When the Orange County punk band the Vandals first released the song “Johnny Two-Bags” from their 1995 album, Live Fast Diarrea, it must have felt like some kind of backhanded recognition to punk musician Jonny (Two Bags) Wikersham.
Lyrics like, “You ain’t black and you ain’t blind / You’re girlfriend’s not the cheating kind / Well you’re cleaned up and you’re off the booze / Maybe you weren’t meant to sing the blues,” were a kind of affectionate put-down directed at artists who dig a little deeper to find their own “blues,” as they infuse their art with something more than the surface frustrations and anger the Southern California punk scene came to personify during the 1980’s. At the time, the band seemed to nail it when they sang: “He’s too green to sing the blues and Orange County ain’t a breeding ground for blues / Oh Johnny do shut up.”
Fortunately for us all, Jonny Two-Bags didn’t listen to the unsolicited advice from his punk peers. Today, in the years since the song was written, he has become a member of the legendary and durable punk unit Social Distortion. He joined in 2000 following the death of key band member, Dennis Dannel.
Wickersham has recently released Salvation Town, easily one of the best Americana albums of 20014. It stands in the tradition of Ry Cooder, Los Lobos, and Warren Zevon as it captures the unique experience of growing up in Southern California from the inside. It also captures the feeling of redemption following this artist’s years of emotional struggle and alienation. It is where the artist finds some real blues, deep within himself. He uncovers a unique voice for this record, raw but resolved, relating stories of his youth, coming from a divorced family, and finding his way as a street punk in Orange Count
y.
With this album, he embraces all of his musical history, which is owed in part to his father.
“I loved rock since I was in 5th grade when I first heard Led Zepplin,” he said in a recent phone interview. “My dad listened to hard rock. He was a huge fan of The Rolling Stones. Mick-the shouter.” He laughed. “I loved The Who. Especially Tommy. I used to listen to it in my Dad’s van on his eight-track.”
That was his early childhood. When Wickersham turned 12, he heard a cassette of hard core punk bands like D.O.A. and Buzzcocks. His punk journey began. “They were the wildest thing I’d ever heard.” He laughs. As he describes it.
“I only had a few friends. We were just losers. We’d hang out at shopping centers and shoplift. We’d dumpster dive. We were just dirty kids. But, the music came to mean a lot to me during those days.”
As it happened, it was the music where he found his redemption. “I found the Southern California punk scene. Punk is closed minded now. Back then, in the 80’s, it wasn’t. It’s like we were under this umbrella. There was plenty of roots music and love for blues then.” Thanks to Wikershams’ dad, who played guitar and favored country-rock, his love for roots music would blossom as time passed. “My dad taught me my first chords on guitar. He showed me how to play Hoyt Axton’s song ‘Greenback Dollar.’ It was the first song I ever played.”
So, it was no wonder, the music that was implanted in him so early would find its way to providing him such comfort later in life. This is where Jackson Browne enters: “Man, I grew up with him. When my dad died of Parkinson’s disease, he was living in Reno. I had to go through his things to decide what to keep. I found an old CD player and a box of CDs. One of the records I found was For Everyman.” 
For anyone who grew up with music in the ’70s, Jackson Browne’s For Everyman was a kind of touchstone for many of our lives. Not really a commercially driven record, it was filled with introspective and poetic sketches that were full of California and Spanish imagery, and held a soulful insight about life that was universal and timeless. At its heart, it is an emotional album centered on loss.
“I was listening to this music of my father’s and it was like listening to my childhood. It was like a dream.”
As fate would have it, Jackson Browne and his main sideman, David Lindley, both appear on Salvation Town, on “Then You Stand Alone.” It is a song arranged in a way that could have been an outtake from For Everyman, with references to the “electric cross” over the101 freeway. Browne’s familiar voice on harmony and Lindley’s soaring guitar embrace the spirit of the song and send it over the top.
Essentially, Salvation Town is a threshold album. It’s from an artist who has long been prolific in punk music and now transcends that genre, to something deeper, letting go of his past through the catharsis of song, staring forward into what promises to be some new musical direction.
Residing in the consistency of the album’s songs is this kind of re-birth, musically and spiritually. It’s a rare album where every song comes with a price that has been paid and now it’s time to celebrate all the struggles in images unique to L.A. This can be heard on songs like, “The Avenue,” which describes the forgotten and discarded. “Clay Wheels” takes us through Wickersham’s skateboarding past with a rear view mirror on past regrets, and the metaphor of an outmoded form of transportation from childhood. There’s a rock and boogie sensibility in “Wayward Cain,” that speaks to perseverance and endurance with a taste of despair, and the hope of the arms of an angel.
Overall, Salvation Town enters the often diverse and vague fray of Americana new releases with a strong center, finding the artist confident and engaged without posture. It’s about acknowledging and redeeming the past, living in the present without regret or despair. The music is simply straightforward and strong, with traces of Wickersham’s heritage. It’s a record that should make Ry Cooder proud.
Jonny Two Bags’ tour schedule can be found on his website. He is about to begin a tour with Social Distortion. He will be opening June 14 at Ventura County Fairground in Southern California for Los Lobos.
