What’s in Your Fridge is where the Straight asks interesting Vancouverites about their life-changing concerts, favourite albums, and, most importantly, what’s sitting beside the Heinz Ketchup in their custom-made Big Chill Retropolitan 20.6-cubic-foot refrigerators.

On the grill

Joshua Hyslop

Who are you

I’m a singer-songwriter on Nettwerk Records. I’ll be releasing my sophomore album, In Deepest Blue, on Friday (October 23), and then touring through the U.S. and Canada, opening for Vanessa Carlton. I have also been:

• A house painter. It was meant to be a summer job once but I ended up doing it for five years;
• A janitorial-supply delivery boy, which was just a fancy name for toilet-paper delivery boy. Around the thousandth time a construction worker yelled “Asswipe’s here” upon my arrival, I felt it was time to move on.
• A pizza maker for an awful pizza place in my hometown. I never received any training and quit after one week. A year later, the building it was in exploded. For real.

First concert

It was in 1995, when I was eight years old. My parents took my sister and I to Bellingham, to the Mount Baker Theatre to see Michael Card. I don’t remember any of the songs. I just remember that he was alone on-stage and everyone was completely silent while he played. He had something like six or seven guitars on-stage with him and I thought that was too many. I started playing guitar seven years later and I realized I was wrong.

Life-changing concert

When I was in Grade 11 I got to see Wilco at the Orpheum. My friend had shown me a few of their songs on his Discman and I loved it. I immediately went out and bought their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and while I was paying for it the guy at the register told me they were coming to town in a few months. I had no money, so I sold everything I could (some video games, my old pogs, a few of my sister’s CDs) and bought a ticket. I was in the back row of the balcony, but I didn’t care. When the lights went down and the band walked on-stage, everyone was cheering and they launched into their first song. All I could think was, “I want to do that.”
They finished their set to a standing ovation and walked off-stage. Everyone was clapping and cheering and they came back on for the encore and played a few more songs. Usually that’s it, but everyone kept cheering and clapping, so they came back on and played a second encore. When it happened again, people started filling up the aisles and running to the front of the stage. After their third encore they bowed and walked off-stage and the lights and music came on, so people started collecting their things and leaving. I had just made it to the lobby when I could hear the band was back on-stage and playing again. We all ran back into the theatre to catch the fourth and final encore. By the end of the night I had cheered myself hoarse and was more determined than ever that music would be in my future somehow.

Top three records

This is impossible. If you asked me this question again in a week, you’d probably get different answers.

Ryan Adams Heartbreaker This is such a classic album. I love every song on it. Ryan Adams is a huge inspiration to me. His songwriting is incredible and he never stops. He just keeps putting out record after record. This album is incredible, plus it features Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, and Pat Sansone, and was produced by Ethan Johns. It’s amazing.

David Bazan Curse Your Branches Listening to this album was the first time I ever had the feeling that a song had been written for me—that someone was perfectly articulating things I’d thought and felt and gone through but never been able to express. It hit me, and it was great. He also recently put out a record of a bunch of his songs accompanied by the Passenger String Quartet, which is an amazing record too.

Ray Charles Ray Charles I have always loved Ray Charles. The first time I can remember really trying to sing was shortly after I’d seen the movie The Sandlot when I was little. There’s a scene during the fireworks on the Fourth of July when the kids are playing baseball and “America the Beautiful” is playing. I loved his voice. I didn’t know the words at all, but I remember biking around our townhouse complex on my BMX and singing the melody over and over. That song isn’t on this album, but I found this record years later at a local bookstore and bought it without even looking at the track listing. I love it. He was 25 when this came out. That is crazy.

All-time favourite video

Fatboy Slim “Weapon of Choice” I’m not a huge fan of Fatboy Slim and I was never really into music videos, but this one is incredible. The whole video is just Christopher Walken dancing in an empty hotel. He flies a little bit also. I think he’s the only person who can make dancing funny and terrifying at the same time. If you haven’t seen it, you should go watch it as soon as you can. Something about it reminds me of The Shining, too, and that’s one of my favourite movies, so that’s a plus. 

What’s in your fridge

Pomegranates. Years ago I spent a couple months living in and out of a van that someone had given to me. I had very little money and didn’t really know how to cook or anything. In mid-October that year, Safeway had a sale where you could buy four pomegranates for $4, and they were huge. I pretty much lived off of them, and I’ve continued to fill the fridge with pomegranates every October since.

An unopened bottle of chili-pepper-infused wine. It’s been in there for ages. My wife and I do wine tastings in the Okanagan sometimes and we got two small bottles of this stuff a few years ago. I don’t know why we got it. It took us over a year to finish the first one. It’s actually extremely spicy, and, apparently, the longer you leave it unopened the spicier it gets. I can’t imagine it would even be enjoyable at all by now, but I can’t just throw it away. It’s a real problem.

One of those boxes of Arm & Hammer baking soda. This is probably for freshness, but I know for a fact that this same box was in our fridge in the last place we lived and we’ve lived in our current place for just under two years. On top of the box it says, “Change every 30 days.” When you lift it up it just feels solid, like a paperweight—which it would probably be better suited for. It’s not keeping anything fresh at this point. 

You can buy Joshua Hyslop's In Deepest Blue here.