Artist Spotlight is a segment that we started to introduce our listeners to some deserving up and coming artists/bands. They have made an impact on us for all of the right reasons, We think they kick ass and we hope you do too! Today we’d like to shine the spotlight on Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards.
Johnny Manchild & the Poor Bastards are planning the release of their fourth full-length album, Rapture Waltz, in the spring of 2024 As Oklahoma City natives, they are the latest addition to a heritage that goes from Leon Russell and JJ Cale to the All-American Rejects and Flaming Lips, all of them can be heard in the music of Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards.
The idea for Rapture Waltz came from the last few years of frontman Johnny Manchild’s life, with the reinvention of his band, the loss of friends and family due to alienation and sickness, and an overall feel of a world in peril, with him on the outside looking in, the last man standing. It’s a duality that runs through his work, from his nickname and the soft-to-loud dynamics of his music to balancing the head and the heart along with the bipolar condition which has plagued him since childhood. Recorded at the famed, now-shuttered Prairie Sun Studios in northern California with Grammy-nominated Wes Sharon [Greg Allman, Doobie Brothers, John Fullbright, Turnpike Troubadours], the genre-bending songs on Rapture Waltz cover a wide palette.
The lyrics paint a dark view of these pre-apocalyptic, post-lockdown times, while still offering a ray of hope, as in the new single “Oh, Songbird,” with its Clash-like martial punk warning of imminent disaster. “I wanted it to be a ‘London Calling’-type song,” nods Jonathan. “It’s fun… the perfect first single for the end of Covid isolation and beginning of going out again and playing live for people.” Manchild has been playing music professionally since he was 10 years old in a touring band, appearing on the Fox-TV show, The Next Great American Band, saving up his earnings to acquire recording equipment that he still owns and uses to make his albums. Placed on Ritalin at five, he found an outlet for his energy and focus on music, first playing the drums, before teaching himself piano, guitar and bass, in addition to the engineering skills he developed to pay the bills. “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t listening to music,” he says. “As a really little kid, I had a Walkman and listened to all my parents’ music. They had me when they were teenagers, so I ended up listening to a lot of ‘90s stuff, like Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.”
Through his teenage years, he balanced playing drums on the local punk and metal scene with his record engineering gigs alongside a brief stint as a musician in the Army until founding Johnny Manchild – a neat description of his own prodigal skills as a writer, producer and arranger.
Over the past half-dozen years, Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards have massed an impressive following through the Internet, garnering more than 20 million streams.Last year, the band embarked on a national tour of house concerts in more than 20 different towns, including Canada, building up a growing international fan base.
We recently sat down with the frontman of Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards, Mr. Johnny Manchild, for a fun Q & A session.
Every superhero and villain have an origin and an artist is not different. Well, minus the radioactive spiders and secret government experiment. What’s the origin of Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards?
Johnny Manchild/Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards: I started the band while I was in college for Jazz Performance. I had been in several bands since I was 10, and around 19 I had a good collection of songs together that I had actually written myself. I had a bad experience in the band I was in and lost a few of my songs, so I decided to start my own thing and give being a frontman an attempt. I grabbed a few guys from the jazz program to jam with me in spring of 2016, and I’ve been doing this ever since.
Tell us about your upcoming new album Rapture Waltz. What was the writing and recording processes like, where did the name of the LP come from?
Writing this record was a lot of quiet time by myself, just writing through a lot of difficult times. A lot of the record is about isolation, uncertainty, and losing people you care about. The recording process was one of my favorites I’ve had the luck of being a part of. I took my friend and engineer, Wes Sharon, and we went to Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California. Wes had cut his teeth there as an engineer, and it was important to me that we do the record together. We had access to beautiful gear and instruments, and the vibe was perfect for the songs we were tracking. Tom Waits famously used the studio we were in for two of his records, as well as Nataly Dawn from Pomplamoose, which was a personal favorite artist of mine growing up. It was Wes, my drummer Ethan and I cutting the record at Prairie, and we added horns later at Cardinal Song studios in Oklahoma. It was just the right amount of preparation and experimentation, and I’ll probably think about it for the rest of my life. The album title came from the title track, “Rapture Waltz”, which was originally titled, “Rapture”. The song was a waltz, and I thought that it was a perfectly badass name to capture the vibe of the record.
The first song release from Rapture Waltz is “Oh, Songbird.” Can you share with us the inspiration for the song?
This song was largely about the realization that a lot of things that I had grown up with were actually quite wrong, and backwards. The BLM protests were going in full swing, and we were quarantined during the height of Covid, and everything just felt totally fucked up. I wrote this with the hope that even though things are really dark right now, we’ll find ourselves on the other side of it eventually. Hopefully, we could even learn to grow from all of this somehow.
You and the Poor Bastards are from Oklahoma City and surrounding areas. Do you feel like the local culture has impacted your music or sound and if so in what ways?
I would definitely say so. I went to the University of Central Oklahoma for Jazz, and being immersed in that culture was a huge part of my musical influence at the beginning of the band. I fell in love with Radiohead during my time there, which was largely due to my professor Zac Lee. He was a massive fan, and he had these wicked jazz arrangements of Radiohead songs. That was definitely an influence on me, as far as what you could do with arrangement and modern music.
Your band has amassed a significant following using social media and digital streaming platforms to engage your following. Was that by design or a happy accident?
It was a little bit of both. We did a cover song for a YouTube video on my friend’s channel, and that was the first thing that got a lot of attention. After that, it was very strategic, even though I didn’t totally know what I was doing. We released a single every month for a year, both as a challenge musically and as a way to kickstart the algorithm and have something real to push every couple of weeks. It went pretty well, looking back.
When were you bitten by the music bug and how has music, your own and from other artists impacted you?
I’ve been playing music since I was five, and I was always a fan of it even before I was playing. Music has become my entire life, and I honestly don’t remember a time when it wasn’t really important to me. I used to drum with my teeth when I was a kid, and I would break rhythms down that way even before I got my first drum set. Music is my whole thing.
You’ve been compared to everyone from Freddie Mercury to Frank Sinatra, to Billie Joe Armstrong… which is a pretty diverse mix. That said, if you could put together a fantasy all-star jam to perform with who would you pick? They can still be with us or not.
This is an insanely hard question to answer just so you know. Dave Grohl is definitely on drums. I’d have to go with Esperanza Spaulding on bass. Guitar would go to Marc Bolan from T Rex. I’ll throw Cory Henry on keys just for fun. That band would be interesting to play with… not necessarily a good culmination, but definitely interesting.
Do you have a favorite tour or show story you can share?
My favorite tour so far has been the house show tour we did in spring of this year, 2023. My drummer, Ethan, and I did a duo tour for 6 weeks. Something like 41 shows in 50 days. We went all the way from south Texas, across the south, up the east coast, through New York into Canada, and back through the Midwest from Michigan. It was a brutal, beautiful, awesome, and stressful time. We got to see fans come out all over the map, and it was the most fulfilling experience I’ve had so far. I learned that I’m definitely the kind of person that falls in love with touring easily.
If the songs on Rapture Waltz were a cocktail, what would be in it?
An absinthe rinse, a splash of orange bitters, 6 ounces of bourbon, one ice cube, and 2 ounces of tears. Maybe a mint leaf.
Connect with Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards online:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5RZXy..
Twitter: / johnnymanchild
Facebook: / johnnymanchild
Instagram: / poorbastards
Reddit: / johnnymanchild
