Getting to Know One Outta Ten

One Outta Ten is your latest indie-rock band addiction.

They have just released their latest EP, Better Days. On the release, frontman Josh de Leon says,

It's hard to process how tough this past year has been for the band. All five members of the band have experienced loss this year, the type of loss that shapes who you are going forward. Making "Better Days" was cathartic, but necessary. Dave and I lost our father, and the world hasn't been the same since. Luckily, we are surrounded by people who love and understand what we are going through. I've experienced so much love from people in the past year. I just wish my dad was there to see it. Making these songs is my way of saying I'm still alive, and we're doing fine. We won't let the loss stop us, and Dave and I will keep making music in our father's memory. This album is dedicated from our band to Sylvia, Marilyn, Rascal, and Kahlua, but from me and Dave, this album is for our dad Ray. I miss you so much. Hope you've got a beer in your hand and you're relaxing on a beautiful beach.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Josh about their album, Better Days, and more! Read on for our exclusive interview.

MSM: Tell me about your journey with creating music. How did you get started, and what first ignited your passion for music?
Josh: Dave and I were surrounded by good music at a young age because of our parents. They were always playing The Beatles, so I really thought that they were the strongest influence on us from a young age. Pretty typical stuff, to be honest. It didn't start picking up until we were around 8 and 10, when my uncle got us the video game Rock Band for Christmas. Suddenly, we were exposed to so many new music genres, varying from Dad Rock to Progressive Metal, Riot Grrrl, and 80’s punk, just to name a few. That was a transformative period for me, especially. We played the hell out of that video game! In 8th grade, I met my friend James Gill, who introduced me to the Arctic Monkeys. We really wanted to capture the sounds of those early records, so we decided to make a band in high school. Thus, One Outta Ten was born, with me playing guitar and singing, James on bass, our friend Tyler (who remains in the band today) on guitar, and David on drums. We have gone through some lineup changes since then, but right now it feels the most coherent and easy it’s ever been, with Mark on bass and JT on keys, vocals, and guitar.

Your music defies easy categorization, blending elements of different genres and styles. How do you approach genre and style when writing and recording music?
I honestly love how varied our music is. I grew up listening to so many different types of music, and I’m still very influenced nowadays by trying to outgrow my comfort zone. I think the best way for my musical growth to flourish is through exposure to the weird. One of my favorite bands is King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and I’m very inspired by how they seemingly pull musical ideas from a hat and run with them. Sometimes I’m just really struck by a sound and, from there, I’ll try to incorporate that into my music. I don’t want to be stuck in a genre, but playing around with genres is pretty fun. Somehow we stuffed Better Days with a song with shoegaze sounds, a country song, two ballads, a five-minute guitar-driven instrumental jam outro with a bass solo, and a surf rock-inspired song that I wrote in, like, 2017. For Better Days, I was listening to so much Jeff Rosenstock and The Beths and Slaughter Beach, Dog, that I really wanted to make an album that sounded similar to them. Very introspective lyrics, with the acoustic guitar taking up a good amount of space, with the electric guitars and the drums kind of dancing around with each other. Oh, and there are also VERY memorable chants and choruses the audience can sing along to. I know the next album we make will be faster and more dancey, with more of an emphasis on love songs and electric guitars. Hopefully I can throw in some Steely Dan-esque sounds in there, too!

Josh, you and Dave recently lost your father. Did he impact your music career other than inspiring Better Days?
My dad, Ray, is pretty much ENTIRELY responsible for the music we make. When we were kids, he would talk about the band he used to be in with his friends. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. He always supported Dave and me in our music journey, paying for our instruments and showing us new music to be inspired by. Hell, all three of us used to play in our garage together, and he would step up to play bass. There’s probably a video of our trio jamming out to Billy Idol somewhere on the internet somewhere. I would always show him our demos, and he would be so pleased to watch a song get made. Sometimes, when he came to our shows, he would buy all our friends beers at the bar. My dad was just a stellar dude, and to know our music is really to know who he is.

Can you talk about the creative process behind Better Days?
This was the most collaborative project the band has worked on in our career. We have been working on the album for about two years in total. When the process began, I was just collecting snippets of riffs and songs that I recorded, playing with an open E tuning on an acoustic guitar during May 2022. I had COVID, and I was going crazy from doing nothing but watching Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure with my girlfriend, so I began writing more music. That song ended up becoming ‘[Friends/Anyways],” which is the penultimate song off the album. I think it did a good job of setting the groundwork for how we would sound going forward in the album process.

If you had to pick out your favorite song or lyrics from the album, what would they be?
All of my favorite lyrics are the ones that the other bandmates wrote. They’re SO good. It’s good to just have writing partners who can assist in the process of making a song. “SCREAM!!!” has a line about the week my father died. It was a weird time because Southern California experienced both Hurricane Hilary and a 5.1-magnitude earthquake. I was having a pretty hard time filling out the verse when Tyler shot back with “Earthquakes and hurricanes/A barometric improbability,” which really set the tone for the first verse. I also love “Rose Tea” because of how lyrically it captures that feeling of having someone who supports you fully. JT wrote the line, “But just like the roses hung upside down in your window/I've been out too long and the pedals are starting to fall,” and it just really spoke to me. Every once in a while, I’ll listen to “Rose Tea” and then send JT a picture of me crying. Great song. I also just love the lyrics to the title track, “Better Days.” I think that’s the best my songwriting has ever been. It’s so personal to my experience with my dad, who really was just that good of a guy. I wanted to make a song that let him know that I’m still doing okay and he doesn’t have to worry about me living without him. He gave me everything I needed. Yeah.

