jon johnson

When I'm eigthy Dashboard will play on the oldies station in my home town

jon johnson — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:32:55 GMT

I’ve spent many years chasing fame. Well, maybe not chasing it. Jogging breathlessly in a direction others have found it, maybe? My father had a few moments in his early life, as a musician in Seattle he played with a host of artists that either were on their way to becoming someone the world saw as a success or would eventually be viewed that way.

You know that song “Louie, Louie”? The old one? It wasn’t the richest tapestry of lyrics or storytelling but it was everywhere. Written by Richard Berry in the 50’s in Seattle. My dad played in a number of bands around that time. The Kingsman had a quite famous cover of it. It charted. Its probably the version you remember, though the Kinks did one that blew up much later. Anyways, there was a bunch of drama with The Kingsmen and rights and ownership and such. Eventually members wrote around the idea of “louie” and penned songs about the same character “love that louie” and “louie go home” came out in the 60’s and by that time the Seattle music scene was all talking about Louie. Enter my dad and his drummer Louie. Penned the song “Come back louie” in the even later 60’s and released on the same record label (Hollywood recorders) The Sonics did a cover too. there were many.

So he hung out with the Heart sisters, and Alan White of Yes, and all those others in Seattle from the 60’s. His records and photos of those days hung in the Experience Music Project in Seattle during it’s inaugural season. I’ll never forget walking through the museum with my Father vibrating with energy as we walked through the installations looking for proof of all the stories he’d told for all the very many years.

And I have stories too. Some of the things I’ve done with my music are cherished. Impossible now, it feels. And I’m sure I tell them all too often.

It’s the shape of it all. My dad couldn’t write lyrics very well. He wrote and recorded one song in his life. Lyrics and everything. But man could he play the guitar. Always covers. Always exactly how they sounded on the record. When he was playing it meant he was breathing. He didn’t sell records or t shirts of tote bags. The only thing he wanted later in his life was a room to play in. A group of people to dance. And a constant stream of cold bud light’s put into his cup holder attached to the mic stand.

I’ve sold 118 copies of my little poetry collection through Amazon. I’ve also sold 39 physical copies of the book that I printed through a small print shop. I’ve sold one copy at a physical book store in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I’ve made a little over $300 from my Amazon sales.
I’ve made a little over $390 from my physical sales.

This week a fan (someone incredible) purchased a sweatshirt I designed for my last album release on my web store and it was the first piece of physical merch I’ve sold for this project. I used print on demand and drop ship for most of the things I sell. And I don’t sell very many of them. I pocketed $18 for that sale.

When I first published Oaxaca for Sushi I checked my KDP stats as often as they updated. When the cash got transferred into my account it quickly went to a bill that month.

When I release new singles I refresh the stats in the same way. As often as they update. “30 streams today, 52 the day before”

When I play a room that has 52 people in it, or 300, or 1,000, i’m in it. Immediately and for the rest of my life. When I post things on the internet I am pulled away from it. Separated even. Those 52 people are the same. I am not.

I remember driving from Texas where I was living at the time back home to Seattle in my early 20’s. I stopped for a week with my cousins in Arizona. We rode horses through the high desert. Ate tacos. And listened to all my dads stories filtered through is older brother, who happened to be his drummer during all those old stories.

My cousin gave me two records he pulled from Kazaa. Incubus’ “Make yourself” and Dashboard Confessionals “The places you have come to fear the most”. Music was already my life. I had already written a song for a girl and sung it for her in the Tyler, Texas airport. She had already dumped me, too. The guitar was already a permanent fixture in my trunk. Songwriting was new, though. Figuring out what I liked about certain songs was new.

I went to my first Dashboard show a few months later somewhere in the midwest and it was electric. Well, I mean he played an acoustic guitar, but you get the metaphor. If you are an elder millennial you know what the room did. It erupted. Every single person sang every single word. Chris wasn’t the show. We were.

I’ve been chasing that for 25 years. The room erupting. But I don’t think I’ve ever put thought into what it takes to bring people to that room in the first place. I’m 44 now. it’s easy to think “my best days are behind me” but my therapist doesn’t let me wallow in that. He simply tells me to redefine what a good day looks like.

