Johnny Manchild and The Poor Bastards/Photo: Johnny Manchild and The Poor Bastards

Johnny Manchild and The Poor Bastards are a convivial and gruff outfit, producing the sort of licentious piano rock that makes you want to dance badly and break things.

Big band, punk, soul and alt-rock colored by virtuosic piano riffs and a genius horn section have come together wonderfully in Oklahoman Jonathan Garrett’s remarkably nostalgic yet unusual rock project.

At first glance, this is fun music. Fun to listen to, fun to think about, fun to see live. Johnny is elegantly chaotic on the keys and has created a mesmerizing orchestra of calculated entropy.

But with a quick listen to the actual poetry, the listener is driven around delicate and labyrinthian emotional cul-de-sacs, unearthing exposure to ultimately a deeply sensitive and talented songwriter eager to tackle painful topics.

I had a chance to sit down with Johnny for a chat in advance of the Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards show at Subterranean on October 19. What was scheduled for thirty minutes turned into an interview that ran for over an hour, a joy of a conversation that impacted me deeply. We covered cinematic songwriting, Johnny’s history in the 395th Army Band, upcoming releases, recording in Tom Waits’ room (kind of), and much more.

It’s awesome to chat with you. You’ve got a couple of weeks before you go on tour—how’s the calm before the storm treating you? Enjoying it?

Hate it. God, no, I hate it. Hate the calm, it drives me insane. I like being busy. I don’t know, it’s a combination of my personality but also work reasons. I like working, and when you’re getting ready for a tour you can’t commit to any real projects. You just have to get ready to tour, be okay with being in the red for a bit before you make it back. I would so much rather be working/writing. Couple life things came up as well and I just do better with that when I’m busy.

I hear you on that, completely. Let me try to keep you busy—tell me the Johnny Manchild story, from when you got started to “Rapture Waltz” (2024). 

I never knew I had an interesting background until people started asking me about it, and it turns out people think I do.

I started playing drums when I was five. I was in a Nirvana cover band when I was eight, and when I was ten I joined my first “band” band called Refuge. I didn’t realize we were big but we were touring, like across the country. When I was twelve we got flown out to L.A. for “The Next Great American Band” TV show.

I’d earned $2,000 doing that, which was all the money in the world, and after that all ended I bought a Yamaha acoustic guitar and some basic recording equipment.

So, by that age, you were already committed to music as a career? What precipitated that?

I was socially odd as a kid, didn’t have a ton of friends, wasn’t good at talking to people, so for those next four years, I just learned how to record. Learned how to play the guitar and bass, as well as piano. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I started a studio with a friend of mine—just a laptop and some speakers—and today that studio is a building we’ve dropped $180,000 on.

Were you performing? Solo or with a new project?

I played in a lot of alt-rock and punk bands through my teens. Things took a weird turn at that age. I had some substance problems, so I joined the Army to just… stop. To get away from the people I was hanging out with and get that sorted out. I joined an army jazz band (the 395th Army Band). Did that for five years while I went to college studying jazz performance.

Tell me about college. We’re getting close to the timeline of Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards. 

My sophomore year I was part of a band but it got gross. They kind of ended up taking some of my songs and I was just like “Fuck this, if my songs are good enough to steal, I’ll do my own thing.”

I started picking up folks from military jazz ensembles. Ethan Neel was one of them, who’s been in the band the longest. We were a college band at that point, we just had a college crowd but it was fun.

I graduated in 2018, and in 2019 I decided to do a single a month for the entire year, mostly as a challenge to see if we could do it.

So at this point, you’re officially Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards. Seems like that (releasing a single a month) worked. How’d that affect listenership, beyond the college crowd? 

It was crazy. We went from like 800 listeners to over 40,000 in a few months. And then COVID happened. That killed our momentum but gave me a ton of time to write.

That’s when I wrote a lot of “We Did Not Ask For This Room” (2022), which we recorded down at Sonic Ranch in 2021.

Tell me about how those records are different. What did you do differently between “Rapture Waltz” (2024), “We Did Not Ask For This Room” (2022), and “One Big Beautiful Sound” (2018)?

“Rapture Waltz” actually has a really cool story. So I lived in California for eight months and met an engineer named Wes Sharon. He’s done Turnpike Troubadours, John Fullbright, a bunch of other stuff. He was tight with the owner of Prairie Sun (Mooka Rennick), which is a legendary studio upstate in California. He messaged me saying they were going to close that studio down and if I wanted to record there we could.

In the recording-engineering field, there’s a very specific reverb you can implement called the “Tom Waits Room.” That original room is at Prairie Sun, it’s basically just a concrete box, and Tom Waits did a bunch of his stuff there. “Bone Machine” (1992) and “Mule Variations” (1999) for example.

That’s where we recorded “Rapture Waltz,” one of the last albums recorded there. That experience showed me that having a tight crew is really important. The difference between the three albums is really just my evolution of how to run a band.

