By Kreig Marks, September 2026

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Kreig: Hi Josh, let's jump right into this.  When a new Greta Van Fleet album begins, what arrives first for you: a lyric, a melody, a feeling, or complete chaos in the rehearsal room?

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Josh: Usually a feeling, and then chaos generously offers to translate it. The best songs come from something you cannot quite explain yet. You chase it around the room until it becomes a sound everyone can stand inside.

 

Kreig: You have lived inside some very large vocals. When you are alone and nobody needs the sky split open, what does your natural singing voice sound like?

 

Josh: Probably much quieter than people expect. I think the voice onstage is an instrument built for the architecture of the music, but everyday life is more conversational. You do not need thunder to ask somebody if they want tea.

 

Kreig: When you look toward the next Greta Van Fleet record, what is the one thing you would refuse to repeat just because it worked before?

 

Josh: Comfort. It is very tempting to identify what people respond to and build a nice little house around it. But art should be a door, not a house. We have to keep walking into places where our own expectations cannot follow immediately.

 

Kreig: You have three bandmates who have known you for most of your life. Is that a creative superpower, or does it make it impossible to hide a bad idea?

 

Josh: Both, without mercy. Jake can tell when I am reaching for something honest, and he can also tell when I am pretending a half-formed thought is profound. That kind of history gives you trust, but it also removes your ability to bluff.

 

Kreig: Rock audiences often want a band to feel dangerous, mysterious, and larger than life. Does that ever become exhausting when you are just four people trying to order dinner after a show?

 

Josh: It can be funny. You walk offstage feeling like you have just traveled through another dimension, then somebody is debating fries or soup. I think that is healthy, honestly. Grandeur is meaningful only if you can still laugh at yourself afterward.

 

Kreig: Here is a difficult one: some critics have treated your early sound as nostalgia rather than originality. What did that criticism teach you, if anything?

 

Josh: It taught us that people often need categories before they can hear something clearly. We have never denied the music that shaped us, but influence is not imitation. The responsibility is to keep evolving until the conversation becomes less about what people think they recognize and more about what we are actually saying.

 

Kreig: If the new record had one rule written on the studio wall, what would it be?

 

Josh: “Do not decorate the truth.” A song can be beautiful and still be empty, so we try to make sure there is an actual pulse beneath all the color and scale.

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Kreig: What is the strangest source of inspiration you have brought into a writing session that the others actually took seriously?

 

Josh: Silence has been a surprisingly persuasive collaborator. Sometimes you spend hours making noise and realize the real idea was hiding in the empty space between things. That can irritate musicians initially, which is usually a promising sign.

 

Kreig: Your songs can feel mythic, but people are often most moved by the human details. What ordinary emotion do you think rock music has ignored for too long?

 

Josh: Tenderness. Rock can be loud about conquest, longing, rage, and rebellion, but quiet care is just as radical. There is courage in admitting that you need people, that you are frightened, or that love has made you gentler.

 

Kreig: If a young singer tells you, “I want a voice like Josh Kiszka,” what is the least glamorous advice you would give them?

 

Josh: Learn how to listen. Listen to your own body, listen to the room, listen to the band, listen to the silence after a note. A voice is not just a weapon you point at a high note. It is a relationship with breath, emotion, and restraint.

 

Kreig: Do you ever worry that a band built on intensity can become trapped by the need to constantly be intense?

 

Josh: Absolutely. If everything is a climax, nothing is. The next chapter has to allow shadow, humor, fragility, and stillness, because those things make the louder moments feel earned.

 

Kreig: Last one, and I will make it unfair: years from now, what would disappoint you more, making an album people adore but that feels dishonest to you, or making an album that confuses everyone but tells the truth?

 

Josh: The first one would be harder to live with. Affection is beautiful, but it cannot be the reason you make the work. If the record confuses people because we took a real risk and followed something true, then at least it has a soul.