Interview

Josh Lewis of 50to01

The Content and Deliverance Interview

When Josh “Loosedog” Lewis of the 50to01 crew approached us to share their latest project, Content and Deliverance, we were very keen to learn more about it, so were stoked when Loose agreed to give us some answers.

First up, here’s what they have to say about their new film:

“A multi seasonal voyage, passing through land and time. Content and Deliverance is a homegrown self funded project, exercising all of our current learnings into one creative journey. The mission to simply celebrate bikes, crews and the good times they continuously bring us. Produced by Josh Lewis for 50to01 throughout 2022. Filmed by the crew… It’s 45 mins long so get comfy. Enjoy… Full film and Book available at 50to01.com “

Keep reading for interview below.

TLW: Hey Josh, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. You’ve got a new feature out, Content and Deliverance. What’s the general theme of this one?

Josh Lewis (Loose): Yo guys, cheers for having me :) So with this one I wanted to edit it chronologically, session by session, to make it feel like a bit of a mixtape. I say multi-seasonal voyage because it starts in the darks of late winter/early spring of 2022, and passes through one of our hottest summers I can remember, then into autumn… where we would usually just be getting started on filming if you look at our last projects. We were always battling the weather in the past, and also the early nights coming in would often shut down the sessions just as they were getting going sometimes… so with CD we thought we’d stack up all year and see what we ended up with – we got as many sessions in with the local crews as we could and just generally wanted to celebrate riding with friends in the best way we could, trying to make the energy from those sessions radiate through the screen. So that was the idea behind stacking the footage, then when it came to editing, I have been putting a lot of time into all sorts of bits and bobs… be it drawing doodles for edits on the iPad, making music, animations… it just feels like I have been loving learning new things, and with this project I wanted to try and apply all those new learnings into one body of work. Especially with so many friends around me all also being into music, art, graphic stuff as well… it made sense to just collaborate up with as many people as possible and try create something completely homegrown… which we managed to do and I am so fucking stoked and proud to see it completed and going out there into the world.

TLW: What’s your favorite section in the new film? (Without giving too much away..) And why?

Loose: It’s hard to think of a specific section the stands out as my favourite, I have so many bits where tunes hit with the riding or I get a certain feeling coming back from being there in real life. One section that made me feel proud though was the one with the world wide crew rolling into the session with all the young uns. I was proud because I had asked Dylan (Siggers), Carlos (Langelaan), and Finn (Hawkesby Browne) if they could manage to get me some footage over at somepoint to make a worldwide crew edit of some sort. This was before I had even thought of what I was going to do with the year film. Then it hit home once I had seen the sick footage they all managed to compile and get over to me, that there was a section for the film there in itself. That combined with the footage we got from riding with all the up and coming local lads from around us, including Brendan Conroy who had come over from Ireland for a few days to ride with me – they were all riding together going hard, encouraging each other and repping our kit. Watching that section back made me realise what we have created, and I’m so proud to have people from many different generations up for repping our stuff, never mind going out and helping obtain footage from all over the place to make a film just made me feel really good.

TLW: Are there any tricks in there that you’re particularly proud of?

Loose: The last clip I got, overspin to fakie, was something I had always wanted to feel on the bike and personally had aimed for it when it comes to learning stuff and practicing or whatever, practicing 450’s and 540s trying to feel that extra bit of spin from a 360 took a while for me. I had done small ones but this one was the biggest one I had done, and still feels good thinking back to it now. Gives me that tingle, that’s what I love about riding – when you manage to push yourself to that point where you’re doing something you always wanted to do, and spent many hours visualising. When you finally get there and taste the juice, you can run off the juice for a long time.

TLW: What move worked you the hardest?

Loose: It was deffo that one I mentioned in the last answer. It took me two separate days. First day with Josh was brutal, I took so many slams landing on my back, banged my head on one go, just kept getting wrapped up in the bike so nasty. I was surprised I actually didn’t do damage to a knee or ankle, because they kept landing in some worrying positions. My back eventually went on the first day, I could barely load my bike into the van afterwards. Went home focussed on getting the body right… I really couldn’t shut out wanting to go back to have another go because I had got so close, you can be real rough on yourself sometimes when you expect to do something and put so much energy and even risk into getting it, but have to go home without actually achieving it. Sometimes you can get in your head and think maybe it won’t happen etc… obviously it will, you just have to keep your mind right, but there’s always that little devil on your shoulder with anything isn’t there… dealing with the body pain is so much sweeter when you have landed the trick… sometimes its a dark place when you’ve gone home empty handed haha. A week later I went back with Pales this time (Dan Paley, 540 don and empowerer of the spin). It was mad because I almost landed it first go and rolled out exactly how I wanted to in like 3 goes… couldn’t believe it. The rush of being given it like that, after having to go home with nothing the time before, makes the whole process so worth it. It’s why I love working on projects like this, because you end up rolling on some power that is summoned from the project itself knowing you are close to completion… it’s that juice again, if only we could bottle it up.

TLW: Some of the tricks in your recent videos have been getting quite slopestyle/dirt jump like. Do you ever learn specific moves on a dirt jump or bmx bike before taking them to the forest?

Loose: I take inspiration from all forms of biking, bmx, slopestyle… even trials. But to be honest the bike I feel most comfortable on is my MTB, and people think I’m weird because I would rather learn tricks on my MTB instead of my bmx or hardtail, but I just feel completely at home on my short travel bike. To be fair it usually gets learnt on the MTB first then applied to the other bikes afterwards haha… backwards i know.