“One Big Beautiful Sound” was just all fun, all creative. I was younger, just got out of the Army and college, didn’t have any money or fans, and I just wanted to go hard. I was working as a music teacher, working at a liquor store and at a recording studio, trying to fund all this, and we didn’t really put a ton of thought into it. I was singing the horn parts out loud to our horn section, and then writing them down when we got what we wanted. It feels fun (the record) because we had fun making it, it’s not the best recording and it’s a little messy but as far as “being in a band with your friends” that’s what that record was.

“We Did Not Ask For This Room” was much more orchestrated. I had a ton of people working on it, constantly adding input, and I was trying to control all of it. I love the record, but I listen back now and there are definitely things I’d eliminate. Just too much going on and I was trying to control too much as a result. Felt a little flashy, like I was just trying to show people what I could do. I also felt like I overreached and micromanaged while simultaneously involving too many people.

“Rapture Waltz” is more balanced. I had (and still have) two bandmates who I really trust and am close with, and as a result am able to give more leeway without having to sacrifice too much. We recorded the record in five days—it’s much more lean and I was able to be less of a dictator. It’s just me, Alex Coleman (bass), and Ethan Neel (drums)—that’s the core. I learned you need to have someone driving, but it’s just as important to have people close that you trust, and that number (of people) is going to be small. The answer isn’t to control everything, it’s to find people whose choices you trust and are at the right level not just as musicians, but as producers. For example, people who understand when it’s more important to play below their level to better service the song.

So what’s next then?

We’re getting ready to release eight new singles in the new year. Well, maybe eight. Might be best to just say “singles.” And then totally separate from that, we’re going to release a new album in 2026. So it’s good, we’re getting ready to release a bunch of new music as soon as we stop touring.

Tell me about songwriting then as you’re getting ready to push more music. What’s your process?

Usually melody first, lyrics next. Once I have the melody and feeling down, the lyrics just go, and if I have to try too hard or they’re not coming to me, then usually it’s no good.

Sometimes, and I feel crazy for doing this, I think about songs as cinematic. I think about having closeups or wide shots in the sense of my writing. So I’ll think of myself as if I’m getting into character. Who is this character version of myself for the song, and how can I become that character for the purpose of writing the song. I’ll put myself in a dark room or turn the lights down in the studio to make it happen, and sometimes, if I’m successful, the songs just flow naturally. Sometimes it’s cringey. I don’t know, I feel crazy saying that but I’m sure other people do it.

All of your music is profoundly personal and often intimate. Is there a song that’s particularly hard to play live?

“Resolve” (from “We Did Not Ask For This Room”). We’ve played it once. It was at our Tower Theater album release show. It doesn’t work live without the full ensemble. But it’s hard.

I’ve only played it then. It’s not a song for everybody. It’s definitely not a single. I’ve had two suicide attempts that have put me in the hospital, and this song came out of that. The last one was in January 2023 and that sucked, and that’s what “Resolve” is about. Deciding to kill yourself, making sure your apartment is clean and looks good, that you’ve got a good note. It was a really pretty day and the song is about finally making the decision, and everything is relaxed and at ease and looks beautiful. But the song is about that feeling, from that day, and how what stopped me was that I just couldn’t do that to my mom. That’s who I called that day, and she saved me. And the song is about that feeling, about how you want to do it, you feel good about it, but you can’t, and now you’re stuck. It’s just really depressing and hard to hear for a lot of people. Everything is fine today, I found out through that experience that I’m bipolar and as a result am now properly medicated. But yeah, I called my mom, I’d had a pistol ever since I was in the military, and I told her I didn’t want to have the gun in my apartment anymore and asked her if she would take it. I tried to keep it as light, “no big deal” as possible, and she brought me to the hospital, which is what needed to happen. My mom saved my fucking life, and I love her.

Do you ever see yourself playing the song again?

Something that I love about this band is that talking about this stuff seems to help people. We did a six-week tour a couple of years ago, where we opened up applications and invited people to drop $300 for us to play in their homes. It was amazing. And we showed up at this house in Indianapolis, and the dad living there told me how much he appreciated talking about this stuff openly. That he’d gone to therapy and received a depressive diagnosis that he was now getting treated. And that means the fucking world to me. We need to talk about this stuff more openly.

So, I mean, when we’d show up to people’s houses they’d make requests. And if we do that again and someone requests that song, we’ll play it.

Before we finish up, tell me about Chicago. It’s your second time back after playing The Beat Kitchen last year. How do you feel about the city?

I absolutely love it. Actually, I took a two-week Amtrak trip around the country when I was younger, and Chicago was one of my stops. Just myself, alone, traveling. Was drinking like a maniac the whole time. And when I was in Chicago I ended up at The Green Mill, which for me is just such a cool place. I’m a jazz nerd at heart, and to be there and see people actually dancing to jazz was amazing, and the history of that place is unreal.

Actually, when we’d just started our very first tour in 2020, we were in Chicago when the pandemic hit. It was nuts. Just had to go home, and being able to come back multiple times ever since is amazing. It’s like a real, massive city, but it still feels Midwest, which for me as an Oklahoman is perfect.

Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards play Subterranean, 2011 West North, with Cat Ridgeway on October 19. Doors at 6pm; show at 6:30pm. Tickets $15-$18, available at subt.net.