Duquette Johnston releases his first record in nine years-- THE SOCIAL ANIMALS
The silence is broken. THE SOCIAL ANIMALS is out worldwide today. Click here to listen.
OUT TODAY: DUQUETTE JOHNSTON REFLECTS ON HIS "WILD, INCREDIBLE LIFE" AND FINDING POSITIVITY THROUGH THE DARKNESS ON FIRST ALBUM IN NEARLY A DECADE THE SOCIAL ANIMALS (SINGLE LOCK RECORDS)
ELEVEN NEW ORIGINAL SONGS WITH PRODUCER JOHN AGNELLO (DINOSAUR JR, WAXAHATCHEE) AND DRUMMER STEVE SHELLEY (SONIC YOUTH) AVAILABLE NOW: https://link.singlelock.com/duquette
Duquette Johnston has released The Social Animals today on Single Lock Records, a collection full of the resolute optimism that he leaned on to persevere throughout his one-of-a-kind 25-year journey in music. Teaming up with the friends he's met along the way, including the creative forces behind indie rock pioneers like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, Duquette uses a dynamic sonic landscape of spiraling guitars and cavernous beats to share deeply-learned lessons on family, community and picking up the pieces when it feels the most impossible. Listen to Duquette Johnston's The Social Animals here: https://link.singlelock.com/duquette
A founding member of the breakout 90s band Verbena, Duquette signed to Merge Records, toured with The Strokes and Foo Fighters, and left the band somewhere around their first major label deal. In the years that followed, remembering "I thought I had to live in misery to create great art," a drug charge began Johnston's treacherous cycle through a prison system more focused on "zero tolerance" than recovery and rehabilitation. Eventually getting sober, getting out of prison for the last time and dedicating his life to his Birmingham, Alabama community, Duquette opened a community center/art gallery/music venue/clothing store fittingly named Club Duquette. With a mission to help bring the arts to the city's low income neighborhoods, the space has since been profiled by the New York Times, Vogue and the Washington Post. Now, returning to recorded music for the first time in a decade, Johnston chronicles what he learned through another challenging period - nearly losing his wife to a life-threatening illness after a complicated pregnancy with their first child.
Ultimately, The Social Animals is a way for Duquette to bring as much good for others as he can out of that "wild, incredible life" he's lived. "If my story and my experiences can open other people's eyes, then everything I've done is worth it.”
ABOUT THIS RECORD:
For more than twenty years, Duquette Johnston has been amongst the vanguard of Alabama music. From the founding of the seminal indie-rock band Verbena, his work in Cutgrass and the Gum Creek Killers, to his acclaimed solo releases "Etowah" and "Rabbit Runs a Destiny", Johnston has consistently pushed the boundaries of what Southern American music can sound-- and feel-- like. On his latest, The Social Animals, Johnston partnered with producer John Agnello and an all-star cast of players including Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley to create his boldest and most powerful music to date.
In a career that's taken him from stages with Pavement, Foo Fighters and The Strokes, to the Etowah County Correctional Facility, and then into the world of fashion with his Birmingham-based company Club Duquette, Duquette Johnston has gone to the edge and survived. Throughout that, he's won acclaim from NPR's World Cafe, Paste Magazine and Rolling Stone.
On The Social Animals, he opens the door into that experience with eleven songs that shake off the typical Southern Americana sound and present a lush, loud, and eloquent meditation on the human experience.
Tracklisting:
Year to Run
Whiskey and the Wine
Baby Loves a Mystery
Holy Child
Motorcycles
To My Daughters
Forgive Me
Mystics
Run With the Bulls
Fortunate Ride
Tonight