Josh Garrels

Josh Garrels, a singer and songwriter, has forged his path through introspective lyrics and sounds that stretch from pastoral indie folk into hip-hop territory. Active since the early 2000s, he co-established Small Voice Records, the label that issued Jacaranda in 2008. Home reached the Billboard 200 in 2015. Though he has stayed loosely connected to the Christian music world across his career, Garrels has avoided positioning himself as either strictly Christian or secular, instead allowing his music to convey his personal narrative.

Born in 1980 in South Bend, Indiana, Garrels performed in punk groups as a teenager before absorbing East Coast rap ahead of college. In his early twenties he adopted the Christian faith, an influence that became central to his musical development. He launched a series of self-produced home recordings with Stonetree in 2002, followed by Underquiet in 2003 and Over Oceans in 2006. His rich, soulful voice prompted him to weave orchestral textures into folk foundations, moving between rapped passages and crooned lines across intricate yet accessible songs. On Small Voice Records he released Jacaranda in 2008, toured extensively, then settled in North Carolina and issued the rarities collection Lost Animals EP. In 2010 he joined Brooklyn’s Mason Jar Music collective for an orchestrated performance of “Words Remain” inside a historic Episcopal Church in Manhattan.

The 2011 double album Love & War & the Sea in Between reflected his life in Portland, Oregon and the broader Pacific Northwest. Both Christian and secular outlets hailed it as a defining work. The following year he reunited with Mason Jar Music to create the documentary The Sea in Between, filmed on remote Mayne Island in British Columbia, for which he supplied the soundtrack. Several of his songs landed on television programs including CBS’ The Ghost Whisperer and ESPN’s Outside the Lines, while he also scored multiple small films. In 2015 he offered Home as a free download through Noisetrade; the album later peaked at number 19 on the Billboard Digital Albums chart and number 83 on the Billboard 200. The holiday-themed The Light Came Down appeared the next year. Chrysaline followed in 2019, produced partly by Garrels alone in Muncie, Indiana and partly with Isaac Wardell in Charlottesville, Virginia.