Josaleigh Pollett & Crowd Shy on Building 'If I Let It Quiet' Across Continents
Created between Salt Lake City and Osaka, 'If I Let It Quiet', out July 24, pushed Josaleigh Pollett and longtime collaborator Crowd Shy into unfamiliar territory. We spoke about friendship across distance, DIY recording, creative trust, and why success has little to do with algorithms.
Josaleigh Pollett's fourth album, If I Let It Quiet, arriving July 24, was never going to be made under ordinary circumstances. When longtime collaborator and producer Jordan Watko (Crowd Shy) relocated from Utah to Japan, the pair suddenly faced a challenge neither had encountered before: how do you preserve a creative partnership when an ocean sits between you?
Rather than trying to recreate old working methods, they used the distance as an opportunity to experiment. Recorded between home studios in Salt Lake City and Osaka, the album became an exploration of friendship, trust, change, and finding connection through technology, field recordings, and a shared commitment to making music that matters.
We caught up with Josaleigh and Jordan to discuss the realities of long-distance collaboration, the DIY recording process behind the album, creative growth, and what success means when streams and algorithms aren't the main goal.
Chris Roditis, Musicngear: “If I Let It Quiet” was created between Salt Lake City and Japan. How did working across that distance shape the emotional tone of the album and did the physical separation influence the songs in a way that unexpectedly benefited them creatively?
Josaleigh: The physical distance and the uncertainty of how to navigate a long-distance friendship/creative partnership for the first time shaped the entirety of this record. We knew going into the making of it that things wouldn’t be able to work the way they had on our previous record and that we’d have to be more intentional about time and logistics.
But more influentially to the sound, we knew that such a big change would actually be a really good opportunity to try completely new things and lean into the chaos a little bit. I think it made us more brave and open to experimenting on this record than we had been in the past.
Musicngear: You describe the album as an exploration of quieting noise, both geographical and emotional. What did you personally have to quiet or let go of to make this record?
Josaleigh: The biggest challenge to me personally when we started working on these songs was this deep fear that mine and Jordan’s creative collaboration would suffer in the distance, or worse, our friendship wouldn’t be able to handle it. That fear was so loud at first that for months before Jordan even moved, it was hard for me to keep my big, loud, afraid emotions out of the way of spending quality time with him.
My challenge was to share my very real fear with my best friend without making him hold all of it, and make space for his very real and big feelings about making such a big life change so that I could be there for him, too.
I had to let go of control and allow the change to be whatever it was going to be, because we both knew that holding on to anything too tightly and not allowing our dynamic to change would be what could ultimately end it.
Musicngear: A lot of the album was recorded in home studios across two countries. Can you walk us through the gear and tools that defined the record?
Crowd Shy (Jordan Watko): Moving to a new country and specifically one where space was tighter, meant I was fairly limited in how much gear I could bring with me during the move. I lucked into finding a used Moog Matriarch early into the move, which we used for a lot of the bass sounds across the record.
More than anything else, though, switching over to Ableton really ended up defining the sound of the record. I really fell in love with the warping functions there. So much of what Josi would record and send me would immediately get stretched and pitched there almost immediately. It started to create this world where everything sounded a bit synthesized, but ultimately had a human fingerprint that felt in line with working so far away and relying on digital tools to keep us connected.
Working with so much audio as opposed to MIDI for this meant finding interesting ways to shape sounds with plugins, too. I try to limit the number of different plugins I'll allow myself to use when during any given project we work on together.
This time around, we used Aberrant Digitalis and ShapeShifter and Lese's Codec for a lot of that shaping, which were such a blast to play around with. Exactly how tracks would react to those plugins was always a bit of a surprise, which kept things interesting while working so far apart.
Watko & Pollett Collaborating Internationally 
Musicngear: Did working remotely push you toward any production techniques or gear choices you wouldn’t have explored otherwise?
Crowd Shy (Jordan Watko): We usually track everything together in the same room, so one of our first priorities was finding something to replicate that experience as much as possible. We landed on the Muse app, where I could remotely control Josi's DAW and move audio quickly between our different project files.
I touched on it already, but working more in the box felt like a must early on, so I definitely turned to a few pieces of gear often to try and keep things feeling alive wherever possible. The record is full of voice memos and field recordings from Utah and Osaka that we resampled into everything from textures to percussion.