Your lyrics touch on deeply personal experiences and emotions. How do you go about writing about such personal topics, and how do you balance being vulnerable with maintaining a sense of privacy?
I used to struggle a lot with songwriting because it felt like revealing my true self to the world. With my earlier stuff, I really just couldn’t get to the depth that I wanted to. I think the closest I was able to dig was with the song “Epilogue” off With Rage, written for my partner. That was the last song I wrote for that album, and I really only slipped it into the album right before we were done with it. I guess I used it as an emotional springboard, because every song I have written since then has felt so true and real. Every song on the album feels like a part of me in the world, letting people experience what I’ve experienced. Being in your mid-20’s with some life experience makes me feel like I have some genuine meaning behind my music. Not that the old stuff isn’t real! I just think the new lyrics have gotten so good, and I’m finally ready to talk about the stuff on my mind without fronting. Honestly, I used to be really scared to show how I felt, but I think after the outpouring of love we got after my dad died, I realized how futile it is to live without showing who you are. If you love someone, you just gotta let them know. It reminds me of a Jeff Rosenstock lyric where he said, “I gotta let you know when you’re alive/Cause I’ll be a disaster when you die.” Great song. “...While You’re Alive” off of Jeff Rosenstock’s album WORRY. I think everyone in the band can give all that they can when we write and play music together without it dipping into our personal lives.

How do you go about taking all this emotion and feeling and translating it into a music video or visual?
For the “Better Days” music video, it felt pretty therapeutic. I haven’t looked through my childhood home videos in so long. My dad really loved to film everything on tape back when we were children. I remember one summer, he paid me $100 to digitize the tapes and put them on our home computer. When we were looking for footage to use for his funeral, I realized they were all still on the computer. I didn’t touch it all in 2023 and most of 2024, until I needed to make sure there was a music video out for “Better Days.” I decided to look through it, not sure what I would find. I think after sifting through so much video, I began to find it really sweet that my dad filmed everything. He really was so proud of Dave and I, and the men we became. There’s a lot of love in those tapes. I used a bunch of footage from the 1990’s with my mom and dad. I found footage of my parents making recipes with my late grandmother, my dad’s mom. My dad used to talk about her so highly and how affected he was when she passed away from cancer. He was so regretful about how she didn’t make it to meet Dave and I. I, too, feel that way about my dad, and it’s hard to know that the cycle will continue. My future kids will never meet their grandfather; all they will know are the stories we tell about him. In a way, I just wanted everyone who watched this to know he had a whole life before I was even alive. Ray lived a life full of love, and I’m glad I could show that in the music video.

If you could sit down and have a conversation with someone who has guided you through your journey as an artist, who would you choose and why?
I’d love to talk to the guys in King Gizzard. Their work ethic, musicianship, and ability to connect with their fans have inspired me in many ways. Maybe there isn’t a lot of overlap between our sounds, but I have gotten SO much better at guitar by using their music to practice. We even get into jam-band territory when we play some songs live. I would ask them how they keep expanding their skillset. I would like to know how they can keep writing seemingly without experiencing creative burnout, and I would absolutely love to know how they practice the 100+ songs they play in rotation on their tours. It’s mind-boggling. King Gizz, if you read this, I love you.

What artists have you been listening to lately?
Recently, I’ve been all over the new King Gizzard album Flight b741, but I really liked the Charli XCX album. I've been really trying to have a Brat Summer. The past few weeks I was on a road trip on the east coast of the US through Canada with my girlfriend, and we listened pretty hard to the Kendrick Lamar diss tracks directed towards Drake while we were driving through Toronto (sacrilege, I know). I’ve also been bumping lots of My Chem and System of a Down, just to feel like I’m in 6th grade again. Masayoshi Takanaka has really been the summer vibe for me, too. He’s such a great guitarist, and when I listen to him, I feel like I’m on the beach of a PS2 game. While we were in Washington, DC, my girlfriend and I stopped in on a random show on a Tuesday night. We watched two acts that really surprised me: Alexa Rose and Sam Moss. They were both very good at singing, and they reminded me of traditional Appalachian music. It was very interesting.

Lastly, is there anything else you’d like to share? Hype yourselves up— what do you think sets your music apart, and why should any potential new fans check out your music?

If you’re new to us, welcome to the party! We write music we love to call Hangover Rock and Forever Blues, dedicated to the fast times and good times that leave you with the soul-crushing headache that comes the day after. If you love loud and fast indie rock that makes you want to mosh and cry, give us a listen! We’ve been working hard for you to listen to the new album, and I want to personally thank you for finding us! We have the BEST live shows ever, come watch us and grab a shirt at our shows! We’re playing in LA on August 31, 2024, for our album release show, and playing the whole album in full in Camarillo on September 21, 2024! We have a bunch more dates that you can find on our Instagram if you want to see us in California. A world tour in a few years, maybe?