INTERVIEW: Johnnyswim on Songs with Strangers

Johnnyswim on discovering the song Harold Brown and Pat Barrett’s ‘Lightning,’ which has given them hope during the pandemic

 

Abner Ramirez: There’s a song that came out in the middle of last year, in the middle of all of it. The George Floyd stuff, the political stuff, and the pandemic. And it was a type of song, if I saw the genre, talking about genres. I probably would have been a little triggered and been like, “I’m not going to try to listen to this”. It was a worship song, a Christian worship song. And we’ve got a lot of dear, dear friends that are professional Christian worship leaders and songwriters. Amazing superpowers. But it was real tough this year for me to listen to worship music, if I’m being honest. I think in a lot of ways, Evangelicals dropped the ball and are dropping the ball when it comes to the George Floyd stuff. When it comes to #LetUsWorship. Really it was just “love God, love other people.” That’s really it. There was a song that I heard, and we played the song probably six, seven times in a row. The song is called Lightning, by a friend of ours now, a guy named Harold Brown and a dude named Pat Barrett, who is a worship leader. I don’t know that that song can be famous in the Evangelical world, because it’s provocative. It talks about racial justice. It talks about equality. It talks about so many things and it was so powerful. To me, it was like this breath… I hate to say breath of fresh air. It was more than that. It was hope. It was hope, especially in a genre that I kind of… I mean, we can all say, “Praise Jesus”, and mean it and that’s great. But I’d lost hope for a lot of this genre doing meaningful things and not just doing safe everyday, more of the same stuff. And it had been a long time since a song gave me hope. Since I just heard something that made me feel hope. And it was like, man, a lot, like discovering water when you’re parched. That song Lightening, it reminded me of the power of music. It reminded me of the power that words, melody… You can create in the air, sonic turbulence that transcends the physical and changes somebody’s heart. It makes them think differently. That is what music has meant to me during this time. That song really was a big part of that.

 

Johnnyswim on being inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Tyler, the Creator, and making music regardless of genre

Amanda Sudano: Even with Georgica Pond and Diamonds, that was always something we kind of struggled against in a lot of ways. We had played these Bluegrass festivals and we toured with Old Crow Medicine Show, but then we could tour with Emile Sande. We did all these things and nobody really knew where to put us. It was always a struggle because there was always that voice, usually from somebody in an office somewhere going, you guys need to narrow it down, pick which line. We were like … I mean, honestly, we’re good with our trajectory right now. We’d rather just see what’s in us. The fact of the matter is all of that is in us. All of those genres are in us and it’s really hard to choose one. Our thought, especially at the beginning was let’s write what we write. Let’s produce it how we hear it, and we’ll figure it out on the way out. Fleetwood Mac was an inspiration to us as well because there’s different voices and they created their own kind of sound and they pulled from different things. That was what we anticipated doing, but we still had a meeting together day of like, well, radio’s not really sure where to put some of the new stuff. What else is new?

Abner Ramirez: That’s exactly right. It’s always difficult. We recognize we are trying to create art for commerce. We can’t pay our mortgage if there’s not some kind of commerce involved with the art we’re creating, but it’s such a balancing act to not be commerce first and then art, which it’s easy to do. I don’t think you can have cities like Nashville, LA, that are so music-driven, people writing songs every day, four or five sessions a day to try to get the next hit for whoever if it’s not commerce-minded. You have to be and that’s great, that’s wonderful, but that’s not our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal is that we’d be able to pay our bills as overflow of the creativity that we have. I’m inspired by the Fleetwood Mac stories. Even Tyler the Creator is really inspiring to me because he makes stuff that’s so his own. I can imagine the amount of people in suits in offices telling them what they think about his creativity. That’s the people that we are and if it happens to pay the bills, God bless it. If not, I’m going to go get my pilot’s license and start flying for a living, but other than that, you wear the wig. There’s not a whole lot that I’m interested in doing, other than that. I’m not hunting down a genre. That’s all for commerce. Genres make it easier to look it up on Apple Music. It makes it easier to program radio for whatever. It’s just not something that we are interested in worrying about. We feel led by the drive in our gut because Amanda will literally say it, she’s like, “I like this. Let’s stay here. It’s here. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s here. It’s got to come out.” As a listener, hopefully that means something to you. 

Johnnyswim on the Songs with Strangers project

 

Abner Ramirez: I was bored. I was real, real bored. There’s a part of performing that I didn’t realize until not having the ability to do it. The part of performing that you can’t fake, you can’t just, you can’t fake it. And it’s the risk. The risk of getting up on stage and doing something, singing with all you got, trying to perform your heart out. And there’s a risk that if you’re not going to be accepted well or that you’re not going to do well, that you’re going to miss it, you’re going to forget something, technical difficulties. There’s risk. It feels a lot like jumping out of plane. You’re just up there, heart forward, going for it. And that’s the thing I missed most during the pandemic. Not just performing, not just applause, stage, ticket sales. We do miss those things too. The part that was missed the most, the biggest, the risk. And so we wondering, how do we get that back? How do we do something that’s not just trite. But how do we do something risky? So we have the idea to get on Instagram Live, to pick someone at random on Instagram Live. Write a song from beginning to end with them on Live. We never stopped the stream. And then continuing the stream, after we’re done writing the song with the person and go through the entire process of recording, mixing, and mastering, and before we’re done with the Live that day, and it typically took about 12 or 13 hours, and it was always done. We never missed it. We did six songs? We did six songs that were written, so I would get up and I would get on Instagram and say hey tune in or Songs with Strangers today, we’re releasing a song tonight and we haven’t even written it yet. Then we would do it. We did it every time. We got up, we put somebody on Instagram Live, we pick them at random, just talk to them like this.

Amanda Sudano: And it was wild because the first couple that we did, it was like fully locked down mode. And so we had nobody else in the house with us and the kids. So there was like children. I’m sure there’s plenty of tracks, you can like really hear the kids on it. I recorded a whole vocal for the very first song we did with the baby like sitting there like trying to sing while he’s feeding the kids dinner. And then he runs back in here and I’m getting kids ready for bed. It was like a marathon every time, it was so much fun. I think we expected we’d make three or four. And we were like if it works, like we’ll do that first one and if it works, we’ll do like three or four. And then we just had so much fun that we were like, and there was a community that was kind of built in the chat. That still early last week, they all flew and met each other and had like a weekend.

Abner Ramirez: There’s a group on Instagram called the Johnnyogram. People like connected over Johnnyswim Songs with Strangers and the enneagram, they all found each other with chats.