Johnny Coley is a queer writer and artist from Alexander City, Alabama. He lives in Birmingham where he has been active as a poet and improvisor since the 1970s. He has published four books of poetry, a novel, and three albums of spoken word with an array of musical collaborators. Sweet Wreath is home to much of Johnny’s work, including his debut album Antique Sadness, the poetry collection Suggests Nightfall, and the novel Huron. His most recent album Mister Sweet Whisper was co-released by Sweet Wreath and Mississippi Records.
On Antique Sadness, Johnny Coley delves into the saltwater pool of his mind to extract lucid observations that drip like surreal front porch gossip. With a drawling voice equally poignant and comic, Johnny's experimental storytelling unfolds like an old familiar blanket...musty and stained with various bodily fluids...a map of time, pleasure and disintegration. The music surrounding his verbal riffing is made by an array of off-beat combos: two banjos and a transistor radio screeching in a field, amplified chalkboard paired with upright bass and mysterious electronics, a brushed snare gently sizzling along with pastoral harp cascades. Johnny Coley & crew keep things loose, unpredictable and juicy.
"This year seems like an impossible one to decide on a hard favorite, but this album (Antique Sadness) contains some of the most profoundly moving and singular recordings I could ever imagine... exquisitely haunting, sublime, hilarious, stunningly beautiful reflections, one after another. Albums like this make me think that maybe perfection is attainable after all, if you aproach it gently but confidently enough."
-Jen Powers, Aural Thicket, WCRS 92.7FM, Columbus, OH
"...tracks like “House I was Born” have an interesting contrast between the more dreamy, reflective tone of the backing music and Coley’s amusing turn of phrase, all of which is elevated by his unique cadence that falls somewhere between Robert Ashley, David Wojnarowicz, and Intersystems. Pretty wild that it’s taken so many years for Coley to have recorded an album like this, as Antique Sadness displays a type of southern avant psychedelia that I could see a number of ‘heads’ getting behind"
-Free Form Freakout, KMSU 89.7FM, Mankato, MN
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Review of Coley’s Second album, Landscape Man:
“No one ever finishes that jigsaw puzzle sky. There’s always a piece missing,” says Johnny Coley, midway through ‘Wrong Dollar’, the opening track on Landscape Man. Spoken over a fabric of wilted, morphing country, plucked mandolins and bouzouki melting into swirls of slide guitar, his snaking narratives sit in the middle ground between weighty existentialism and vulnerable perplexity. His lines have a rambling quality, but that penchant for digression is a strength. A radical move in a world which over values simple answers, Coley invites us to search out questions with him rather than prescribe narratives to us. While the trippy soundscape from his musical collaborators is surreal, Coley’s words are not hallucinatory, they’re deeply personal incites, anecdotes effortlessly slipping from the mundane into the philosophical. It’s clearest in the awkward romance on ‘Soundbodies,’ the album’s closing track. “I forget about crumbling, rotting infrastructure because my baby taste’s so good.” Coley’s words are laden with doubt, they’re written from a position of admitting perplexity rather than claiming authority. Embracing mystery and sharing the act of thinking through it. -The Quietus on Landscape Man, November 2022
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Percussionist Jimmy Griffin reflects on improvising with Johnny:
Jimmy: I had a mustang that hadn’t broken yet. Johnny lived at Highland Towers, you know the one, the middle tower between the two parks. And there was a cool, black gentleman named Horace, who could do the moonwalk. He lived in the projects in West End, close to where I lived. So every morning, I would get in the mustang, drive to the projects parking lot to pick up Horace, go to Highland Towers, pick up Johnny, and it was a Mountain Brook lawn service, drive to Mtn. Brook, and do this lawn service gig. Oh and then Johnny was the driver for the lawn service truck we were using. And they would send us on jobs in Mtn. Brook, and we would get lost half the time (laughs), and we’d have to come back and say, “We couldn’t find the house!”
So, one of the things was…I think the lawnmowers had a brand name like “Lawnboys.” So Johnny and I would joke about, “Well, we gotta load the lawn boys onto the truck,” like they were living things. It was a wild job. So I wanna say that Johnny had this sense of improvisation always. Even while cutting grass. (laughs)
Like myself, we both had jobs we weren’t really that good at. (Laughs). So if you give him something he’s really good at, like art and poetry and improvisation, and listening and responding to musicians, well there you go. Johnny has some magic in his voice that catches everybody’s attention...I think if Johnny’s reading or especially improvising to music, people are kinda leaning forward because that voice, that cadence, unusual juxtaposition, things you know all about and things you don’t know anything about. It just pulls everybody in. And he knows when to stop. Some of us don’t (laughs).
