Birth name Josh Clayton Role Singer Name Josh Clayton-Felt | Years active 1990–2000 | |
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Born May 18, 1967 ( 1967-05-18 ) Occupation(s) Musician, producer, songwriter Instruments Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keyboard Died January 19, 2000, Los Angeles, California, United States Similar People Michael Ward, Josh Freese, John Pierce | ||
Josh clayton felt too cool for this world
Josh Clayton-Felt (May 18, 1967 – January 19, 2000) was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He co-founded the alternative rock band School of Fish and later embarked on a solo career.
Contents
- Josh clayton felt too cool for this world
- Josh clayton felt dragonfly
- Early years
- School of Fish
- Solo career
- Aftermath
- Discography
- References
Josh clayton felt dragonfly
Early years
Clayton-Felt was one of two children along with his sister Laura born to Marilyn and John Clayton. His parents later divorced and his mother would eventually remarry Henry Felt, a folk musician who exposed Clayton-Felt to the works of Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. He grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and attended high school at the Cambridge School of Weston. He later enrolled at Brown University.
School of Fish
Clayton-Felt moved to Los Angeles after leaving Brown to form The Boon with fellow CSW-alumni Andras Jones. During this time he worked for acclaimed comedy director Robert B. Weide in 1987 as an informal office assistant during the production of Swear to Tell the Truth. He also worked at the Tower Records store on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood.
Josh Clayton-Felt and Michael Ward founded the band School of Fish that went on to be highly successful in America in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s.
Solo career
After the breakup of School of Fish, Clayton-Felt released an album independently in 1994, and landed a deal with A&M Records in 1996. His album, Inarticulate Nature Boy, was released in February 1996. It scored airplay on college radio, and led to tours with Tori Amos and Del Amitri. The record did not sell well and Clayton-Felt was dropped; he had been writing a follow-up record, to be titled Center of Six, which he continued to work on in 1998 and 1999 with session drummer Steve Scully.
In December 1999, while still writing for the album, Clayton-Felt was diagnosed with choriocarcinoma, a rare form of a particularly aggressive testicular cancer with the worst prognosis of all germ-cell cancers. He died a month later at the age of 32. Robert B. Weide delivered the eulogy at Clayton-Felt's funeral, in early 2000.
Aftermath
In 2002, Dreamworks Records released a collection of songs from the unfinished Center of Six sessions under the name Spirit Touches Ground. Talking Cloud Records released an album of additional unreleased material under the Center of Six name (including the title track) in 2003.