who’s Josh Scott? Josh Scott, JHS Pedals? You don’t know Josh Scott?

DZ: You don’t know electric guitar pedals, Bob?

BK: What’s my problem? So Joseph Habib knew you. He put us in contact. And tell us what your association with Joseph was.

JS: Yeah, it’s one of my favorite stories. It’s like an ornament on my Christmas tree of life. He’s like… My wife and I got married in 2003, and we were part of… Pretty much immediately after we got married, we were part of this church plant in Jackson, Mississippi. And it was a starting church. And so you do everything. It’s basically like a staff of four at that time, a pastor, his wife, me and my wife. And so we’re doing everything from babies to elderly meetups in the morning. It’s like whatever you got to do, you do it. Anyway, so a lot of times I would just teach Bible in the teens and stuff. And he just appeared one day, just this teenager with a lot of axe body spray all over him. Like, this very questionable, clothing choices.

BK: Thanks for that detail, those details.

JS: He was just like a classic 12, 13 year old. I’d pick him up and yeah, I was just really drawn to like, yeah, there’s… I see something in him. He saw me play guitar. He saw me doing some worship leading. So long story short, here we are now. That was… I guess he would have walked in the door around 2004 or so, 2005, probably something. I can’t remember, something like that.

BK: Almost 20 years ago.

JS: Now he’s a Hebrew scholar at Cambridge. So like…

BK: Probably largely do.

JS: If you ever wanna feel effective, like I don’t know how to feel like I did. I’m just like, thank you, Lord. Like something works. I don’t know. He’s literally… He’s dedicated his career and the hours of his life to… It’s very specific too. He studies the punctuations of the Hebrew, which is very important of the Hebrew language. And they’re trying to uncover and understand a lot of the translation in a better way. It’s just unbelievable. So, me… You never know who the kid is when…

BK: You never know. And there’s no doubt that a large part of the reason why he is doing what he’s doing now is due to your investment.

DZ: Yes, for sure.

BK: And I think you can tie a direct link between those two.

JS: Sure. I was there.

DZ: I’ll take it.

BK: So you and Alice have been married, you said 20 years. You have three kids. And where are you now? You’re currently living?

JS: I live in Kansas City, Missouri. I’ve been here… JHS is… I started JHS in ’07. The math on that’s like 15-ish years. I don’t know. I can’t remember.

BK: Okay, so that’s what I wanna get into. You are a maker of pedals. Now, for someone who’s listening to this, and like me, maybe not familiar with the guitar world, how did JHS Pedals, which are your initials, how did they… How did it come about?

JS: I have an extremely… The Lord has given me a gift for obsessing over things. So at one…

BK: I don’t know if you’d call that a gift necessarily.

JS: Yeah, I’m just saying it is. I’m just like, maybe it is. I really get into stuff and I immerse myself in subjects. I’ve been like that my whole life. And so what happened is I fixed a guitar pedal. We were in Jackson and I had a pedal that broke. And so a guitar pedal… That’s ironically, I don’t have any near me, but back there on the cabinets. But yeah, it’s just a device. You hit it with your foot and it changes guitar. So clean guitar is fine. It can be really beautiful. But most of what people think of when you hear an electric guitar, you’re hearing an effect. You’re hearing an alteration to the waveforms of the guitar. So there’s these boxes. The first one was in the early ’60s. I had one of those. This is the 2000s. They’d evolved quite a lot. And it just broke. The on and off mechanism broke. I fixed it and just something grabbed a hold of me. Curiosity, which had happened, and I’m familiar with that, but it was a complete obsession. I had to know how these work. I had to know… It was like, I couldn’t sleep. I mean, I’m not being dramatic. It was an obsession of how does sound get changed?

BK: Wow.

JS: I just, like, it drove me crazy and I got textbooks. I started taking my other stuff apart. Yeah. And I eventually, I started modifying some other brands. I was learning, oh, this capacitor will make it bassier this will do this. And a couple people started buying them and then they fell into the, I had this little music store relationship there in Jackson, a shop called Fondren Guitars. If you’re in that area, it’s a great little shop. And the guy, Patrick was like, just sell a few. And they just kept selling. And then…

DZ: Wow.

