Bet everything on music, then never looked back
Photos provided by Josh Merritt
Six months after Josh Merritt quit his job to chase music full time, life handed him a reason to second-guess everything.
The aspiring songwriter had finally taken the plunge, leaving behind a steady career in heating and air conditioning to make a living with a guitar in his hands. Then came unexpected news: he was going to be a father.
For many young musicians, it might have been the moment to abandon the dream.
Instead, it became the reason to work harder. Over the next decade, Merritt built a career that allowed him to do something few independent musicians manage — support a family entirely through music. Along the way, he released original albums, toured nationwide, and transformed personal experiences into songs that resonate far beyond Western Kentucky.
Today, the Owensboro-area musician can look back and see that becoming a father wasn’t the obstacle he feared it might be. It became fuel.
“I always told myself if I ever got to where I couldn’t support my daughter or my family, I’d hang it up,” he said. “But really, it put me into overdrive. I think it’s the reason I’ve had the career that I’ve had.”
That drive has carried Merritt to listening rooms, theaters, festivals, and venues across the country. Yet for all the miles he’s traveled, the foundation of his music can still be traced back to a childhood spent in Hancock County, where music wasn’t simply something people listened to. It was part of daily life.
MUSIC RUNS IN THE FAMILY
Long before Merritt wrote songs about heartbreak, addiction, family, and small-town life, he was a little boy running through crowded family jam sessions.
His father, one of 14 children, was a musician. So were many of his aunts and uncles. Family gatherings often turned into bluegrass jam sessions that featured eight or nine relatives playing at once. Those gatherings planted the seeds for everything that followed.
“We’d always have these big jam-outs at one of my uncle’s houses,” Merritt said. “I can remember running around there while everybody was playing. If you came from my family, you kind of came by it naturally.”
One memory in particular still stands out. Around age 7, Merritt became fascinated by an upright bass his Uncle Curtis played. Instead of simply showing it to him, his uncle offered something unexpected.
“He said, ‘Well, heck, load it up and take it home with you,’” Merritt said.
The instrument became Merritt’s first real introduction to making music. His father taught him how to play, and for years the upright bass was his primary instrument. Guitar didn’t enter the picture until his teenage years, when he wanted something that would allow him to accompany himself while singing.
Even then, the dream had already taken root.
“My momma jokes around all the time,” Merritt said. “She said I used to say when I was five or six years old I wanted to be a country music singer.”
After graduating from Owensboro High School in 2008, Merritt continued playing in bands while pursuing what seemed like a more practical future. He enrolled in college, studied criminal justice, and worked full time as a heating and air technician.
Music remained part of his life, but mostly as a side hustle — weekend gigs, local shows, and opportunities whenever they arose.
A TOUR THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
In his early 20s, Merritt was offered an opportunity to join a touring production in the Florida Keys. For two weeks, he experienced life as a professional musician. There were rehearsals, sound checks, schedules, and nightly performances. When he returned home, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“I came home and told myself, well, I hate that I got all the way through college, because I’m not gonna be doing that,” he said.
Rather than immediately walking away from his job, Merritt spent the next two years preparing. He paid off debt, created a financial cushion, and worked toward a plan that would give him a realistic chance at making music his full-time profession.
The final push came from an unexpected conversation. One morning, after arriving at work exhausted from balancing late-night gigs and early-morning shifts, a friend pulled him aside.
“You’re burning the candle at both ends,” he remembers being told. “One of these days you’re going to have to pick which one you want to do.”
The message stuck. By the end of that same day, Merritt had decided.
In 2014, he gave his notice and became a full-time musician.
The first several years required a different kind of hustle than many people imagine when they think about a music career. Merritt spent much of that time playing cover gigs, learning how to make a living entertaining crowds while also trying to develop his own artistic voice.
That distinction — entertainer versus artist — became one of the most important lessons of his career.
“You can go out and make great money being a cover artist,” he said. “But the lanes that you have to take to be an original artist are totally different.”
The challenge wasn’t learning how to perform. It was figuring out how to balance paying the bills while creating opportunities to share original music.
Eventually, those original songs became the foundation of his recording career.
ORIGINAL MUSIC THAT RESONATED
Merritt’s first full-length album, Reynolds Station, took years to complete and was ultimately released in 2020. Named after the Hancock County community where he grew up, the 10-song project drew heavily from his childhood experiences.
The album explored themes of addiction, family struggles, and rural life — subjects Merritt knew firsthand.
“When I was a young child, my mom’s family, they were caught up in a lot of the epidemic that was going on with drugs,” he said. “A lot of my childhood was kind of composed from that.”
The stories proved deeply relatable to listeners.
“I think that’s why I had the little bit of success that it had,” Merritt said. “It resonated with people that probably grew up the same way.”
Musically, the record occupied a space somewhere between country, folk, and Americana.
A few years later came 206, another deeply personal project. While sorting through old songs after a difficult breakup, Merritt realized he had unknowingly documented an entire relationship through his songwriting.
“There was a song from when we first got together. There was a song from when things weren’t going so great. There was a song from when it was falling apart,” he said.
The result became a concept album tracing the rise and fall of a relationship — another collection of songs rooted in lived experience. That commitment to authenticity remains at the center of everything he creates.
Earlier this year, Merritt released a live acoustic record featuring stripped-down versions of songs from throughout his catalog. After years of touring nationally as a solo acoustic performer, he wanted listeners to hear the music the way he most often performs it.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive.
“I’ve had a lot of people come back and say, ‘I’d love to get to hear that side of it,’” he said.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
For the first time in years, however, Merritt isn’t racing toward a specific project. The live album completed a long-term creative roadmap he had been following, and now he’s allowing himself space to decide what comes next.
“I’m in a really great spot right now,” he said. “I’ve got a whole bucket of songs I want to go make a record with, but I think right now I’ve got the space to sit and think what kind of record I want to make.”
Whatever direction that next chapter takes, Merritt knows the people who will remain at the center of it.
Now engaged and raising a family, he rejects the notion that musicians must choose between artistic ambition and personal stability. In fact, he believes his family is the reason he’s been able to sustain a career that many thought impossible.
“I think there’s nothing that drives me more to be a good musician than my family does,” Merritt said. “I’ve got a really good supportive family behind me. Half of what I do is for them.”
For the boy who once carried home an upright bass from a family jam session and declared he wanted to be a country singer, that support has helped turn a childhood dream into a life.
And more than a decade after taking that leap of faith, he’s still writing the next verse. OL
