At the moment, Johnny Manchild is absorbed in getting all the sheet music in order for the album he'll release early next year. There are horns and piano parts to parse out, as well as new singles to prep and an upcoming tour to plan.
But Mr. Manchild, whose real name is Jonathan Garrett, wouldn’t want it anyway.
“I can’t stand not having things to do. I like being busy,” he says from his home away from home, aka his studio.
As the founder and frontman of his eponymous band, Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards, he’s found it works best if he oversees every aspect of the music that he and a rotating cast of collaborators perform, whether that’s drafting each song or picking the musicians to play them.
“I took more control over it over the last five years,” Garrett explains. “It’s a tough thing to do this as a career. Even people who want to, there’s a lot. I realized I had a pretty big stake in it, and I was spearheading a lot of the things, so I didn’t wait around as much and just started moving faster.”
The only thing sleepy about Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards is this picture.
Courtesy Madi Rae Jones
“It was always in my head, a group effort, but it slowly became a little more of a singular project with others involved as I go,” shares Garrett, who primarily handles piano and vocals once on the stage.
The result is a theatrical display of art rock, one big beautiful sound, with the flair of American Idiot-era Green Day and the panache of piano-playing stadium titans such as Billy Joel and Elton John.
“Some people call it emo, some people call it theater, and I think it’s the same thing,” says Garrett, who received a degree in jazz performance and composition from the University of Central Oklahoma.
The musical spectacular comes to town on Thursday, April 10, with a headlining show at Globe Hall. Local openers Volores and Milk N’ Fox.
After touring their last record, Rapture Waltz, extensively, Manchild and the Bastards are stirring up some new singles, including the latest ones from this year — “Voluntary Animals” and “Already Over (Smile, Honey)” — and some unreleased originals. “We want to play a bunch of new stuff. A lot of the songs aren’t even out yet,” he notes.
But there are plans to release six more standalone tracks throughout the year, before shifting focus to the yet-to-be-named record. “I had this group of songs that I really liked, but they weren’t the right fit for the record, and I figured instead of making everyone wait, it’s kind of a fan service to give them a bunch of songs that they’ve only heard demos of, or they heard live,” Garrett adds.
There are no secrets to his proficiency, particularly his prolific pace.
“It’s more of a vibe,” he shares. “It usually takes me between thirty minutes to an hour to write a song from lyrics for structure.”
Of course, he pours more hours into them, with the post-production fine-tuning and execution. But sometimes, it does develop that fast. “Already Over (Smile, Honey)” is an example of that. “I was pissed off, so that one came pretty quickly, so the vibe for that is definitely pissed off, for sure,” he says. “That used to be the only way I could write. Now, not so much, but it’s easier with any strong emotion.”
At this point, these “fragments of songs” fall out of him at any given time, then it’s up to him to nurture them to life, even if it means abandoning them, at first.
“I have a general practice of leaving them alone for a long time,” Garrett says. “Usually, I try to spend enough time away from it that I can’t remember it at all so I can listen to it like an objective listener. Sometimes the songs are obvious to me what I want to do; others I have to sit on them a bit until they sound right.
“Usually, I know what to do with it.”
Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards, with Volores, and Milk N’ Fox, 7 p.m. Thursday, April 10, Globe Hall, 4483 Logan Street. Tickets are $22-$25.