The bass and synths in the opening track are actually just pitched loops of a plane flying over Josi's house. A lot of tracks were resampled through the Portastudio 414 for a little saturation or the Death by Audio TSA and Fairfield Circuitry The Unpleasant Surprise for something more extreme.
Musicngear: You’ve had a steady, slow-building recognition over the years. What’s been the hardest challenge you’ve faced as an artist during that journey, and what’s one piece of advice for artists navigating similar challenges?
Josaleigh: I’m really so grateful for the way my music career has grown alongside me. It feels like I started getting more steady recognition once I started to feel more proud of the music I was making, which feels ideal to me. Writing and performing songs has always felt like a necessity to me, and it wasn’t until I started working with Jordan that I started to feel like I really wanted other people to hear them more than they had before.
I love being a DIY artist and having total control over what I do and when I do it, but it’s easy to overlook just how much work it is to put records out. It’s been such a game-changer to be working with Audio Antihero on this record and getting some support in getting our record heard.
It’s so much more than just making music you’re proud of and it’s easy to burn out when you start getting into the promotion and touring weeds, and it’s so easy to get disheartened when you really believe in something that isn’t reflected back to you by streams or the algorithm.
What’s worked for me and is my advice to anyone else in these same weeds, is to avoid the trap of thinking that success is anything other than getting to make music that you believe in. As long as your guiding light is always making the art that you believe in, then everything else good is icing on the cake and everything hard is always worth it.
Musicngear: With this album, what does success actually look like for you? Is it streams, packed shows, press coverage, or something less measurable?
Josaleigh: Since the beginning of collaborating with Jordan, we’ve always held ourselves to the same definition of success - our only hope was that people whose music we admire like the music that we’re making. When people like Chris Walla gave us accolades on our last record, Jordan and I both felt satisfied and like we’d made what we set out to.
For this record, while that definition of success is still top of mind, the goal was a little more personal. Our goal with If I Let It Quiet was to let this album determine the shape of the way we work together across distance, and prove to each other that the music we make is important to us and easy to commit to, even when it’s hard. On this side of making that record, I’ve never felt more committed to this musical project and the friendship and collaboration Jordan and I have built together. There is something incredibly special and unique about it to me that this record made so much more clear.
We’re also taking it on our first tour together, so I think success will feel a little different. We’re playing 11 shows this summer and our measure of success looks like leaving at least one of those saying, “I think that was the most fun show we’ve ever played.”
Odds are looking good. I’m just excited to be stuck in a van with my best friend for two weeks now that we spend so much time apart.
Musicngear: You’ve collaborated widely and shared stages with diverse artists. Who would you most love to work with next, and are there venues or festivals you feel especially drawn to playing?
Josaleigh: I love collaborating with musicians I admire, and especially love sharing stages with folks across multiple genres and scenes. I’m a fan first and foremost. I would really love to continue to lend my voice to other projects wherever I can - harmonizing with other vocalists and singing other people’s lyrics is a great joy of my life.
I’d especially love to collaborate with the band Pretty Bitter - I think Emilia and I would sing really well together - and I’d love to sing harmonies with Daniel Bateman of Frog someday if he’d let me. I’ve also done very, very little touring, so exploring the Midwest or the East Coast in general on tour is hopefully on my very near horizon!
Musicngear: “If I Let It Quiet” feels like another step forward in the evolution of your sound. After this album and tour, where do you see yourself wanting to go creatively next?
Crowd Shy: Sonically, we really never know until we get there. We were lucky enough to work with and collaborate with so many talented people on this record, not least of which was Andrew Goldring, who mixed and mastered for us. If there's anything we could do more of in the future, it would be to get into rooms with people we love to find the right words and sounds for the project.
More vulnerability, more sharing space, more connection.
Josaleigh: Big agree. We’ve done so much writing in our projects separately. Something we’ve yet to do is come together without any real thought-out ideas and write a song from start to finish together in the same room.
I can imagine our next project starting out with a week of writing somewhere cool and then bringing those ideas into Andrew’s studio or something to demo things out with more friends. More time together and more friends is what I’m always craving.
Connect with Josaleigh Pollett
Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Threads | Bandcamp | Spotify
Connect with Crowd Shy
Instagram | Spotify
About Chris Roditis
Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.
Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@musicngear.com
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