I’ve always edited more than i’ve created. I’ll write an essay and spend weeks carving it up. Finding a voice. Editing for tone. Throw it into Hemmingway to check readability. Use the Grammerly plugin to cut through the fat and get to the core of the message. Edit, edit, edit, sit, wait, edit, reformat, post. And what is posted is good, but also a little hollow. I see it. But it’s what everyone says you do with a Substack or a blog or any other social media platform. You gotta make it easy for the algo to find you. But truly and I mean this with my full chest… Fuck the algorithm. And Fuck perfection. I’ve always been messy. I am very messy.

This is the second time that I’ve opened up Substack with a blank page and just… started… typing. I want to write. It’s my favorite thing to do. I want to play my songs to 52 people. But more than anything I want to be honest with myself. About what I want out of this life. And It involves much less editing as I get older.

So this fame thing and Dashboard and my Dad and Louie, Louie. It’s all connected. I don’t know that I want fame. I do want to sit in a room full of people who are breathing. Like my dad was, on the corner stage of a shitty Chinese restaurant in Bellevue Washington, every Thursday night for a decade, with all the people who went there dancing and asking to hear songs they all fell in love too over the decades, while the server grabs a cold Bud Light for my dads cup holder attached to his mic stand.

On using Caravaggio in prose

jon johnson — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 16:35:08 GMT

An after from reading around 100 pages of Dave Eggers book Contrapposto

A thing that I enjoy about being a writer is, oddly, not the writing itself. It is more often the reading that is required for me to actually write something that feels honest. It’s the words, really. Phrasing, more accurately. Which is term to describe the arrangement of words. So, I think I need to go back to the fact that it is actually the words. I’d futhur argue that its the individual rhythm of the words and how they fall or lift when spoken together.

When I find a complementary rhythm that my brain finds interesting I get a little jolt of serotonin in my brain. Like I’ve finished my daily Wordle in less tries than usual. Or when I shift my car into gear from reverse into first without fully stopping the car and it’s smooth so I picture something smooth and smile to myself. It’s a little joy.

So Dave is writing about art and creativity and inspiration and all the many things that pour into a soul who has found the outside world magical and bright and needs to capture it as they perceive it. And he’s talking about old masters and apprentices and Caravaggio is mentioned and I read the word effortlessly. Followed closely by a name I had never read and needed to sound out with all it’s very many vowels. Itallian, of course. Which should possibly be seen as a deficit but I am learning. So I’m growing. So I am winning also. Not everything is a game, I know this. but I do think I often wish to win something. It’s another little joy.

But I read Caravaggio easily. And I haven’t really studied the masters. I’m not a visual artist per se. I do not draw or sketch or have things in notebooks that would remotely resemble what I was perceiving. But I love the museum.

In early 2005 I went to New York and visited as many museums as possible. I also went to about a dozed broadway and off broadway shows. I was trying to find myself back then too. The Met had a number of his works on permanent display. I don’t remember much about his direction, his upbringing, or his accomplishments, but I know his painting “The Musicians”. And I do love that painting. I love how he captured light.

I learned later this is a style choice of Ol’ Mike. Tenebrism. Which is an extreme depiction of dark and light. This essay isn’t about Tenebrism. Or Caravaggio. Or even Dave Eggers and the way he seems to encapsulate a Tenebristic style with his storytelling. If I am not reading, I am not writing. And if I am not writing I feel differently about myself. My legs feel lethargic. I forget I even have abdominal muscles. That I can, and have, built very strong things with my hands. I am at rest too often when I am not creating. So I read and then I write.

In Contrapposto the central character attends a few workshops on drawing figures. Usually nude models. And starts to uncover his reality within creative persuits. That someone can place something in front of you and the job is not defined until then, until you perceive it. What pulls your attention. Features. Shapes. Light? And the protagonist draws from a perspective of truth. Truth as he perceives it. Of seeing what he sees in front of him and transferring the image in his brain on canvas, with charcoal, and little opinion otherwise. Just what’s in front of him.

