The next single off of “Valkyrie” is coming August 12th. It’s called “Follow in my Footsteps” and - like “P is for Pompeii” - it’s another oldie. But a goodie.
I wrote “Follow in my Footsteps” in Washington, back in 2007. We had just wrapped up production on our 2nd record - “Lucid” - and I had started writing for the next album. I still have all those demos, which I titled “The Glumdumb Demos”. The acoustic demo was sort of a band favorite that we thought we could do a lot with.
A little homemade cover for a collection of JS demos tracked 2007-2008.
When I moved to Boston in 2008, it was one of the first songs we tried to work on. That and a song called “Annie, Please” (Galacticus 9). The songs were so different that we had a hard time reconciling the heavier style of “Follow in my Footsteps” with the pop bounce of “Annie, Please”. Ultimately, Annie found a home when I dreamt up the idea for “Galacticus 9”, but “Follow” just stood apart...
... until years down the road, when the thematic root of Follow was joined by new songs like “Cleopatra” and “Pharaoh”, all of which will appear on “Valkyrie” when it’s finally released. With a lot of these songs, there’s a weird kind of path that they go on before finding an album to call home. Over the course of releasing all the Johnny records, I’m excited for a lot of these older songs to be fleshed out and finally be heard.
In other news, life is perpetually busy. For the last month, I’ve been tracking another Polaris Rose album. It’s a bit more melancholy than our last record. Very genuinely us, with a bit more of a ‘b-side’ mood. My goal is to track the songs we have (approx 12) by October. At that point, two things happen. 1) I start retracking guitars for the next Johnny Record (album 6) and 2) Polaris Rose starts writing more songs as we flesh out that new album. We have a title, a theme, and an overall sound mapped out. We might just say “we need a song that does this” or “we need a song that does that”.
Johnny Stranger has some shows coming up that we’re preparing for. The last couple shows (Redwood and Rockers Ball) we performed as a 3-piece and intentionally stripped down (meaning no lights or video production), but we’re planning more elaborate shows in order to better express what the songs are about and the visual side of the band. So there will be announcements soon in the live arena.
At the same time, I’m excited to be collaborating with my best friend David Walk (or DWalk, as we all call him) on some really exciting new video content for the socials. If you live in the LA area and are interested in joining in on the depravity, hit us up!
Aside from that, I’m just doing the usual over here. Listening to interviews of George R.R. Martin, listening to politics podcasts, working on a million other little projects… oh, and I’m playing Echo Park Rising here in LA with my best buds in Beers for Fears. So that’s all exciting.
Finally we have a very special release coming this holiday season. So keep an eye out. :)
