Cover photo © 2025 Bob Kieser

It took a full 11 years of waiting before Josh Hoyer and his band, Soul Colossal, became an “overnight success” by capturing this year’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis. And despite having released nine CDs over the years – one of which was honored previously as the best self-produced album in a previous IBC event, it still took Josh by surprise when it happened.

After all, he was wary – and for good reason.

In 2014, he and his bandmates had made the trip from Nebraska to Memphis as representatives of the Omaha Blues Society, and the outcome was anything but satisfying. Despite possessing a rich catalog of original, booty-shaking soul-blues, when their verdict came in, the judges felt their act wasn’t “blues” enough and sent them packing.

That smarted.

But possessing plenty of Midwest sensibility, it didn’t take Hoyer long to understood the ruling. The blues is – and always has been – difficult to define because of the many forms it takes in the U.S. and around the globe. And it makes sense that each judge has his or her own vision about what the blues is because of its diversity.

“That’s one of the beautiful things about the blues,” Josh says today. “You know that each person’s gonna have a different perspective and the song’s gonna deliver different emotions, too. I can dig it!”

It’s still ironic though.

Eleven years later, Hoyer dipped into his trick bag and added more songs he deemed better for a mainstream audience, but still reincorporated three of the tunes that led to their downfall in the past.

“I just lo-o-ove those tunes,” he told Blues Blast recently from his home in Lincoln, Neb., with the last cold blast of winter whipping across the Plains. “We still play them all the time. They’re great songs…the best soldiers we had… ‘Make Time for Love,’  ‘Til She’s Lovin’ Someone Else’ and ‘Dirty Word’…and all of them were on our first record. I was like: ‘Hey, let’s just do those!’

“It’s interesting to see how (the judges’) response changed.”

Going against the odds with confidence takes inner strength. And Josh is no stranger to taking chances.

The grandson of a piano-playing grandmother and bass-playing grandfather who entertained at community barn dances in Cook, Neb., Hoyer was born in 1976 and caught the singing bug early. The first time he took the stage, his teacher father entered him in a talent show at his high school. Josh was only six or seven at the time, and he wowed the audience with a version of John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurt So Good.”

He’s been singing ever since…first the church choir and later in junior high. Now an accomplished piano player/organist, he’s been playing an instrument since fifth grade. A teacher insisted he take up trombone, but he only had eyes for sax and stubbornly voiced his opposition, winning the battle. It proved to be a good choice because the sax helped pay the bills during the early part of his professional career.

Hoyer’s always possessed a good ear, perfect pitch and the ability to improvise. It’s a blessing, he says that a high school teacher, Tim Sharer, noticed it and insisted he join the jazz choir.

“I wasn’t real happy about it at first,” Josh says. “It was a pivotal moment. But I grew to love it. Until then I was singing and playing from charts like everyone else in school, and it really broadened my horizons. It helped me cultivate my own voice and ideas through improvisation.”

A stint in college after graduation was brief. It was obvious that Hoyer’s heart was elsewhere. At the time, he was too young to enter the bars, but he was still hanging out at night in the back alley behind the Zoo Bar, which has been a crown jewel on the blues and roots highway since opening in the century-old building in 1973.

Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Albert Collins and Robert Cray are just a few of the luminaries who’ve shared the small stage in the long, narrow room. And it served as the home club for Magic Slim, too. Slim loved the club and Lincoln so much that he relocated from Chicago in 1994 and entertained there regularly during the final 20 years of his life.

At first, Hoyer soaked up all the sounds emanating from the stage listening through the grates behind the bar. He was a big fan of organist Ron Levy through his shows at the Zoo along with another favorite, the jazzy jam band Medeski Martin & Wood. And, at home, he was honing his sax chops by playing along with jazz LPs, too.

“In my early 20s, I hit the road for a bit,” Josh says. He took his horn and worked up gigs as a sideman, eventually landing in the Pacific Northwest. It was in Eugene, Ore., that he came to an understanding about the direction his career should take.

“I really wanted to be a bandleader…to create new songs. And I was like: ‘Man, this is really tough to do on saxophone.’ I was 22 or 23, and I bought myself an old Roland synthesizer and started to teach myself the keyboard.”