When I read I tend to focus on descriptors. These are what place me in a story. To understand the cold air of an Indiana morning. To connect the tension of a mothers eye that doesn’t understand her son’s very active brain. Or his need for space to explore within that brain. For me to say “I understand that” is to say “I have lived that” either in actuality or in effect through my own very active brain.

I’m trying to remember who I am. Many layers that I have added to make that journey far more complex than I can admit outside of my therapist’s office. So I’m trying to find myself and I usually look for analogs in various forms of media.

like many people I saw The Odyssey this week and so much of the story feels like prophecy. Ominous prophecy but prophecy nonetheless. Take Odysseus’s big monologue with his wife in the third act for instance. Penelope has been waiting for her husband’s return for 20 years. Suitors are overwhelming Ithaca. Sparta worries they cannot raise an army to defend if needed. And here, the man himself, the victor of Troy, sits in her presence. Comforts her soul. Answers her riddles to prove her sight correct. And in that moment he tells a truth. Odysseus was lost. And couldn’t come home, wouldn’t come home. Not yet.

The space between the man who left and the man who relied on Ithica to honor Zeus’s law was too great. Could not be traversed easily. It was an odyssey. He needed to find himself in the world as it was, not as he was remembered, in song, by bard, by his own son.He changed. And to jump back 20 years and into a life you left, changed, is not honest.

So I’m looking for myself again. And there are 20 years, 30 years, 40 years between the little boy who didn’t understand there was a wide world one day and then the very next day had to go to a therapist and lived a life that was covered with concern. With sharp tongues. With constant fear that the thing that changed would change everything else and it was no longer an honest life. It was guarded.

So, was it the damage from the thing itself that changed the boy? Or was it the 20 years, the 30 years, the 40 years that filtered that first thing into the container that sits here now. Legs lethargic, abdomen soft, belly full but unsatisfied with what has been given to it.

Was it oddyseus’s rush to break Zeus’s law to end the war with Troy the thing that broke him? Or the fact that he saw what happened next. That he didn’t look away. That he said “The end of our age has begun” and he was the final singer in a song that had started long before he kissed Penelope for the last time.

I am trying to find myself. To connect all the dots and trace where it all went wrong. Did it even all go wrong though? I do look back, but it is quite blurry. Right now the joy is IN the looking back. IN observing it all. THROUGH the container that sits here now. Full of the 20 years, the 30 years, the 40 years that have all been wrapped up into this very bright box that is me.

Some things are true today that will be untrue in a matter of moments.

My first Substack blunder

jon johnson — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:42:34 GMT

This morning I hit publish on my most recent draft (it’s probably right ahead of this one in your inbox) of an older draft of last months piece focused on my religious deconstruction and I’m sure a number of you are having a vague sense of Deja Vu.

Oops.

I usually feel the need to apologize but this isn’t that serious. I’ve spent most of my time lately inside my brain. And themes around the church and what it has wrought seems to be written in bold, permanent marker. I think this will be the well I draw from for quite a while.

I met again with my new therapist last week. This is the second therapist that I’m currently working with. Might as well go all in, right? Thank goodness for decent health insurance. Anyways, He’s pragmatic. Which is a trait I admire, and respond well too. Focused purely on the “thing” that changed me in my youth. That question my parents asked about me every day “is Jon ok?” And I wasn’t. And I’m not. We’ve gotta go all in, right?

And from that questions pretty much every other thing stems. Doubt. Fear. Anger. All stemmed from a feeling of powerlessness from a child in need of softness. In need of safety. In need of grace but given dogma instead. Every choice others make, and we make is directed by god, or not. Black and white.

It’s no wonder I still very much see things in black and white. Binary. There is a thing that is wrong and there is a thing that is right and that still small voice inside my head uses an efficient filling mechanism. It is an impulse at this point. “You did that wrong, Jon. And It’s all your fault” followed quickly by “you are better than this”

Meet Jon’s crippling sense of self doubt.

