Joshua Alan Felty (born April 22, 1981) is a Kentucky musician, writer, artist, and filmmaker.  He is most known for his solo music project Dartmoor and his indie filmmaking company, Apartment 33 Films.

Born and raised in Eastern Kentucky, Joshua found solace in music, art, and entertainment early in life.  Joshua's mother, Janet, encouraged her son to pursue his dreams, no matter how lofty.  "She always told me 'you can do anything if you put your mind to it'," he says of his mother.  "And I believe that to this day."

Joshua was born in Ashland, KY, the son of Janet Felty and James Campbell.  His mother and father never married; he has subsequently never met his biological father as of spring 2008, but has received some correspondence from his paternal grandmother.  He and his mother lived with her mother and father in Oldtown, KY until he was nine years old.  "I grew up in the country and slowly started moving west from there," he says of his beginnings.  "The countryside of Eastern Kentucky is most beautiful, most bittersweet."

Joshua's mother enrolled at Morehead State University in 1990, prompting mother and son to move west to Morehead, KY.  The community was a culturally artistic community, one with much history but still a small town.  It was here that Joshua embraced music and the martial arts.  "I was always infatuated with karate and ninjas," he says of his childhood.  "So by the time I was a teenager, I was ready to learn the martial arts up close and personal."  His mother started him at Virgil Davis Karate Studios in Morehead at age 13.  Within a couple years, the portly young man had lost over 60 lbs. and completely turned around his outlook on life.  By the age of 16, he had achieved the rank of black belt and was teaching full-time after school.

"I was certainly in better physical and emotional health," he says of his adolescence.  "It was the greatest time of my life for I was most happy."

In high school, however, he gave into some peer pressures, first with drinking alcohol and then smoking marijuana.  "One of the most important creeds of my martial arts training was to be strong, independent, and not give into drugs."  He attended Rowan County Senior High and graduated in 1999.

Joshua started college at MSU later that same year, having considered taking a year off to work and save some money for school.  "I lived with an aunt and uncle in Virginia for about a month after high school, but I missed Morehead too much.  That, and there was this girl I was talking to."  He returned home and started working as an orderly in the radiology department at St. Claire Medical Center.  This occupation showed him a different view of the world as he saw humanity and mortality up close.  "That was a really crazy time in my life, honestly," he reflects.  "Because I was partying and getting high at night, then spending my days pushing around cancer patients and drunk drivers."

By the summer of 2000, he had flunked his first semester of college and spent most of his free time partying and playing music.  Most of his performances were impromptu before college students and other locals.  Everything that year came to a head when he was taken to jail for a disputed wreckless driving charge.  "There was a road block several hundred feet down the road and I made a rushed u-turn back the other way."  He was later acquitted of the charge by taking a driving course.

Back in college, he found himself playing more music and having more fun at parties.  The summer of 2001 brought its own debauchery in the form of weekend keg-parties and ill-fated experimentation with LSD.  "The first couple times I took it weren't too intense," he says.  "But the last time, really was the swan-song of my acid experimenting."  Felty took two hits of gel-acid, a more concentrated dose, and spent the night virtually being nursed by a friend.  "It was horrible.  The next morning, my mother having bared the brunt of my 'bad trip', I apologized to her and completely turned around my life."

He started working at Interstate BP in Morehead, stocking beer and waiting on customers.  That fall, he went out with an old girlfriend for a while, having his heart broken soon after.  Thinking he had sworn off love forever, he started working with a band, then known only as Level Zero. 

"I was introduced to this new band by my friend, Dave, in early 2002," he remarks.  "Here I was with basically a few guys I knew from high school, writing and singing vocals."  The band practiced at the drummer's house in a remote Eastern Kentucky hollow, even though the house was decrepit and electrically unsound.  "There were several times I'd be singing and feel a little jolt emanate from the microphone."

That spring, Joshua met his future wife, Sarah July.  They immediately fell in love, having a love for music in common.  By summer of 2002, the band had broken up and everyone had gone their separate ways.  Joshua and Sarah were married September 20 of that year in Winchester, KY, some 45 miles west of Morehead.  They settled in Winchester as Joshua had secured a helpdesk job at Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

Joshua maintained musical collaborations with the old band's guitarist, Anthony Perry, writing and recording new and existing compositions on weekends.  Their project (aptly titled Project X) inspired them to start working with the drummer and bass player for a short time in the summer of 2003.  "We got back together at Jesse's (the drummer) house on the fourth of July," he adds.  "But we really weren't headed down the same road stylistically."  Joshua maintains that he and Anthony continued to working on songs off and on throughout the next couple of years, applying a "weekend-warrior" mentality to their output.

By 2004, Joshua himself had amassed enough of his own personal musical material to release his own record.  He named his solo project Dartmoor, after the sparse English countryside of the same name, and released his first record "Same As Yesterday" in 2005.  He wrote the song "Northwest" while studying at Spencerian College in Lexington.  "I was sitting in the library, taking a break from studying for a big test," he says of writing his song.  "Then this melody jumped into my head.  So I went out to the car, sang a few bars, and wrote most of it down."

In 2006, Joshua and his wife moved to rural Salt Lick, KY, prompting a 90-mile round-trip commute to and from work.  They lived in an aging trailer on old farmland, prompting the writing of the next two albums, "Porchlight" and "Pea's Porridge". 

"Porchlight was named after the on little light-bulb on our front porch," he states of the second Dartmoor record.  "That light-bulb meant so much because at that time, because we were so disconnected from society."  The follow-up "sister-album" Pea's Porridge came a few months later, demonstrating the more eclectic, dream-like songs not included on Porchlight.