It’s the instrument that’s propelled his life ever since. At first, he tinkered with melodies, chords and bass lines and composed tunes from there. Looking back, Hoyer says: “I was fortunate to know people that were willing to play my ideas and help me learn how to write.”

He returned home briefly, but the Big Easy was calling.

“I felt more at home in New Orleans than I ever did in Nebraska,” he remembers. “I really love the Big Easy sound…the great R&B, soul and funky blues. The music is a way of life down there.”

He took a job as a gloried lawn mower with a landscape company by day in 2001. And he spent his nights soaking in the scene by hopping from one club to another and sitting in whenever he could. But his stay came to an abrupt end about a year later.

A late-night disagreement with a roommate quickly erupted into a fight. Hoyer’s bed collapsed during the brawl. The biggest damage was to his sax, which lay under the bed and was crushed under the weight of the bed and the combatants when it fell.

Shattered by the experience, he returned to Lincoln for a while and became a fixture at many of the blues jams held in the city, then hit the road again in 2003, when he was hired by now nine-time Blues Music nominee, vocalist and producer E.C. Scott as her sax player.

“That was a learning experience,” Josh told Mark Thompson in a previous Blues Blast interview. “She’s a phenomenal bandleader, and she ran a tight ship. If she wanted you to play a certain lick, that’s what you were going to play — or else. As an independent artist, she managed herself…no record label, no booking agent. She showed me what it took to be make a band successful.”

A strict disciplinarian, she ran everything by the clock, and she left Hoyer behind at the hotel one day when he was 15 minutes late to depart for the next city and next gig.

Hoyer bounced back quickly, returned to Lincoln and launched his career as a front man by launching the band, Electric Soul Method. Composed of several top players in the region – most of whom were bandleaders themselves, they released one CD and won awards, but the group fell apart quickly. The keyboard player moved to New York, where he started working with Corey Henry, while other members returned to projects all their own.

It was a dark period in Josh’s life, and his music showed it. He formed the group Sons of 76, which delivered a unique sound that fused Americana with rock and had Big Easy overtones. They produced three successful albums, and people loved them. Unfortunately, however, their sound, which wasn’t dance music, left Josh looking for another route to success.

Fortunately, Magic Slim was there with advice. Not only was he running the Zoo’s weekly jams, he was always in the house when other bluesmen were in town. And he was there to put Josh on the positive path he travels today.

“He was a great, friendly man,” Hoyer remembers, “and I was fortunate to have an elder like him to listen to for so many years. He’d insist: ‘This isn’t about us. This is about the people coming through the door. It’s our job to keep them happy. It’s about respecting the clubs and doing everything we can to keep folks entertained.’

“For him, it wasn’t about ego. It was about having fun, entertaining – and having relationships with the clubs so he could return to them over and over again.”

During that era, Josh resumed studies at the University of Nebraska, got married and graduated with a degree in journalism. His goal, he says, was to return to Big Easy, land at the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and play music at night.

“Just when we were getting ready to leave,” he says, “my wife told me we were pregnant…life had other plans.”

Now the father of two daughters, Josh quickly decided he had to stay home. But he still wanted to do something with New Orleans appeal. “There’s enough sadness in the world,” he said at the time. “I want to lift people up.”

His solution was to start a dance band with a horn section…something guaranteed to get audiences out of the chairs and onto the dance floor. Original music that incorporated the Stax, Muscle Shoals, Big Easy and Bay Area sounds and touches of Curtis Mayfield, James Brown and Etta James, too.

Initially called Josh Hoyer & the Shadowboxers, the original lineup was assembled in 2012 and composed Benji Kushner on guitar, Justin Jones on percussion, Josh Bargar on bass, Mike Dee on sax and Tommy Van Den Berg on trombone. They morphed into Soul Colossal after discovering a more established group from Atlanta possessed the same group name and threatened to sue.

Whatever they called themselves, they drew immediate attention locally, and national interest quickly followed, resulting in their eponymous first CD under their initial name receiving a nomination in the Blues Blast Music Awards for best new artist debut album of the year.

Five more studio albums have followed along with a pair of EPs. And their latest disc, Green Light, won the best self-produced album award at the IBCs a couple of years ago. Road dogs, they’ve played almost everywhere in the U.S., along with festivals in Spain, Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands. And they’ve been guest artists on a Virgin cruise, too.

