JOHNNY DOWD

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0	LONDON: 100 Club
P	Monday 8th April, 2019
N	7:00pm

Event information

Johnny Dowd (born March 29, 1948 in Fort Worth, Texas) is an American alternative country musician. Typical of his style are experimental, noisy breaks in his songs and strong gothic (in the sense of dark and gloomy) elements in the lyrics as well as in the music. There is also a strong undercurrent of black humor and the absurd in his work.

He currently resides in Ithaca, NY.

Although his early albums were most celebrated in the alternative country community, he has never quite fit into any particular genre.

“Imagine if Hank Williams had mutated into Captain Beefheart, acquiring a bunch of primitive electronic equipment along the way, and you’ll get some idea of where Johnny Dowd is at on Execute American Folklore. . . . Gloriously deviant.“

— Andy Gill, The Independent (London)

“This 14-song album is among Johnny Dowd’s best and, in an aberrant way, most accessible. Opener Unease and Deviance, which sounds like a disco single played at 33, is weirdly danceable, while the rap brag-a-thon Modern Woman is a gleeful sing-along. As well as a beatnik-hillbilly rap, there’s punk-blues too, SFX, synths, cool arrangements, and luckless characters who wouldn’t feel alone at a Trump rally.“

—MOJO

“[Johnny Dowd’s] latest offering, That’s Your Wife on the Back of My Horse, is another tongue-in-cheek masterpiece, which gives a firm and mighty middle finger to the bland clones of the music industry and those who created them. . . .Dowd is Dowd, a veteran hell-raiser with a dystopian style and edge, that some twenty-year-olds would give their right sleeve-tattooed arm for. . . .If Dowd’s music does not become the sound track of the next Twin Peaks, it will be a travesty. David Lynch are you listening?”

— Alan J. Taylor, No Depression

“It’s weird, uncompromising and, compared with anything I’ve heard this millennium, certainly unique. A Drunkard’s Masterpiece is a creative car crash of Americana, beatnik rock, poetry, prose, jazz rock, rap, screaming metal guitar, retro pop, spoken word and country noir.”

— Sylvie Simmons, MOJO