Mr New Therapist Guy clocked that I needed to hear that I am correct where applicible very quickly. 15 min into our first session. “Do you need me to tell you that I think you are correct here?” followed by a very quick “well, I’m not going to” We skipped the entire getting to know you phase. The best part of any form of new things.

When I’ve gone out on dates with new people I generally wish to hang onto that first flash as long as possible. Even sometimes before the actual date part! The stolen eyes in the coffee shop, the first time you learn someones name. The mystery has always been the most interesting thing for me. That there are things yet to be discovered. That I can still tell a story and have someone look at me, wrapped in my words. Yes, this centers me. This is also probably highlighting my unyielding need for acceptance. To be seen as good.

Good means “has value”. Good means “would totally hit again”. Good means there is more there. The black and white file folders have plenty more “good” to be filtered through, in order to walk into (or out of) a situation with confidence. To cover up the "bad” that always shows up eventually. And by then, I’m already seen as good.

Years ago, when I lived in California I would ask my partner if they thought “I was too much” or if they thought “other people thought I was too much” after pretty much any social situation. They were usually kind about it. My self confidence is a house of cards I need those closest to me to maintain after all.

So I didn’t do a good job this morning and 49 of you now know that I am not always good. And it’ll take a good amount of time to quell my frustrated brain to shut the f*ck up a little and just hit “unpublish”

So, instead of working through my Google folder of essays winding through all the very things I’m talking about with my two different therapists I typed this out while listening to a political podcast on in the living room, cramping, a cup of coffee (unrelated, i’m sure) and a pair of waffles in the toaster trying really hard to build out a middle folder where things are not good or bad, one where they just fine.

Good, Bad, Fine. We often put the most pressure on ourselves.

Remember who you are.

Did you know I write songs too?!

jon johnson — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:14:33 GMT

Long Way is a song about leaving and it’s also a song plumbed from the deepest parts of my heart. Recorded simply. With my iPhone 16 in my little makeshift studio in Raleigh, North Carolina during the last week of May, 2026 after a fulfilling and exhausting trip to Las Vegas and a documentary about Counting Crows.

Following the link above will take you …

On muscle memory post deconstruction

jon johnson — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:38:55 GMT

I was raised within the Assemblies of God. Assemblies of God is a charismatic denomination within the Christian Church. Charismatic means hands in the air. Charismatic means the youth pastor had a soul patch and an acoustic guitar and a testimony involving a near-miss with a girl in college. Charismatic means I knew every song on the WOW Worship CD by h…

The Ministry of Silly Walks

jon johnson — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:31:13 GMT

Being a father is nothing like I expected.

I had a plan, the way you have a plan when you don’t know anything yet. I was going to be patient and consistent and I was going to read the right books and say the right things and my kids were going to know, in their bones, that they were loved and safe and that the world made sense. I was going to be the dad …

Holy Holy Holy

jon johnson — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:46:53 GMT

I still have my dad’s 1978 Volkswagen convertible. Sunbeam yellow. Rust spots on the rear quarter panel that I keep meaning to do something about. I don’t.

Some things you keep exactly as they are.

We were living in Ventura at the time, which is everything people imagine when they imagine California. Palm trees. Bikinis. Surfers and van lifers and famous …

Both Hands

jon johnson — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:22:23 GMT

I don’t have much right now. Maybe something’s growing. Maybe something’s dying? But i wrote this and i don’t think i have much to say that it doesn’t say for itself.

Thursday/Friday in York, PA

jon johnson — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:04:10 GMT

Thursday

Made the shittiest coffee this morning. The kitchen was cold enough I could see my breath, I never can figure out these hotel thermostats. And hotel Keurigs make me feel like i’m the only one awake in the building. Coffee is supposed to be shared. I hate it.

The barista at the place-I-go-to-now remembered my order. She nodded and started making i…

Before judgement, Notice

jon johnson — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 23:50:47 GMT

A prologue of sorts:

The world is… well the world is heartbreaking. I am political. If you know that you know me. I have so many words and so few. So I’ll simply say the names that have weighed heaviest:

Renee Good. Alex Pretti.

