Johnny Dowd is no ordinary artist. This mentalist maverick from Ithaca, NY, quite simply defies description. A Wikipedia entry makes an attempt, labelling him as alt-country, but a cursory ramble through his back catalogue suggests the emphasis is on the alternative. […]
Johnny Dowd has never been easy to listen to. He sings in an atonal drawl that seems not so much incapable of carrying a tune as uninterested in trying. His band (Dowd on guitar, longtime drummer Brian Wilson, and keyboardist […]
Within the musical world of the unsinkable Johnny Dowd, you have to laugh to keep from crying. Take the sad, first-person narrative of “Wedding Dress”, in which a young man recounts his sexual confusion — how he loved to play […]
Given the elasticity of his imagination, you’d think Johnny Dowd could write a simple love song. With “I Love You”, he gives it a valiant try. The result is a ballad clocking in at 1:16 that’s suitable for the Shangri-Las, […]
Johnny Dowd’s third release, Temporary Shelter, establishes him convincingly as one of the most talented depressives in popular music. He is also perhaps the most frightening. While Leonard Cohen and especially Nick Cave have trod that ground before, the gleaming […]
One Monday morning, 49-year-old Ithaca, New York, resident Johnny Dowd wearily rolled out of bed, still sore from a weekend’s worth of moving boxes and furniture as owner, operator and truck driver of his small moving company, and decided to […]
