alternative music guitar heroes

Evan Johns made some noise in the 80’s, with three albums on Rykodisc (one produced by Gary Tallent of The E Street Band). Before that, Evan-fan Jello Biafra put out one album of him on his Alternative Tentacles label. Evan and Danny Gatton had worked together (Evan wrote three of the songs on Danny’s Redneck Jazz album), and he also worked with The Leroi Brothers out of Austin, Neko Case, played guitar on the road with Butch Hancock (an incredible Hillbilly singer/songwriter---the real deal---out of Austin), buncha others.

By the time I worked with him (in the late-90’s, on his Moontan album) he was in pretty bad shape, though still playing like the madman he was. During the week we were in the studio in Atlanta, he ate one meal, the rest of his diet consisting entirely of room-temperature Budweiser in the can. He bought it by the 18-pack, one of which lasted him a day. We were suppose to go on the road to promote the album, but he fell into a coma, in the final stages, the doctor said, of liver failure. That’s was the end of that tour!

A real character, Evan played guitar and sang like no one else. He died two years ago in Austin, at age 60.