One of the first tracks I encountered in my exploration of alt-country was NoahJohn’s wonderful ‘Standing On A Snake’ from the 1999 album “Tadpoles”. Here is the title track from that excellent album, which gained some very positive critical reviews in the UK, including from Mojo and The Sunday Times. The track is not catchy or even very musical, with the vocals accompanied by sparse accordion, but the words and the images they paint stay with you and, over time, so does the melody.
Carl Johns, aka NoahJohn, originally from South Indiana, tells of returning home and then going on a walk with his father: “I was walking down/In my hometown/With my old man/ Fields stretching out/ By the side of us/ Green blankets”. This idyllic scene is then shattered: “Then a truck drove by and somebody shouts/ Hey faggots!/Get off the road”. Johns then sings, ironically you guess, “It’s good to be back home”.
He finally tries to see things from the point of view of the youth shouting abuse: “Maybe he just hates himself/ And can’t figure out/ Exactly what he should be doing”. This unusually reflective way of looking at things makes the song particularly memorable.
The album is NoahJohn’s debut, written when bored while living alone in Madison, Wisconsin. He had previously attended Indiana University in Bloomington and had something of a creative awakening there. He used a new name NoahJohn because he was uncomfortable seeing his real name on promo material and kept it through four albums and the many changes to supporting personnel. His final album as NoahJohn was a 2003 collaboration with Eugene Chadboune “Country Protest Anew”.
Johns learned piano, guitar and drums as a child. He later drummed with garage bands and worked with bluegrass musicians. You can hear the garage band influence in the rawness of the music on the album, particularly the guitar. The bluegrass influence is heard in the ‘hoedown’ fiddle on show but there is also banjo and mandolin at times. Both influences give the album a compelling vitality and energy. His uncle gave him an accordion and this instrument appears on some tracks. There is a rural flavour to the music and the words, and the word ‘hillbilly’ has been used to describe it.
After NoahJohn, Johns recorded four albums as Charlemagne. Initially a solo project, he formed a band to support him. At one stage they looked and sounded a bit like Bon Jovi- a slightly bizarre turn of events given the music on “Tadpoles”– but Johns does seem to be an original, creative maverick.
