Johnny Modern

Johnny is a London based singer/songwriter whose material references key themes and events in politics and pop culture from the 1970s to the modern day.  Delivered with a melodic mix of seriousness and satire, Johnny's musical universe is inhabited by a range of often picaresque fictional characters including the scandalously debauched, shamelessly affluent TV personality, Good Time Jeremy; the kindly but frazzled ageing rock star, Acid Head; the sad, lonely but subversive suburban widow, Mrs Smith.  These are joined by some often stranger than fiction real life characters such as various politicians cast as The Criminals, the renowned spoon-bender Uri Geller and the infamous science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout.  Inspired in particular by The Beatles, Neil Young and The Smiths, Johnny's vintage style rock incorporates thought provoking but playful lyricism.

Johnny's rough and ready demo album, Modern Times, was recorded in a week at Bona Fide Studios, Shoreditch in 2000, engineered and produced by Ross Burridge with Will Hawthorne on lead guitar and bass and Alan Dobson on drums.  This was followed up by the more polished, The Time Has Come, in 2008, also recorded at Bona Fide,  in collaboration with multi-instrumentallist/producer, Thomas Quillfeldt.

Following a long hiatus, Johnny teamed up with producer/engineer/guitarist Joe Reeves in early 2023 and started work on the double concept album ‘From A Quiet Place’, a distillation of material written over the last two decades.  Recorded partly at Joe's studio in Kingston and partly at Stereolab drummer Andy Ramsay's Press Play Studios in Bermondsey, the album will be released as four EPs.  

The first EP ‘I Remember Then’ was released in April 2024.  Following this, work continued on the second EP ‘All the People’ at Press Play with Andy Ramsay taking over producer/engineer duties, ably supported by Dave Hattee on drums and Argentinian virtuoso  Lucas Vedel on bass and guitar.