JS: I had these stickers made that were horrible and I just slapped the stickers on and I didn’t know what to call it. So I was like, JHS ’cause I’m not very bright. And that’s my initials [laughter] And it just kept selling. And then one thing leads to another and you know, big artists start using them. Some of the, like, I remember Switchfoot using them and just Mutemath. And these big Carrie Underwood and all these guitarists…

BK: John Mayer, doesn’t he use some of your…

JS: Yeah. Just a, I accidentally, I say, I’ve had to work on this. I used to say accidentally started a company, but oh my gosh, it’s so much hard work. There was no accident. It was just, I didn’t intend to do it, but I pursued curiosity. So that’s why we’re sitting here. I had the weirdest job ever because I was curious.

BK: Okay, so I’ve neglected to say from the start, we connected through Joseph and we had some, a couple Zoom calls I think. ‘Cause I wanted to invite you to the conference, the Worship God conference. And I was so struck by your humility, by your love for the Lord, your love for the church, your love for the gospel. That you take what you do very seriously. So we’ve just heard, but yourself, not so much. In fact, I was just telling you, I was watching one of your YouTube episodes. What do you have? Like 438,000 subscribers. He has more subscribers than some of these music…

DZ: That is awesome.

BK: That’s pretty. Well, I don’t know, it’s a lot of subscribers.

[laughter]

BK: Anyway, what was the thing? Hate mail.

DZ: No, it’s yeah, reading your hateful comments or whatever.

BK: What was it called?

JS: Yeah. It’s just reading people’s hate mail or like, you get it all ’cause you have that many subscribers and Instagram, we have half a million and you just get all these, but people just love to say things.

BK: Yes. They do.

JS: So I was just like, I just love throwing it off by joining them and they don’t know what to do. They want me to just, they want it to ruin my day, but I’m like.

BK: Yeah. Yeah.

JS: Like someone’s this bored, so I’m gonna just join.

BK: Yes. So that’s, I mean, we love that about you. And then you came to the conference and you just resonated with the things we resonate with, which is serving the local church, not being, in fact, I remember one of the things you said at one of the conferences, you know what, I love being here because you guys are just normal. You’re just, normal. And we are normal. We are jars of clay. But it’s rare, Josh, that you meet someone who’s in the industry, whether it be Christian or secular, they see themselves that way.

DZ: Right. And so influential too. I mean, you’re making pedals for so many guitar players and different, like, famous artists and stuff. It’d be very easy to just jump on that platform.

BK: Think this is all about me, what the name I can make for myself. And, but we’ve never felt that. So it’s one of the reasons we wanted to have you on the podcast. ‘Cause We think that’s such an example to emulate for any young person or maybe parent of a young person who’s interested in music. Just hearing your story of, I just, I wanted to do something and I wanted do it better, and I wanted to keep doing it better. So I researched it and I didn’t worry about being famous. I didn’t worry about, impacting the world. I just wanna learn. I mean, you mentioned curiosity.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: We… It’s the glory of God to cover matters, the glory of kings to seek it out. Proverbs says, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re just learning how God made his world to work. So back to your history. Were you raised in a Christian home?

JS: Yeah. My parents were believers. They were, my situation, my parents were both, they had a really bad experience and were hurt in a church situation. By the time I was like eight-ish, nine-ish. So I didn’t grow up going to church. I have some very early memories of being at church. And then it stopped. And then in hindsight, I now understand there’s like, why that blacks out, there’s no church. But I grew up. But that being said, my dad, every day of my life, every morning was reading his Bible. My mom prayed over me.

BK: Praise the Lord.

JS: I knew… And when I came to Jesus on my own, they never pushed that. I knew so much scripture and I understood so many things because my mom and dad very much it was a Christian home. But it was more, it was a, I think they were just like a biblical home. The Bible is upfront and they didn’t really know how to cope or deal with what they had been through. But the Bible was upfront and the truth of scripture.

BK: So what, how did you, when did you think you first understood the gospel that Jesus had died for your sins? That you needed a savior, that you wanted to live for him?

JS: Yeah. I mean, this would’ve been around 2001.

BK: Wow.

JS: I just had this, like, I have said many times, it’s always hard to explain something that was that impactful. I had never ran from God. You always hear like, oh, he is running from God. I had just never found him, is what it felt like.

BK: Yes.