And Josh has drawn praise for his own talent, too. One publication, No Depression, stated: “If James Brown and Otis Redding had a love child, it would be Josh Hoyer.”

In 2017, he appeared as a contestant on NBC-TV’s show, The Voice. Delivering a version of The Chi-Lites’ “Oh Girl” that delivered him a spot on Team Shelton. His take on Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” sizzled during the battle round, but he still lost out to soul singer TSoul, who moved on in the contest.

Away from the stage, Hoyer’s also been working behind the scenes at the Zoo Bar too. “The owner loves to hire people who love the music, who want to go there when they’re not working and spending all their money they make back at the bar,” he jokes.

“In all seriousness, he knew how much I was passionate about the place and the music. It’s developed into something where I’m booking bands…something I’ve been doing for 15 years…and I clean the bar, too.

“If it ever worked out that he needed somebody to take over, I’d be there immediately.”

A songwriter at heart, Josh has always gravitated to blues, soul and funk. But he also loves country and Americana. “For me,” he says, “it’s just story-telling and trying to make each song have a life of its own.”

And, he insists, his band is a collection of Cornhuskers who shine just as brightly as he does. “I’m blessed to have great players with me,” Josh says. “Like Duke Ellington, I want to feature everyone in a way that they excel…the trumpet player on one song, the sax player on the next one.”

As with any band, the lineup changes through the years. And that’s true of Soul Colossal. Hoyer still mourns the loss of guitarist Benji Kushner, who left the group as its last original member in 2023 and succumbed to cancer last year.

But his replacement, Myles Jasnowski – who was mentored by Benji, “is fantastic” – as are the rest of the unit: bassist Mike Keeling, drummer Matt Arbeiter, sax player Jame Cuato and trumpeter Blake DeForest.

“Without all the great players I’ve had, none of this would exist,” Josh insists. “They all respect my vision, take my songs and make them come alive. It’s fantastic for me as a writer to think ‘here’s a spot where Myles can really shine’ or ‘where James can turn the song into something brilliant.’ It’s wonderful to have that kind of team mentality when it comes to execution.”

Together their performance is palpable. You can feel it to your core. Listen to Soul Colossal and you’ll agree they were an excellent choice in a tough field.

How does it feel to be a winner?

“It’s funny,” Josh says. “Our bass player looked right at me when they announced us and said: ‘Do we really want this?’

“It’s really nice to have some validation from the judges and artists…Jim Pugh, John Németh, Danielle Nicole, Brandon Miller…those folks, ya know. That felt pretty good coming from people I respect a great deal. And I felt Benji’s presence watching over us throughout the event.

“This is one of the only times in human history where people can play music and travel around for a living. I’ve been afforded a great life and I’m super thankful.

“Then there’s the other side: At my age with two daughters in high school at home, it’s important to me to keep a balance between family and touring because every moment is precious.

“I’m looking forward to doing some things locally in Lincoln – songwriting workshops and working with some high school kids, too. I want to make the music go farther than just the bandstand. I’ll be giving them tips and guidance about the performing arts and continuing to book acts for the Zoo.

“I’m not eager to get back in the van and play in bars where people are more interested in seeing sports on the TV. I want to play shows where we in front of people who really want to be there.”

Fortunately, for Josh and Soul Colossal, they’re already booked for the Telluride Blues Festival in Colorado and the Big Blues Bender in Las Vegas, and they’ll be appearing on next winter’s Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. And Hoyer’s currently shopping for a label for the group’s next album.

Oh, yes…and he’s got two more discs in planning for the year ahead, too – all of which he plans to have out before his 50th birthday: an Americana album with the restarted Sons of 76 and a straight-ahead blues set with another ensemble he works with, Church of Blues.

“I love sleeping in my own bed,” he says. “Family time’s important. But I really enjoy connecting with people and turning them on to the healing power of music. We’re definitely interested in traveling to perform for the right opportunities. We’d love to broaden our listening base and share our music all over the world.”

Hopefully, Josh Hoyer & Soul Colossal will be coming to your neck of the woods soon because they’ll blow your doors off when they do. Check out their music and where they’ll be playing next by visiting Josh’s website: www.joshhoyer.com.