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Listen to an interview with Johnny on the Earth Hotel Podcast
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Painting of the Antique Sadness band by Craig Legg
Clockwise from left: Brent Stauffer, Brad Davis, Jasper Lee, LaDonna Smith, Jimmy Griffin, Lizzie Little, Johnny Coley, Jess Marie Walker
On Antique Sadness, Johnny Coley delves into the saltwater pool of his mind to extract lucid observations that drip like surreal front porch gossip. With a drawling voice equally poignant and comic, Johnny's experimental storytelling unfolds like an old familiar blanket...musty and stained with various bodily fluids...a map of time, pleasure and disintegration. The music surrounding his verbal riffing is made by an array of off-beat combos: two banjos and a transistor radio screeching in a field, amplified chalkboard paired with upright bass and mysterious electronics, a brushed snare gently sizzling along with pastoral harp cascades. Johnny Coley & crew keep things loose, unpredictable and juicy.
"This year seems like an impossible one to decide on a hard favorite, but this album (Antique Sadness) contains some of the most profoundly moving and singular recordings I could ever imagine... exquisitely haunting, sublime, hilarious, stunningly beautiful reflections, one after another. Albums like this make me think that maybe perfection is attainable after all, if you aproach it gently but confidently enough."
-Jen Powers, Aural Thicket, WCRS 92.7FM, Columbus, OH
"...tracks like “House I was Born” have an interesting contrast between the more dreamy, reflective tone of the backing music and Coley’s amusing turn of phrase, all of which is elevated by his unique cadence that falls somewhere between Robert Ashley, David Wojnarowicz, and Intersystems. Pretty wild that it’s taken so many years for Coley to have recorded an album like this, as Antique Sadness displays a type of southern avant psychedelia that I could see a number of ‘heads’ getting behind"
-Free Form Freakout, KMSU 89.7FM, Mankato, MN
_________________________________________________
Review of Coley’s Second album, Landscape Man:
“No one ever finishes that jigsaw puzzle sky. There’s always a piece missing,” says Johnny Coley, midway through ‘Wrong Dollar’, the opening track on Landscape Man. Spoken over a fabric of wilted, morphing country, plucked mandolins and bouzouki melting into swirls of slide guitar, his snaking narratives sit in the middle ground between weighty existentialism and vulnerable perplexity. His lines have a rambling quality, but that penchant for digression is a strength. A radical move in a world which over values simple answers, Coley invites us to search out questions with him rather than prescribe narratives to us. While the trippy soundscape from his musical collaborators is surreal, Coley’s words are not hallucinatory, they’re deeply personal incites, anecdotes effortlessly slipping from the mundane into the philosophical. It’s clearest in the awkward romance on ‘Soundbodies,’ the album’s closing track. “I forget about crumbling, rotting infrastructure because my baby taste’s so good.” Coley’s words are laden with doubt, they’re written from a position of admitting perplexity rather than claiming authority. Embracing mystery and sharing the act of thinking through it. -The Quietus on Landscape Man, November 2022
__________________________________________________
Percussionist Jimmy Griffin reflects on improvising with Johnny:
Jimmy: I had a mustang that hadn’t broken yet. Johnny lived at Highland Towers, you know the one, the middle tower between the two parks. And there was a cool, black gentleman named Horace, who could do the moonwalk. He lived in the projects in West End, close to where I lived. So every morning, I would get in the mustang, drive to the projects parking lot to pick up Horace, go to Highland Towers, pick up Johnny, and it was a Mountain Brook lawn service, drive to Mtn. Brook, and do this lawn service gig. Oh and then Johnny was the driver for the lawn service truck we were using. And they would send us on jobs in Mtn. Brook, and we would get lost half the time (laughs), and we’d have to come back and say, “We couldn’t find the house!”
So, one of the things was…I think the lawnmowers had a brand name like “Lawnboys.” So Johnny and I would joke about, “Well, we gotta load the lawn boys onto the truck,” like they were living things. It was a wild job. So I wanna say that Johnny had this sense of improvisation always. Even while cutting grass. (laughs)
Like myself, we both had jobs we weren’t really that good at. (Laughs). So if you give him something he’s really good at, like art and poetry and improvisation, and listening and responding to musicians, well there you go. Johnny has some magic in his voice that catches everybody’s attention...I think if Johnny’s reading or especially improvising to music, people are kinda leaning forward because that voice, that cadence, unusual juxtaposition, things you know all about and things you don’t know anything about. It just pulls everybody in. And he knows when to stop. Some of us don’t (laughs).
________________________________________________
Listen to an interview with Johnny on the Earth Hotel Podcast
Painting of the Antique Sadness band by Craig Legg
Clockwise from left: Brent Stauffer, Brad Davis, Jasper Lee, LaDonna Smith, Jimmy Griffin, Lizzie Little, Johnny Coley, Jess Marie Walker
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