JS: It’s the curiosity, I am a very curious person and I remember memories as a child wondering about things, and I remember like, God, why are we here? Those thoughts, those things were always with me through my childhood. And it was like suddenly I found him. I ended up just attending this like little bizarro, nothingness youth group with this friend, and I…

[laughter]

JS: There was nothing about it that says a recipe for attracting someone like me too. It was just, I walked into a room and everything changed. And it was almost instant. I, yeah. It’s just such a amazing experience. And since that point because I remember opening a bible in that context. So there’s the pre and post, right? And the post was, okay, this thing is happening. What’s going on? I talked to my mom a little about it, she’s probably smiling more than ever, and I don’t, she’s like, they never pushed it just happened to me. And I remember realizing, why are these four gospels the same story? This is so weird. Like, that was, I had a lot of Bible, but I also had nothing, which was because of me. If anyone knows me, it’s like I fully immersed. So I was able to have it for myself. I discovered it for myself, which is a very beautiful, Yeah. I took the Bible and I was like, I want to understand this. I wanna see is this real? Is this provable? Is this something that, is it more than just some southern tradition, right? What is this thing?

BK: And so you, and it’s really the Lord drawing us as we’re looking for him he’s all the time behind us saying, yes, I’m drawing you to myself. What? And so you were how old then?

JS: 19.

BK: Okay. Wow. And so, did you have friends at that time who were going the other way? I mean, there’s certainly kids now who, they grow up in a Christian home and they start to deconstruct, they start to reject everything. You were saying, No, I wanna find out if this is true. And you realize, oh, this is true.

JS: I never, it’s a very strange thing in the hindsight of my life, I never got involved in the typical, like, I’m not the case study for like, the crazy kid who did it all meets Jesus. It’s just…

BK: Amen.

JS: I was rather boring in the sense of the way I was raised. I had a, and there’s reasons for this. I have a brother who’s 10 years older, and he went through a lot of bad stuff and there was a lot of trauma in the family situation with that. And I saw through him a lot of things. And early on, I now understand, I subconsciously was, that is not the path. And so even though I didn’t have some foundational, like moral compass, so to speak, or whatever you wanna call it, Sunday school lessons. I never was on a, I was on a neutral path. I just never could find purpose. Music was the first purpose I ever had. And so guitar and then when all that happened to me, it was a real meeting with Jesus. It was like, wow, this is not some fairytale. Like, something has changed in me.

BK: So were you already into music by that time?

JS: Yeah.

BK: Very much so. So what changed then? ‘Cause again, this is becoming a parent’s podcast, what changed in your life, in your heart? You were into music in high school. Through high school.

JS: Yeah. Yeah. I was in bands. I was writing songs. I wanted to be famous. But I was fairly successful. Locally, big locally. A lot of potential, headed in those directions. But there was never a feeling of actual purpose in it other than this feels like a path. And I love music. Music was deeply inside of me. I resonated. Music saved me in school. When I say that about my brother and not taking those paths and staying off of the treacherous decisions that he had made, music was my friend. I grew up very rural, a mile down a gravel road, kind of a horse ranch. Like no neighbors. Music was, the guitar was my best friend, and the guitar was therapy and the guitar, that was my life was, this instrument is an outlet. I don’t know how to talk to people. My parents aren’t great at, like, we don’t have the sitcom family discussions about life.

[laughter]

JS: It’s not like my parents, it’s a different situation. This wasn’t family matters, it was like they come in…

BK: I don’t know how many families do. [laughter]

JS: Yeah. The guitar was, it was a therapy. It was a beautiful thing for me. And then, but the meaning, the purpose, like what am I here for? All of that thing that I had felt in me through the years, none of it made sense till Jesus.

DZ: Yes.

BK: I love that. So if you can, and feel free to jump in, I’m just.

DZ: I think it’s great. I’m loving listening.

BK: If you could describe, ’cause I know, young people who are so into music and so into the guitars and raised in the church perhaps, and don’t make that move where they see, and this seems to me what you’re saying, Jesus became more important to me than my music. I realize music doesn’t give me a purpose. It’s a friend. It’s, you said music saved me, but in the sense of kept me from doing, going off the rails.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: So what if you can go back to that time, 20 something years ago, what changed in your thinking? What started to make sense? Because you didn’t give up music. You didn’t say, well, I can’t do music anymore.

DZ: Yes, right.

JS: No, even for more detail, those who follow JHS, they’ll know I use the word obsessive. I use it in a positive light. I’m very focused. I now for years have dealt with, I’ve become like, I have never said this, but it constantly is said of me a guitar historian and I’m collecting documentation, working on the…

BK: I was gonna say that. Yes, you are a guitar historian.

JS: So, I always, I’m trying to think of the train of thought I was on there. I was, I’ve always been very much obsessed with things. So with music, all right, I get into music. What that means technically is I picked up a guitar because I heard Pearl Jam. I heard a guitar solo and I thought that is so cool. So I beg my mom for a guitar. She goes to Sam’s Club and buys this garbage Chinese guitar.

