Interview with Josh Dun: How twenty one pilots’ Drummer Found His Voice
- Julie Simmons
- Sep 26
- 7 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
By Julie Simmons
It’s true that twenty one pilots (TØP) just released its eighth studio album called Breach. And it’s true the album is accompanied by a North American tour. And, at the end of said tour, the band has announced they’re taking an indefinite hiatus; meaning, they’re not breaking up but they’re not saying when they’ll be back. While all this is newsworthy, I requested a follow up to my 2019 interviews with TØP drummer, Josh Dun, because two questions have been nagging me for the last few years:
Why, after a long musical career and thousands of press junkets alongside bandmate, Tyler Joseph, had Dun only given one solo, published interview prior to 2019? And why is he now giving more one-on-one interviews and challenging himself more than ever?
It’s a beautiful Friday afternoon in late August. Dun is on the phone with me from his hometown in Columbus, Ohio. “Summers in Columbus are my favorite,” he reports pridefully. I take a moment to remind him about how much time has passed since we last met. Back then, I was interviewing him when my kids were 11 and 14.
He smiles through the phone, “I don’t have any kids, yet. So, I’ve never had an indicator of time like that before. I can only imagine having a kid with those specific marks in time. My dog, [Jim], just turned eight yesterday.”
After a five-minute exchange about raising golden retrievers, we begin. I recount my efforts to locate one-on-one, published interviews he’d done prior to 2019 and report that I’d only found one. But since then, he's really challenged himself, personally and artistically. Despite having jotted down a formally worded question in my notebook, I found myself abruptly asking, “So, what happened?”
“That’s a great observation,” he chuckles amiably. “I remember the first phone interview I did solo [circa Vessel album]. It was a small publication. And I remember moments before picking up the phone, I was about to not do it. There’s something that’s so deep rooted. I don’t know what it is. I’ve always been afraid of expressing myself through my voice. In middle school, it was you gotta do band or choir. I hated talking around people, so I went with band [to play the trumpet]. In high school, I remember, I had to give a report. I didn’t think anything of it until I walked up there, and I was standing in front of all these people staring at me. I was like, What are you doing? Why are they all staring at me? I got through it because I had a report partner that gave most of the speech, luckily. ”
My mind drifts briefly.
Public speaking is an extremely common fear and yet the fact that so many successful performers have it suggests that maybe the fear of crowds from a young age is instead an unavoidable premonition. Maybe Josh felt a vague familiarity when he met Tyler, as if he was that report partner. And maybe Josh expressing himself vocally is the point of his personal journey.
(Or maybe I’m overthinking this).
Although I keep these thoughts to myself, Dun concurs, “I think fear is your body’s built-in mechanism to protect you from danger but sometimes you have to weigh out moments when fear is protecting your life from moments when it isn’t.”
We do a quick 10-minute check in. Dun says he’s good to talk longer.
“I can have conversations with people, no problem,” he acknowledges the situation we’re currently in. “Strangers or friends or people at a party. I’ll talk all day. But if there’s more than three sets of eyes and ears on me, that’s my threshold of comfortability. I’m like, You take over.”
“Of course,” I interrupt politely. “The irony is that you’re able to perform in front of thousands of people. Have you untangled that?”
“A little bit,” he answers hesitantly. “The only thing I can narrow it down to is when I’m drumming, I’m still not using my actual voice. That’s what makes me uncomfortable. Because, as I said, even the first phone interview I had, I was nervous going into it. Tyler and I have done rounds of interviews. When I do them with him, it feels more like a conversation and less of an interrogation. The drums are an easier voice. I think we talked about this last time, but the way I learned drums was going to Guitar Center every day, for a year, and playing the electric drums. At a certain point, after learning a couple of beats, I was confident enough to unplug the headphones and plug it into the speaker. I don’t care who hears this now. I feel excited and confident in the fact that I’m doing something that I put time and effort into and that not everyone knows how to do. That was game changing for me. That was the moment I thought I can definitely do this in front of people. Once I fell in love with the drums, I also thought Oh, this solidifies that I will not sing. It pushed me further away from vocals. There are very few drummers that sing.”
