Josh Gilligan, Photo: Emory Brown.

Josh Gilligan’s new album, Party of One, almost turned out very differently, and might not have been made at all. The Florida-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter started recording songs in a studio with session musicians before he realized it was all wrong.

“It just didn’t feel like the right sound,” he says. “It didn’t feel authentic in that moment.”

He called the sessions off and went home. As he grappled with feeling stuck and isolated, he began to write new songs about his emotions and frustrations at that time. The title track grew out of his realization that it’s more fun to be around others and better to reach out to those around you and connect.

The songs he wrote have the underlying melancholy of a transitory time, but also of hope, as he lifted himself out of his rut.

“I don’t know if I even realized I was making a record until it was almost done, and then I was like, ‘Oh, these are the songs for that record,’” Gilligan wryly says.

He says he was inspired in part by the equipment he was using to record. He felt drawn to the idea of something warmer and less modern-sounding. When a vintage Trident console appeared for sale online, he and a friend drove to Kentucky to pick it up, even though he’d never used one before. He recorded most of the songs live and with few overdubs using the device in a small studio he built at home. Shortly after he’d finished the record, the console starting malfunctioning, and it felt like a sign.

“It felt like that was my season with it. I got it worked on, but then it just it didn’t feel right to do another project on it,” he says. “I felt like that was the message; that this was the one to do it on. It was the right vibe for the time of life that I was in. And then I sold it somebody else in town, so I couldn’t replicate it even if I wanted to.”

Gilligan’s music has been compared to that of Todd Rundgren, James Taylor and other ’70s singer-songwriters, but he humbly says he shies away from such comparisons. He was more interested in replicating the conditions rather than the sound itself.

“There were records of artists I love that were made on that [Trident console],” he says. “I thought, well, if you run it through the same circuitry and you write songs that you love, maybe you’ll end up at a similar destination.”

Gilligan moved to Nashville more than a decade ago and loves living in such a music-centric area. He spent most of last year touring as a member of Medium Build’s live band, playing steel guitar, electric guitar and keyboards, and singing backup. He says he enjoys playing for other artists, but that Party of One was a welcome chance to exercise his songwriting muscle. He says he loves making music just for the sake of it, even if it isn’t particularly profitable in the state of today’s music industry.

“I can just enjoy getting it out there and be happy with the people that my music does find,” he says. “I want it to always be from a place of joy.”

Follow Rachel Alm on Twitter at @thouzenfold, on Instagram at @thousandfold, and on Bluesky at @thousandfold.bsky.social.