The Long Way Home: Mipso & Joseph Terrell
When it comes to defining the word “home,” Joseph Terrell, guitarist and vocalist for the acclaimed indie folk band, Mipso, has lots of questions but very few answers.
“One theme that has remained constant [in our songs], is this sort of idea of home and how much of that you carry with you,” he says. “I’ve always had this kind of push and pull relationship with where I’m from.”
Which just so happens to be High Point, North Carolina.
Before Joseph was headlining tours across the country or garnering hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify with the band Mipso, he was a High Point Central high schooler, working his first job in furniture showrooms, and playing in garage bands.
“I grew up in a musical family,” Joseph says, noting his uncles and grandmother’s love for bluegrass and folk music respectively. “Uncle Hugh's a great banjo player, Uncle Bill's a great Dobo player, and Uncle Richard is a great bass player and singer and songwriter.”
With a family that could practically form their own band, some of Joseph’s earliest memories were of playing his miniature guitar alongside his family at the holidays – and he can see now how that influence shaped his own musical career.
“I think that’s one beautiful part about traditional music,” Joseph says. “It’s passed on in physical proximity from fingers to ears.”
Despite his upbringing, by the time he was in middle school, Joseph decided that bluegrass was “music for old people,” and began taking electric guitar lessons at the former Smith-Whitley Music store.
“It was this important community for me of guitar lovers and people who love music,” Joseph says of Smith-Whitley.
After graduating from High Point Central, Joseph was eager to move onto a new chapter and leave his hometown. He decided to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and, as fate would have it, ended up meeting future bandmate and mandolin player, Jacob Sharp, on a college visit.
“We played songs on the quad as 18-year-olds before we were even students at Carolina,” Joseph laughs, thinking back to their humble beginnings. After enrolling at Carolina, Joseph and Jacob began to hone their craft, strengthen their harmonies, and get better at their instruments.
It was in this time that the familiar push and pull of his roots began to catch up with Joseph again.
“I thought it might be fun to get back into some of that North Carolina music that my grandma and uncles started me on originally,” Joseph recalls. “The cool thing about this kind of music is that it’s all around us.”
Joseph eventually asked two other friends at UNC, Wood Robinson and Libby Rodenbough, if they’d be interested in joining Jacob and himself to play a fundraiser event. Before long, they were playing real venues and gaining more traction as musicians.
“The more we played, the more people stopped and watched and asked us to play again,” Joseph says. “We fell into it, but the more we did it, I think the better we got and the more we liked it.”
Fast forward to today, and the band, Mipso, is regularly topping bluegrass charts and selling out venues. With that success comes a lot of long bus rides during the day and long performances at night. Joseph notes that in today’s world, if someone wants to make it as a career musician, they have to be willing to tour. That’s why the quartet spent seven years after their college graduation in 2013 touring almost full-time.
“There were some years when we were on the road over 200 days a year,” Joseph says. Despite the exhaustion that the touring lifestyle brought, Joseph also sees now how it brought the band together – emotionally and artistically.
“We spent a ton of time playing together, and I think that’s what makes a band feel like a band and not just a jam session,” he explains. “Those people have a kind of telepathic connection. They anticipate each other’s next moves. They understand each other’s musical personalities so closely.”
On the road is also where Joseph has sharpened his songwriter instincts, saying the art of songwriting is a lot more about listening than having something to say.
“I have to be able to turn off my agenda,” he says. “It feels more like receiving an idea than forcing something into existence.”
The bands collaborative efforts to pen some of their hit songs like “People Change,” “Louise,” and “Coming Down the Mountain,” has come from what Joseph likens to just saying “yes” to one idea after the next.
“The songwriter is like a sieve that other things in the world pass through,” he says. “You’re acknowledging all of your influences and letting them create themselves into something that’s new.”
Maybe it was those deeply seeded influences of his family’s love of folk and bluegrass music, or the North Carolina air, or the long days on the road – but it’s all seemed to heighten Joseph’s cognitive dissonance when it came to his feelings towards “home.”
“You get really comfortable being in a different place every day and carrying your home with you,” he says, listing the routines and rhythms he’s created to feel at home when he’s on tour. “But I think the downside is that when you gain an ability to be home away from home, you sort of lose the ability to be home at home.”
He says of the touring life, “you’re fitting so much life into every day.” The high-energy, fast-paced tour life that leaves Joseph meeting 50+ people a day, and playing for crowds of hundreds, can often leave musicians feeling restless when they finally do return home.
So is it any wonder that the theme of “home” shows up so regularly in Mipso’s lyrics?
“When I was a high schooler in High Point, I wanted to get far, far away,” Joseph reflects. “Then starting a life of travel where I spent most of my year away, I spent a lot of time missing home and reflecting on what makes it special.”
Today, a Mipso show is just that: a reflection on what makes this home we all share so special. For a moment in time, the crowds at a show can all feel at home – together.
“Standing together with people in your community and singing and dancing and feeling the vibrations of music is a pleasure that humans have been enjoying since as long as there have been humans,” Joseph says. “These days it’s easier than ever to exist in your own hermetically sealed bubble... Concerts are still a special place where it feels like something electric and exciting and very real is happening right now that’s never going to happen again."
So while people may change, and life may indeed move quickly, Joseph, Mipso, and their fans know – you can always find a way back home.
“I know I'm not alone
It's just the long way home
Carolina rolling by, windows down and the sun's up high
Can you feel it?
I can feel it.” (Carolina Rolling By, Mipso)
"Concerts are still a special place where it feels like something electric and exciting and very real is happening right now that’s never going to happen again."
Joseph Terrell, guitarist and vocalist for Mipso
Photo Credits to Mipso
Discover our High Points,
The HPD Team