Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and Father John Misty’s Josh Tillman Are Not Speaking
Robin Pecknold
Bands do that sometimes, they go on Reddit, one of the worst places of the internet, and do an AMA, ‘Ask Me Anything’, for an hour or so. On Saturday, it was the turn of Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold to go on Reddit, and if the session was a love fest, there was a recurrent question showing up among the fans’ posts. What about Josh Tillman who left the band years ago to pursue his own career as Father John Misty? When asked if he still had a relationship with Tillman and if he liked Father John Misty records, Pecknold stayed a bit evasive on the second point, but could not be more clear on the first one:
‘Josh and I haven’t spoken since the end of touring HB and, to be honest, we didn’t really speak much for the two years before that either. We ended up going down different paths too soon before our touring and recording commitments were finished. Happy he’s doing his thing tho. Sorry for the short answer just trying to get to all of these might talk about it more at some point’
Even when asked about Josh’s funny covers and career in general, fans only got these brief answers:
‘We haven’t spoken since 2011’ or ‘We don’t keep in touch!’
But when asked if the supposed tumult of Fleet Foxes’ ‘Helplessness Blues’ recording period was factual, we got a bit more details:
‘Sadly, my relationship with Josh was fully deteriorated by that point. We had really gone separate roads by 2010 but remained in the project together to honor our recording and touring commitments and to not let any fans down who might be coming to our shows. I wish that things had gone differently. Making sure everyone involved is feeling good and that relations are strong is a big priority for me now’.
Tillman already admitted the fall out in a previous interview with the Guardian last year:
‘We all started hating each other. I wasn’t the worst band member – I was actually the funny one. But there were a lot of tears. The worst was the tour we did where I was the opening act. I’d play my sad bastard stuff, be ignored, then go sit at the back. There’s no better illustration of how little worth I had. I walked off stage at Shepherd’s Bush and nobody noticed.’
So you have it, Pecknold and Tillman are NOT friends anymore, and they probably hate each other at this point… Plus isn’t Tillman’s act more successful than Fleet Foxes these days? The band has been on hiatus for a while and I see Tillman’s name everywhere, in the line up of every festival. In any case, it’s better these two don’t work together anymore, Tillman was way too cynical for Pecknold’s sentimentality, twee versus ironic, it would have never worked.
