FATHER JOHN MISTY: (Live on Tour with Loren Kramar) The Stone Pony

Joshua Michael Tillman (born May 3, 1981), better known by his stage name Father John Misty, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer.[1] He has also performed and released studio albums under the name J. Tillman.

Maintaining a steady output of solo recordings since 2004,[2] Tillman has been either a permanent or touring member of Demon Hunter, Saxon Shore, Fleet Foxes, Jeffertitti's Nile,[3] Pearly Gate Music,[4] Siberian,[5] Har Mar Superstar,[6] Poor Moon,[7] Low Hums, and Jonathan Wilson,[8] and has toured extensively with Damien Jurado, Jesse Sykes, and David Bazan.[9][10] He has also made contributions to albums by more mainstream artists such as Beyoncé,[11] Lady Gaga,[12] Kid Cudi,[13] Lana Del Rey, and Post Malone.

Joshua Michael Tillman[14] was born in Rockville, Maryland, on May 3, 1981,[15][16] the son of evangelical Christian parents Barbara and Irvin C. Tillman, an engineer at Hewlett-Packard, who met at a Christian youth group.[15] His mother was raised in Ethiopia, where her parents were missionaries.[17] The eldest of four children, he has a brother and two sisters.[18] Before he settled on a career as a musician, he briefly had ambitions of becoming a pastor because of the performance aspect[19] when he was approximately six years old.[20] He has commented that his parents strongly emphasized Christianity in his upbringing, to a degree which he has described as "culturally oppressive". He was estranged from his parents for many years, but they have since reconciled.[15][19]

After learning drums at a young age, Tillman learned guitar when he was 12.[19] He attended a Baptist church and an Episcopal elementary school while growing up, then a Pentecostal Messianic day school.[21] He said he was naïve when he was growing up because there was limited secular cultural influence within the home and no secular music was allowed. Around the age of 17, his parents modified their cultural stipulations; he was allowed to listen to secular music that had a "spiritual theme". For this reason, his early purchases included albums like Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming as he was able to convince his parents that Dylan was classified as a "Christian artist".[15]