Veteran rock outsider Patricio Johnson releases Nothing, his sixth solo album
Nashville rocker pays tribute to vintage rock, soul and R&B with a set of lovingly crafted, home-recorded originals
NASHVILLE, Tennessee, November 15, 2023–With Nothing, Nashville singer-songwriter Patricio Johnson has brought out a new full-length album that defines the role of the journeyman rocker in this age of influencers and TikTok creators. That he has done so from within the confines of his one-bedroom apartment in grimy Madison, Tennessee (it’s a close suburb of Nashville itself) with virtually no budget, playing all of the instruments himself, might be a testimony to the state of economic affairs that plagues artists in general, though it also highlights a resilience that the 60-year-old makes manifest in every one of the 11 tracks that compose Nothing. Not for nothing did he make his latest music after 35 years in the business. As he sings in one of the newly written rockers you discover on Nothing, you are rock and roll, and he knows whereof he speaks, because he’s the quintessence of the term.
Pat Johnson (he reclaimed his birth name Patricio in the middle Aughts as a “disambiguator” when the digital music boom revealed several other Pat Johnsons) dropped out of University of Minnesota in 1986 and dove headlong into the burgeoning college radio band scene. Touring and recording with bands on the club circuit led to a sojourn in San Francisco. There he joined ex-Avengers lead singer Penelope Houston’s newly minted acoustic project. Around the same time, he joined (former Long Ryder) Sid Griffin’s Coal Porters, recorded with avant-noise outfit Royal Trux–he is featured on Drag City DC1, the first single released by the iconic label–and released his own Wellsprings of Hope album. In 1993 Johnson relocated to Germany, where he was lauded as a solo artist and toured with Penelope Houston and Townes Van Zandt.
Johnson titled the album Nothing as a self-deprecating nod to Todd Rundgren’s 1972 multi-instrumentalist masterpiece Something/Anything? Just like Todd, Johnson plays virtually all the instruments on Nothing. (His Wellsprings LTD mate John Kent is behind the drums on three tracks.) Despite the close quarters of the recording setup and the usual limited resources, these tracks sound radio ready–albeit for 1973. Stylistically, titles like “Cloudburst,” “Tears From A Stone” and “Tell Me Your Name” belie the influence of seventies British Pub Rock icons like Dave Edmunds, Brinsley Schwarz, and Graham Parker. Johnson the lyricist deftly evokes heartache on “Immediate Blue” and an ironic worldview that his maturity as an artist often blends into self-referential retrospection, as on “You Are Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which we mentioned earlier. If Nothing betrays any outward theme, it might well be that singing these songs is an emblem of survival for an artist who may never be a household name. No matter, because he knows you are rock ‘n’ roll, and he remains dedicated to the proposition that creating those glorious sounds is still the greatest pursuit of all.
