Us & Them: Daniel Johnston — The Troubled Life And Artistic Genius Of West Virginia Music Hall Of Fame Inductee

Daniel Johnston, a visual artist and singer-songwriter who was a key figure in the indie music scene in the1980s, will soon be inducted in the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. 

Johnston’s high, wobbly vocals, uneven tempos, and percussive piano playing are unpolished and raw, earning him a label as an “outsider artist.” He recorded his best-known songs alone on cassette in his parents’ basement in Hancock County.  Those tapes earned him a cult following in the burgeoning live music scene in Austin, Texas. Songwriters saw past the lo-fi production values of Johnston’s cassettes to the lyrics and structure of his songs. More widely known musicians like Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain championed his work.  

Johnston was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his 20s, and as his fame grew, his mental health struggles increased. He died in 2019 at age 58, leaving hundreds of songs and drawings. 

In this episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay talks with family members, musicians  and others about Daniel’s life and legacy.

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the CRC Foundation.

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Shelly Reed is Daniel Johnston’s cousin. She grew up in Chester, and still lives there today. Reed says Chester is known for two things: Daniel Johnston and the “World’s Largest Teapot,” a tourist attraction since 1938. Johnston, famous for his music and his visual art, created much of that art while growing up near Chester. But many landmarks of his presence—including his childhood home and murals he painted at the high school—are gone.

“People in town… I don’t know, they even erased his stuff. He drew a picture of a bear and other things at the high school. I’m sure they wish they had it now, because he became so famous. But they colored over it, painted over it. Have you seen his yearbook? He drew a lot of pictures in it. He was always drawing pictures—always… After he died, my daughter and I stayed at their house for two weeks because they were overwhelmed with selling all the things people wanted after he passed away. I was in shock. I thought, ‘I cannot believe people are paying anywhere from $100 to $800.’ It’s just kind of crazy that I’m related to him… You know, he was just a kid from Chester, West Virginia, who liked playing the piano, writing down every thought in his head and drawing every picture that came to mind—and here he is, famous.”

— Shelly Reed, Daniel Johnston’s cousin

Daniel Johnston’s most famous self-produced album was “Hi, How Are You?” It gained worldwide recognition among musicians, including Sonic Youth, Beck, Yo La Tengo, Pearl Jam and Wilco. The lo-fi cassette featured one of Johnston’s most recognizable characters on the cover, a googly-eyed frog-like alien Johnston named Jeremiah the Innocent. The late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain made the frog image iconic when he wore a T-shirt featuring it to the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. Here, Johnston’s cousin Shelly Reed shows “Us & Them” host Trey Kay a vinyl copy of “Hi, How Are You?” at her home in Chester.

Irwin Chusid is a music historian and journalist who has been a free-form DJ at WFMU in New Jersey for more than 50 years. He frequently featured Daniel Johnston’s music on his shows. Chusid coined the term “outsider artist,” and he considers Johnston’s work to be in that category. 

Chusid first discovered lo-fi music when a friend played him “Philosophy of the World,” the 1969 album by the three-sister group The Shaggs. His ensuing  fascination with outsider music led him to write “Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music,” which includes Johnston. Chusid said Johnston is in a league of his own.

“[Daniel Johnston] has pop appeal and a huge body of work—songs people can cover or sing. Anyone can listen and hear a hook, a melody, a verse, a chorus, or something unusual in the lyrics. They can hear Daniel’s soul in that music. And that applies to every—can I use this word?—‘great’ outsider musician: They’re expressing their soul.”

— Irwin Chusid, music historian and journalist.

Family members describe Daniel as someone who wanted to draw and play music all the time. Daniel’s mother Mabel told filmmaker Jeff Feurzeig in his award-winning 2005 documentary, “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” that “he didn’t want to do any of his chores like help mow the lawn or wash the car or any of those things.” She added that she had to “settle that.” Daniel recorded arguments with her on his cassette player and sometimes used them in songs like “Brainwash” and “Mabel’s Grievances.” He also made films spoofing her. Dick Johnston said they were brought up in a Christian home, and his mother objected to some of Daniel’s antics.

“The earliest dispute that arose about what he was doing had more to do with his art than his music, maybe. He was drawing these dead dogs’ eyeballs. And you could find these things all over the county for the longest time because he and his friends were putting them everywhere. And mother thought that was distasteful. I’ve never heard them comment on the songs except to say that they are very good and that they thought that they were a little on the depressing side.”

— Dick Johnston, only brother and former manager of Daniel Johnston and the manager of his estate.

Listen to Daniel Johnston’s song “Walking The Cow.”Watch Daniel Johnston’s perform “I Live My Broken Dreams” in Austin, TX on MTV in 1985.

In 1983, Dick invited Daniel to spend the summer at his home near Houston, thinking that would help Daniel get on his feet. Dick said Daniel got a job at AstroWorld. But a few months later, Daniel moved in with a sister in San Marcos, south of Austin. Soon after, Daniel disappeared and skipped town with a traveling carnival. Dick said Daniel thought family members were going to put him in a psychiatric hospital because of his bipolar disorder. 