In recent years, Dun has plugged his voice into louder outlets, using it to give more interviews and to sing. If you’re on TØP TikTok and the algorithm tosses you headfirst into the proverbial rabbit hole, you might discover a grainy video from when Dun was drumming and singing for another band, pre-TØP. And then there’s the time TØP did their live "MTV Unplugged" (2022) which marked his first comeback as a vocalist and what fans refer to as "jocals."
He explains, “Tyler and I have always been conscious about the fact that we’re a two-person band. There are many bands that have more members to help fill out sound. There’s just two of us. When we agreed to do MTV Unplugged, Tyler pitched the idea of me singing. I was apprehensive but at this point in our friendship, we’re both honest with each other. On a phone call, I said [to Tyler], Let’s push each other and have an honest conversation. I’m gonna trust you. If it’s bad, you gotta tell me if it’s bad. If it’s bad, we’ll throw the idea out. We tried it. I felt okay about it. He felt good about it. Seeing the results and people’s response was encouraging.”
Dun challenged himself yet again during last year’s Clancy tour when he sang backing vocals during the song “Bandito.” And now, the second track released from Breach, “Drum Show,” features Dun on vocals. Lyrically, “Drum Show” is about a relatable, slightly avoidant, best friend who’s encaged by responsibilities, “stuck between a rock and a home.” Fans might extrapolate from the music video that their beloved drummer has been hiding behind his kit, in a van or behind the wheel of a car. Dun sings, “I’ve been this way. I want to change.”
I repeat the lines from the song and ask, “Does that represent how you feel?”
“A little backstory about the song,” he pivots a bit. “Tyler came to me with most of the music for that song. It was one of the very few times when there’s been an idea presented from him that I didn’t love. This was one where it was like an awkward phone call. I was with our producer, Paul [Meany]. We said we thought it could be better. [Tyler] called me two days later and said he felt really inspired by this song. I’ve changed a lot of the things we talked about. It’s kinda ‘your song’ now. It’s drawn from a lot of things over the last decade and a half of friendship, about me and my younger years and beginning years of music and the anxiety and all this stuff. So, this was a song, written by Tyler, with Josh as an avatar. It’s my life from his perspective, which is interesting.”
“So, the line, I’ve been this way, I want to change. That’s Tyler’s impression of you as the Josh avatar?”
“Yes.” Dun pauses conclusively, then adds, “Twenty one pilots is very much two guys communicating thoughts and feelings in different ways. It is interesting to do it now, vocally. Now that I’m singing, I guess I’m co-signing our songs with words which I haven’t done before. [He pauses]. I guess I never really thought about it until now.”
Drummers are oftentimes typecasted for being “the quiet ones.” But what neuroscience has taught us is that quiet people’s brains are optimized for depth and the ability to analyze. In all those twenty one pilots’ interviews as a duo, Dun might not be talking much but he was very much locked in, calculating social dynamics and observing subtext. Another artifact from our interviews six years ago is that, when he was younger, he built his own laptop computer. And then, of course, he loves boxing. Dun has always preferred to use his hands rather than his voice to create extraordinary things.
We’ve now been on the phone for almost 20 minutes. We do another check in and I’m given another green light to proceed with questions. My plan is to steer the conversation into questions about his new SJC Drums Breach drum kit but instead, I feel a natural segue to use these final minutes to talk about the future. I start by referencing what fans refer to as “page 2 of Tyler’s letter” in which Joseph announces that following the end of this tour, the duo will be taking a much-needed break.
Dun clarifies, “There’s not a plan for the band to go away. I think there might’ve been a fear for people that that might be the case. This band means so much to Tyler and me. The reality is it’s been 13 years of pretty, non-stop…this. A lot of work. A lot of sacrifices. We’ve also been telling a story [lore] for 10 years. We want to spend time making our houses, homes and spending time with family. Early on, when we were touring, I’d be home for a couple weeks. By the fourth day, I couldn’t even leave the apartment. I felt terrible about it and apologized to my roommate. He was like, ‘Most people have jobs. They work Monday through Friday and have the weekends off. Now, you’re spending all your weekends at once. It’s just a long weekend.’ So, after this album, we’d like to cash in on a lot of unused weekends we haven’t gotten to enjoy.”
Two weeks after our interview, Debby Ryan, Dun’s wife, posted on Instagram the couple will be expecting their first child.
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This article was originally published in Clash Music in September 2025
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