Most people who manage to find one dream career consider themselves very lucky. Joshua Motohashi is well into his second. Born and raised in Tokyo, Motohashi began learning piano at age 4, eventually moving on to violin, acoustic guitar and bass. Meanwhile, a love of surfing led him to move to a hippie community in Japan, where — like all good hippies — he got into the Grateful Dead.
His "aha!" musical moment would take place 5,000 miles away from home, when he and some friends decided to travel to Oakland for the Dead's New Year's Eve concert. "I came back to Japan from the Grateful Dead concert, and I wanted to be a musician," Motohashi says.
He soon started bartending at a country bar outside Yokusuka and learned to play pedal steel so he could join the house band. In less than six months he managed to learn 250 classic country tunes, and was ready to hit the stage.
In 1991, Motohashi landed in Music City, USA, the pedal steel Valhalla. As he made his way around the bar circuit, he got more than a few intimidating stares from folks sitting at the bar.
"I used to have a long ponytail, to the waist," he says. "Whenever I'd go into those clubs, everybody would look at me like, 'What the ... ?!' They don't know I'm Japanese. I might look like an American Indian, Laotian. With a ponytail. In a cowboy bar.
"But every time I sit in and play music, those guys who sit at the counter and look at me like that, go, 'Come here, man. What do you want to drink?' "
His talents landed him higher-profile gigs with folks like Radney Foster, Billy Dean and Martina McBride. Then he was picked to join Lorrie Morgan's band, a job that would be his bread and butter for 16 years.
But the career of a musician, even one as successful as Motohashi, isn't the most financially stable. And besides, he had another dream yet to fulfill.
"When I was in high school, I wanted to be a pilot," he says. But at the time, learning to fly in Japan was only for the wealthy, unless you went to the one school run by the government — and you had to have 20-20 vision, something Motohashi lacked. And this was years before laser surgery was an option.
In 1997, he began taking flying lessons. Before long he had a private license. Then a commercial license. Then a flight instructor license. He got a lot of experience flying multi-engine planes working as a medevac pilot. And today? Instead of playing pedal steel for country stars, Motohashi is jetting them around the country — folks like Reba McEntire, Kelly Clarkson and Blake Shelton.
Motohashi lives in the Crieve Hall neighborhood with his wife Shannon, a nurse. He met Shannon 17 years ago, when he was playing music at a nursing home where she organized the volunteers. And when people ask him where he met his wife?
"I say, 'Nursing home. Yeah, she's 95, doesn't have teeth, but she has lots of money," he says, laughing.
More From the 2015 People Issue
The Textile Designer: Andra Eggleston / The Transformer: Bill Schleicher / The Chief: Steve Anderson / The Bookseller: Yusef Harris / The Producer: Dave Cobb / The Rookie: Filip Forsberg / The Pedal Steel-Playing Pilot: Joshua Motohashi / The Weathermen: David Drobny & Will Minkoff / The Punk Neuroscientist: Kale Edmiston / The Kitchen Artist: Karla Ruiz / The Metalhead: Kayla Phillips / The Image Master: kogonada / The Bartender: Lee Parrish / The Professor: Lisa Guenther / The Advocate: Marisa Richmond / The Captains: Kellie Hurst & Regina Durkan / The Painter: Michael Shane Neal / The Tunesmith: Shane McAnally