These are not the only, nor do I fear the last.

But nevertheless, Renee Good. Alex Pretti.

Why I’m Not Finishing Anything This Year

jon johnson — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:40:15 GMT

I woke up late again. There was absolutely no reason to be awake—it’s a holiday, a day designed for lounging—but I didn’t lounge. I can’t. I need the coffee. I need the ritual of the bean to prove I’ve actually arrived in the day.

I sat there with the mug and thought about a dream I had. It was a warm dream. It was a pillow after a long day of taxes and …

I Didn’t Miss the Boat. I Just Didn’t Leave Early.

jon johnson — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:07:56 GMT

I’m sad about aging in a way I didn’t expect. Not panicked. Not dramatic. Just aware. A bummer that shows up when you realize you’ve crossed into a part of life where some doors don’t open automatically anymore.

I know what it feels like to have technically missed the boat. At least the version of the boat that leaves early, packed with youth, momentum, …

A Secular Sermon on Proximity to Fame

jon johnson — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 23:06:22 GMT

This is my pitch for a TedTALK (for real, someone hook me up)

Friends,

We are gathered here because we (You, I, and the other Millennials spending more time longing than lounging these days) remember being close to something once.

Close enough to feel it before it had a name.
Close enough to know it would matter, even if it never did.

We stood in the smalles…

Dear Whoever Is Listening

jon johnson — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:07:39 GMT

I’ve been thinking about that room again.
Not any specific one.
Just the general model.
The standard-issue millennial waiting room for greatness.

You know the one.
Low ceiling.
A stage built from plywood and wishful thinking.
A borrowed sound system.
Everyone pretending they aren’t cold, or bored, or twenty-three dollars away from another overdraft fee.
Everyone…

in advocacy of Corn Pops in modern millennial cultures

jon johnson — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 17:40:36 GMT

There are matters of historical significance that scholars often overlook. I’m not talking about the rise and fall of empires. Or the invention of the wheel. Or even the brief but glorious reign of dial-up internet. Somewhere in the margins and ignored by most major institutions of learning, sits one of the great cultural through lines of the 1980s and …

When the work walks in first

jon johnson — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 18:36:48 GMT

I’m in Raleigh this morning. Back at Boulted Bread and it is full this morning. Thanksgiving week. Too many mornings in the house and not enough coffee. So I escaped. Sat at my usual table. Ordered something with espresso in it and tried to collect myself.

This bakery is where I wrote most of Oaxaca for Sushi. Table by the door. Folder full of drafts. A …

Somewhere Between Park and Drive

jon johnson — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 17:24:46 GMT

On motion, maintenance, and everything between.

Do yall know what a PRNDL is?

Or prindle, which is what someone called it once, and it’s been living rent-free in my head ever since.

This morning I was sitting in line at the rental car return near the Philadelphia airport, inching forward in one of those oversized SUVs that feels like a living room on whee…

No Socks in Philadelphia

jon johnson — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:12:31 GMT

The lobby smells like burnt toast and industrial cleaning solution. I scroll through my inbox. A long list of names. Some I’ll see today. Some I’ll only ever know through signatures.

I drove by the river last night. The sky was low and soft, that wide open page. Crew teams were out in the last light. Oars cut the water clean. I pulled over for a minute, …

The Warmth of Obsolete Things

jon johnson — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 20:57:11 GMT

There is a scene in Stranger Things (S3E7) where the plot device used is a dying battery in a handheld radio. Like, things ran out of batteries. Remember that? And you had to have MORE BATTERIES?? 8 AA’s? What on earth. WHAT on earth.

I’ve been thinking about the things that once felt urgent, like knowing the thing was dying and you didn’t yet know there…

the work of letting someone love you

jon johnson — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:10:46 GMT

My therapist once told me that the hardest thing for avoidant people to do is accept love as it’s offered. She said, “Your partners often love you more than you love yourself. That’s not their work to fix. That’s yours.”

I nodded, pretending to take notes, but what I really wanted to do was laugh — because of course I turned self-acceptance into homework.