BK: Nice. Premier store for guitars.

JS: And then I start, you got a picture of the whole thing, I put you in the space, Alabama, middle of the woods, really not a lot of friends, really small school. I never fit in ’cause I didn’t care about so many things I saw peers caring about, I didn’t care about parties. I didn’t, I cared about music can get me… Music is a vehicle. It’s done something to me. So I’m in this mode of like, I am studying music from this house in the middle of the woods, whether anybody knows it or not. And so I’m buying albums. I’m memorizing the producers names, the engineers. I’m looking at where they’re from. I’m holding up a Radiohead album and going like, I’m in Alabama, but this is England. I’ve never seen England. I may never go ’cause no one does anything in Alabama, but this is England or I look at, I look at a Soundgarden. Now I’m going to Seattle. Seattle looks so cool. The Space Needle. Okay, next. And so I’m like immersed. I was seeing the world through music. So I was, I collected music. When I had this experience…

BK: Can I interrupt there just a second and say that experience, that physical experience is unavailable to most people today now. It’s just sound and there is a real value in the possession of actual physical objects that represent music. Go ahead.

JS: No, we could go an hour. I can go an hour.

BK: Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure we could, just wanted to stop there.

JS: Yeah, so I saw the world through music. I began collecting it and when I had this encounter with the Lord, it was, I don’t, words don’t explain it well and I think that’s okay. What happened to me was those obsessions and that drive to master music or whatever that was, that was filling a need of purpose or something. And all that went away. And I remember having this very clear… I don’t, I got rid of all my CD. I didn’t need physical stuff anymore. Like I didn’t become some monk, but all of that need to obtain, all that stuff just didn’t mean the same to me. Guitar, I still played guitar. I still love guitar. But a lot of that obsession was leading towards some kind of purpose that I was misunderstanding as a teenager. I was looking for stuff. I was looking for a way out.

DZ: Yes.

JS: And I guess that is, there is a very real tangible place of everybody where I’m from. You really don’t get out. It’s a little depressing, it’s poor communities and farming and you’re just kind of there. I longed for something more, something else. And I, that was how I was getting there. And then when I met the Lord, it was this other infinite possibility for my life. I’d never known about. I’d started believing like, all right, if I’m created well, the creator has a map for that and I don’t have to, there was just so much relief. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was a trust in something I didn’t have to obsess over or create on my own or work for. It was a trust…

BK: Sorry, I wish you’d finish out your thought, but this, a few moments ago, this is what it sounds like to me. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I counted everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things. Count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which comes from the law, he says, but for you came through your knowledge of music, your abilities, all those things, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. I mean, that’s what that sounds like. Philippians 3.

JS: Yeah, I was valuable because I was getting really good at something. And then suddenly I didn’t need to be, I didn’t need to become valuable. Like, and for me, that was a big deal. Like for me, the way that happened to me, it was, the biggest experience of my life. I didn’t need, the Alabama kid didn’t need to be valuable, you know.

BK: Only Jesus is valuable. If you have him we have everything.

JS: Yeah, and then today, and a lot of people will not get this or understand it or whatever, but people of this podcast will, you look at JHS and it’s like… I just, it’s a lot of times people ask me why I do the things, that I run JHS so weird. Like, I run it so strange in for our industry, it’s because it is not essential.

BK: Yeah.

JS: It isn’t my, I don’t wake up and like…

BK: Love that.

JS: So a lot of the root of JHS is, it’s kind of anti… It’s counter-cultural. Because it’s me going, well, these are guitar pedals, can we chill out? This is like, I’m constantly in an industry, like I go to trade shows or used to I stopped going to trade shows, but I go to trade shows and it’s like people that make guitar, they’re wonderful craftsmen. I respect.

BK: Yes.

JS: Some of these people are amazing, but it’s their life.

DZ: It’s their hustle. Yes.

BK: Yeah, that’s true.

JS: I can’t, that is not what’s going on with me. I…

BK: And that’s obvious.

JS: I’m creating, and I want our company to make things out of an abundance of exploration and creativity. And we’re not proving anything. We’re just playing with everything. And we’re like, I don’t have to prove anything. And, it’s very funny in my industry, I feel it, I feel the conversations where people are like, what are you doing? And I don’t know, it’s just I feel it all the time.