TLW: Why did you go for the DVD instead of an online copy?

Loose: There is an online copy, over on Vimeo on demand. We wanted to steer away from YouTube and try something fresh with this one, we wanted to create something you can feel in your hands, something that you have to go through a process of obtaining. We’ll still be pumping stuff out onto our YouTube and buzz off having such a strong community on there and feel so lucky to have so many people lock into that outlet. But after having done a few films and gone through that process of making something from scratch, I had learnt along that path about sound editing, colour grading etc… all these behind the scenes things that go into creating a movie had led me onto feeling like how can we level up the final bit of the puzzle, and that was this release. I love giving something out for free to the people who enjoy what we do, but I believe this movie is something that deserves obtaining, I know that means less people will see it, but the people who do see it hopefully are going to connect with it extra hard. It’s big up to Josh B for helping this realisation happen after some chats around the podcast we have been doing. I feel 100% buzzing with that decision that we made and the feedback we’ve had from the people who have obtained the body of work solidifies it being a right decision for what we wanted to deliver and achieve. It’s hard breaking out of that likes and views focus that’s going hard right now, I have felt it for sure but deffo had found myself in a cycle of just doing the same process, create, upload, create, upload. But packing up each one of these books and thinking, wow that’s effectively 1 view, really helps put things into perspective, you feel like you’ve facilitated the process singularly for every person that is wanting to watch what we’ve made in a manual way, not just uploaded it to one place then the magic just happens… doing it this way has just really brought me a mad influx of motivation, positivity and reassurance at a time when i really needed it so yeah absolutely over the moon with it all.

TLW: You’ve made a book to go along with the film. What inspired you to do this?

Loose: So we all dabble with photos within the crew, Max loves his film, Jims a sick photographer, I have a go and really enjoy it, and failing that we just pass the camera round and see what we get… Rat, Craig and Paley have all snapped some bangers for CD. I think I was chatting with Max one day and we were saying how we go out on these sick missions, go through mad emotion and make some memorable biking happen, have the equipment with us to film, but never just take that second to take a photo. So this time we consciously made the effort to set up a photo angle and start compiling stills along with the video. Then it’s important to mention Ralph Cofano, our one full time employee at 50to01, who before working with us was knocking up sick creations on photoshop like collages and posters etc which really caught our eye with his eye, if ya get me. Fast forward to Ralph working for us and it just again came as a realisation one day that we should just pass Ralph all the photos to start compiling into something we could print, and we’ll just see what we end up with. Then he started putting his collage spin on it and it really started getting us bouncing and hyped at what was taking shape. Once we just made that commitment to do something more than just a youtube video, everything just fell into place and felt right, not having that rush to it… we got T shirts made, LTD edition sticker sheets, came up with a plan to incorporate the dvd in the cover etc and everything just kind of developed organically. It was just a creative journey in so many ways it’s really been enjoyable and wholesome.

TLW: What unique challenges did you face with the book compared with your regular filming?

Loose: I think the doodles would be something that stands out for me there, many nights spent at mine passing the Ipad round with Max and Ralph , drawing up random stuff to lay over the pages. It was cool to have the iPad for that, same with the film doing the animations on it. I’d dabbled in animations earlier this year learning the ropes, knowing that CD was coming up, so when it came to doing the animations and doodles for the book and film…it took over me a little bit and I had some pretty long hours in the booth. If I had an idea while I was busy doing something else I’d have to write it down so I didn’t forget later… for example: “football bouncing off Daves wheel, arrow shooting out of a stump at….“ That was something I’d never really felt before and was nice to apply some drawing in a fun way. I have lists all over the place with just random scenarios jotted down haha, if anyone comes across them they’ll probably have a laugh and wonder what I’ve been taking.

TLW: Is this the start of more print based media from the 50to01 crew?

Loose: Absolutely, after learning the ropes and figuring out what goes into making a book, we are deffo going to be doing this more. I have found the process thoroughly enjoyable, Ralph had some long days on that, so he might be swayed a little more towards “jheeeez that was stressful”, especially when he had to re-layout the whole book when we thought it was finished because of the spine allowance not being there… but yeah, that said with everything comes challenges and we were so stoked opening the first box and getting to hold the book in our hands. We were dancing about shouting like we’d won. We’ll deffo want to be having that feeling again and ultimately to keep going with this outlet and make something that can go on a shelf next to other projects we have done. It has felt good giving the people who support us something to bang on their coffee table to eventually come across in years to come, something to keep revisiting. You just don’t quite get that with the online links do you? So yeah we think it’s important and worth making the extra effort to keep this stuff alive and this feels like we’re just getting started. I keep saying that about 50to01 but it really does feel like we are just getting started.

TLW: You recently announced your departure from Santa Cruz, which came as a bit of a shock to us as we’ve always associated the two of you together. Can you give us any hints as to where you’re going next?

Loose: Yeah I wasn’t expecting that change to happen either to be honest, but it is happening and I am excited for what’s to come…. I still haven’t signed anything on the frame side yet, but I am just finalising something up which is giving me much excitement. If it all goes through then it’ll mean some fresh exciting challenges for me and helping build something which i am bang up for… main thing is whatever happens I will continue trying to spread the urge to have fun on bikes and I really appreciate the people that resonates with. It’s always a nice thought thinking that even if this wasn’t my job – to ride a bike – I feel like I would still be doing all these films and doing the riding I am doing anyway, and that makes me feel really lucky and really appreciate the position I am in. Thanks to all that supports me and have had a nice word to say on the recent videos, it means a lot. Here’s to the future…. big love