Joshua Karpeh, better known as
Cautious Clay, is a soul singer from Brooklyn who plays flute, guitar, saxophone and ukulele - and those are just the instruments we saw him tune at the soundcheck. Over for his first ever gigs in the UK, Cautious is more relaxed than you'd expect, especially as the layout of the venue he's playing means the backstage area is mainly made up of a cramped room with a massage table in the middle (yes, really). "That's not part of the rider!" he jokes.
Once an area with some actual chairs has been found, he gives us a run through of how he got into music. "I was really into Aladdin as a kid," he laughs. "There was a lot of flute in that film, so I decided I'd learn to play the flute. I was about seven at the time, got private lessons and everything. Then in high school that branched out into playing saxophone in the jazz band and I basically just got fascinated with different instruments. Guitar was next, and then I started making beats while I was in college."
Despite knowing how to play every instrument ever, pursuing music as a career had never crossed Clay's mind. "I didn't know you could make money doing music!" he smiles and shakes his head. "I had no idea, I thought gigs were the only means of doing so, and I didn't want to be a saxophone player, which was the only instrument I was good enough at to get gigs. I like playing sax, but I don't love it that much, so I had to go out and get a job, I had student loans to pay off."
He pauses, before dropping in: "Doing stuff with my friend Billie was cool too – Billie Eilish. I know that's a funny thing to say now, but we met on SoundCloud and were speaking through there, which was cool. She had this song called ‘Ocean Eyes', and before she released it she asked me to do a remix of it, then it kinda blew up. It's been cool to see her grow. I wouldn't say we're super close and we don't work together too much right now, but I know we will be in the future. It's all cool."