Five months later, the carnival stopped in Austin and Daniel chose to stay. He got a job at a McDonald’s and passed out his homemade cassettes to anyone who showed an interest. 

He gave a cassette to Austin-based musician and singer-songwriter Kathy McCarty, whose band, Glass Eye, was a favorite in Austin’s growing live music scene. McCarty said she got a lot of cassettes from people seeking to open for them.

“This weird guy came up to me and gave me a cassette tape. He was clearly dying of nervous energy—he could barely bring himself to talk to me. I took his cassette and said, ‘Yeah, I’ll listen to it.’ It was ‘Hi, How Are You?’ I listened to about two songs and thought, ‘My God, this guy’s a genius.’ We didn’t even practice that day; all we did was listen to his tape over and over. I think we scheduled half an hour for him to play six or seven songs. He rushed through three, then ran off stage. He went to the bathroom, climbed out the window and took off.”

— Kathy McCarty, musician and visual artist

Daniel’s local popularity led to his appearance on an episode of “The Cutting Edge” on the popular music video cable station MTV in the summer of 1985. By that fall, McCarty said Johnston suffered a psychotic episode in which he violently attacked his manager after which he spent time in a psychiatric hospital in Austin. His father, a former WWII pilot, flew to Austin to take Daniel back to West Virginia after another psychotic break. His mental health continued to deteriorate. During a trip to New York City to record his first studio album, “1990,” he assaulted another musician and was briefly hospitalized. Following a recording trip to Maryland, Daniel got into an altercation with a woman in Chester who ended up jumping out of the window of her second-story apartment to escape Daniel after he kicked down the front door. He told a judge he was trying to save the woman from a demon. The judge sent him to a psychiatric hospital in Weston, WV, where he stayed for some time before he was released into the custody of his parents. Daniel would spend a total of five years in mental health institutions over the course of his lifetime.

“Dave, here I am on MTV holding up my tape, ‘Hi How Are You,’ and they’re recording me tonight, I’m on MTV. Remember when we used to watch MTV back home? Look, I’m on MTV, David.”

– Daniel Johnston, speaking on an MTV promo for “The Cutting Edge”

Kathy McCarty began working on “Dead Dog’s Eyeball: Songs of Daniel Johnston” after Daniel was hospitalized in Weston. She said she recorded his songs so people could hear the music in a more relatable way. She accomplished that goal: The album was well-received, and one track, “Living Life,” appeared on the soundtrack of the 1995 romantic drama “Before Sunrise,” starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

“Oftentimes people used to ask me in interviews, do you think that his mental illness is like, what makes him such a great songwriter? And I’d be like, ‘no, if he had not been mentally ill, it would have been much better.’ His mental illness – it stood in his way.”

— Kathy McCarty

Daniel continued to record, often collaborating with other musicians. His eighteenth and final album was issued in 2012 but his most enduring work was the material from the 1980s, much of it from West Virginia.

His dad, and later, his brother Dick, managed him. They toured with him, booking local artists to accompany him. Daniel eventually stopped playing guitar or piano because of tremors from the medications he took. 

In 2017, Daniel announced he would reture from performing. He did a final, five-date tour. Each stop featured a different band influenced by his music.

Jeff Tweedy, the frontman of Wilco, and his son backed up Daniel at the Old Vic in Chicago. A video of the concert shows Daniel sitting in a chair, reading his lyrics off a music stand. Both hands grip the microphone to steady his shaking body. 

Watch Daniel Johnston perform with Jeff Tweedy and his son at the Old Vic in Chicago in 2017. 

Tweedy will induct Daniel Johnston into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame and perform at the ceremony. He said it’s a great honor.

If it was up to me he’d be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or he’d be in every state’s Hall of Fame. I don’t know, I just think that you know I think that there are a lot of good reasons to keep his music alive and keep a focus on the art that he made.

— Jeff Tweedy, of the band Wilco

Daniel Johnston performed outside the U.S. at venues in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy. In 2010, he toured Europe with the B.E.A.M. Orchestra, an 11-piece outfit from Holland.  Live recordings from that tour are on Daniel’s 2010 album “Beam Me Up!”

Dick Johnston manages Daniel’s estate. He said proceeds from the sales of Daniel’s drawings and other merchandise pay for the upkeep of his voluminous archives and legacy-building projects. Dick said he’d like to develop a cable or television series based on Daniel’s life. 

Daniel’s visual art is also in the spotlight. The art publisher Rizzoli will soon release “Daniel Johnston,” a 400-page book spanning four decades of Johnston’s  work.

Daniel is also remembered through the Hi, How Are You Foundation, a non-profit co-founded by Tom Gimbel, who managed Daniel in the 1990s. The foundation’s “Hi, How Are You Project” educates young people worldwide about mental health through community-building events. 

For a kid who started out making cassette tapes in his family’s basement, that’s quite a legacy.   

“OK, even if you don’t like outsider music, you’re missing something in the human experience if you’re not listening to Daniel Johnston. He’s a deeply philosophical commentator on the world, society, life and our experience, and I think he has valuable things to offer. It’s something that shouldn’t be missed.”

— Dick Johnston