DZ: Yeah. Well…

JS: But I just…

DZ: I think what’s so refreshing about it, Josh, is that, that feeling that you have to prove yourself. I think you go back to a boy in Alabama, it’s like, I think of kids around the world who are building social media platforms, just showing like, I have to prove something. I have to prove my worth, my value. And when you live under the tyranny of that stress and pressure and anxiety, say you go on to build a business, well then it runs you, it runs your life, it runs your family. And so God calling you, saving you, giving you a new identity gives us perfect peace. It’s like we don’t have to strive any longer. So it’s really cool to make that direct line from the moment God saved you and the trajectory of your life and he’s blessed your efforts and your curiosity, but it hasn’t driven you to madness.

JS: Yeah. And I think what, if anything, tangible in that when there’s a lot of value, I mean, there’s a lot of value in what I do. I love what I do, but it’s like, man, I love being able to just, JHS to me is not like, I’m not gonna like change the world with sound. Sure. Maybe. I mean, people do, but I’m like, man, I just love that I’ve been afforded this opportunity to employ people and change lives.

BK: Yes.

JS: And have a company and like, that’s so cool. I make toys. They’re very useful. They’re very needed for people. They’re a piece of people’s musical ability and art and creativity. And I take that stuff really seriously. But at the end of the day, I’m aware, I make these toys mostly, and it’s really cool. Like, you know.

DZ: It’s super cool. I mean, but you’re right though. Like not to undersell it, like the sound of your pedals are on some like iconic records. And there’s albums that are even coming out now that I can listen to and go, oh my goodness, that’s JHS, which is really cool. It’s like watching a movie and going, oh, that sounds like Hans Zimmer or that sounds like, whatever. So I do think that’s really awesome.

BK: So who, just so people know, and so I know who [laughter] are some of the, you mentioned some artists who use JHS Pedals. Who are some of the other artists you haven’t mentioned that people would know? I mean, I mentioned John Mayer.

JS: I mean, the pretentious thing is like, it’s kind of, they’re all over the place. That’s the, like the pretentious, if I had a cheesy, like guitar industry slogan, it’d be like JHS we’re everywhere.

BK: That’s a good one. [laughter]

JS: That’s not…

DZ: That’s really good.

JS: So yeah, it’s just, at 15 years, there’s certain pedals that have become part of a sound that people want, it’s almost like a staple of sorts. Yeah. So many of these bands that I set and obsessed over their CDs. Like I work with those bands now, and I, but it’s also like newer pop star. I mean, everything from Taylor Swift’s band to XYZ. I mean, I don’t, you come down off Taylor Swift’s band. You’re coming down, as far as popularity.

BK: Yes.

DZ: Yeah. But seriously, I mean, even from like you said, pop gigs, but even to like real purist guitarists, like guys I played with in LA that are using projector amps and like really ridiculous tinkering like old gear are using your pedals.

JS: Yeah. So you’re talking, the crowd of like Blake Mills and Mason.

DZ: Yeah. Mason Stoops and, yeah.

JS: Taylor, Yeah. Taylor and yeah. And even the jazz like, Julian Lage and Bill Frisell and these people like yeah, they’re all over. And man, that’s so fun.

DZ: Yeah. It’s really cool.

BK: But what I… The reason I even asked that question, Josh, is, and you’re hesitant to answer it, is because there’s some people who say, oh yeah, we’re used everywhere, and they really aren’t. And [laughter], it’s just like, but I’m gonna say that because it just sounds like I’m being, it’s the humble brag. I’m just, well, I did it, but no, I don’t know the nearly know the extent of how your pedals are used. I just, David’s much more aware. But I just know that with all that, you just continue to be very clear on the fact that, there are things more valuable than guitar pedals.

DZ: Yeah.

JS: Yeah. If my value is in famous people using a thing I make, this is for any art discipline. This is any art.

BK: Preach it.

JS: If my value is in the acceptance of what I make when people stop accepting it, I’m not valuable. That is a really horrible path.

BK: Yes.

JS: That cannot be the design. So it’s a, we cannot be, that’s not the design. God doesn’t do that. Like my acceptance is not in popularity because I won’t be popular forever.

BK: Nope.

DZ: Jesus will be. [laughter]

BK: He will be. And that’s why I love Colossians 3 when it says, when Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. He is our life. Nothing else. Well, Josh, you model that. And this has been a fun conversation.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: I can just go on so much more. We try to limit these in about 30 minutes. So we’re gonna talk again about specifically, it’s just whet your appetite just how the electric guitar can serve the church and what, your journey in that. And maybe tips for those who play electric, wanna play electric and how we might serve the church effectively with those gifts. But thank you for joining us for this podcast. Thank you for those who are listening, watching, and we hope to see you again.

DZ: Yes, thanks.