Interview with Stone Dead John: ‘It’s about the story you’re trying to tell, your personal experiences wrapped in fiction’

Glasgow-based blues-rock duo Stone Dead John released two fiery and riff-heavy songs earlier this month, ‘Different Like Me’ and ‘Make a Sound’, with a new EP due out around April.

The duo comprises Chris Johnston (vocals, guitar. drums and bass) and Shaun McKay (guitars, synths, sampler and backing vocals). The ‘John’ comes from Johnston’s surname: ‘The rest just rolled off the tongue,’ he said. They met years ago but reconnected in 2014 where they hit it off and became best friends, Johnston said.

‘Different Like Me’ was written by Johnston around six years ago. ‘It never saw the light of day,’ he said. The band I was in at the time, Formal Party, disbanded and it gathered dust. We recorded it from home on lockdown. I like to jam stuff out, that’s often how you get the best stuff, it’s how we like to write. I like to say that things are never finally written, we might change the structure, add a guitar solo or a bass line in a song.’

He describes his songs as being fictious but based loosely on real events, like ‘Different Like Me’: ‘A love song’s a love song, isn’t it? We all know how it feels to be in love, so it’s a subjective story about falling in love and finding someone who completes you, that utopian view of love.’

As the song kicks off: ‘If I got lost in the city would you call my name, everbody round here just looks the same. I’m glad a found someone who’s different like me. You don’t wear make-up or fancy clothes, just look in my eyes and I’ll let you know. I’m glad I found someone who’s different like me.’

Johnston has always been a huge fan of Americana, citing Johnny Cash as a massive inspiration, as well as The Black Keys, Kings of Leon and Led Zeppelin: ‘The blues have always spoken to me, you toss your influences around and see what comes out. My roots were a pop duo with my friend Trig from school. We’re emulating bands like Mumford & Sons and Faulkner.’

‘My vocals tend to be very high or very bluesey’

One thing that will strike listeners is just how versatile Johnston’s massive voice can be. ‘My vocals tend to be very high or very bluesey,’ he laughed. ‘People will always try to put you down and I was definitely one of those vocalists who thought they weren’t a good singer.’

They have two albums worth of songs ready to release, which have been recorded, mixed and mastered, in addition to the 10 tracks that they released last year. In April, they will bring out their EP, Howling Vol. II, the follow-on album to last year’s Vol. 1. The EP will feature 5-6 tracks, including ‘Oh My My’, ‘She’s the Devil’ and ‘Don’t Fight It’.

Also this month, they released their single, ‘Make a Sound’, which Johnston describes as a ‘fuck the man’ song: ‘It’s the old if a tree falls in the forest analogy, if there’s nobody around to hear, does it make a sound? We weren’t going anywhere as a band at the time and it came out of that. The melody is very upbeat, it’s a really fucking good song! It’s an anti-radio song, there’s the line ‘being a cunt just to make a stand’, I really wanted to use that in there.’

As the chorus goes: ‘Always there I’m never around, never move when I make a sound. Always there I’m never around, never move when I make a sound.’

‘Stratosphere’, another track that came out last year, is a moving track about a relationship falling apart: ‘You’re holding up the wrong side of the devil in me, I breathe fire when I lie, yeah my soul just wants to be free.
A paranoid mind, so close the blinds. She don’t wanna feel lonely. A broken spine, the loves intertwined. She don’t wanna feel lonely.’

‘It’s about when everything in the relationship is crumbling’

Johnston describes it as being about isolation, about feeling trapped in a relationship’: ‘It’s about when everything in the relationship is crumbling, about the fragility of it, the co-dependance. Shaun wrote the intro riff and I ad libbed a lot in the first verse, I like to sing in the moment, it’s very honest. It was about something I was going through. I loved Shaun’s composition. I wrote the middle 8 where the guitar drops down, it felt right, even though it’s long (4.04 mins). I wanted to write a beautiful middle 8.’

The best songs ‘just fall out of you’, according to Johnston: ‘Music is relatively easy to compose, it’s making sure you have the right emotions and mindset, it’s about the story you’re trying to tell, your personal experiences wrapped in fiction. It’s ok to let things be. We’re very aware that you don’t want to smother something or overkill the production and add too many instruments!’

The deaths of loved ones and close friends have also made their way into some of the tracks, most notably ‘Ol’ Jimmy’ and ‘I’m Fine, Man’, which were both released last year. ‘Ol’ Jimmy’ is about my grandfather who passed away recently and ‘I’m Fine, Man’ is about a good friend who fell from some scaffolding and died. He was only 23. A lot of the lads took it really hard. He was a bit of a daredevil. It was so tragic, he was a beautiful soul, a kindred spirit who used to always talk about the stars. I hope wherever he is now, he’s in a better place.’

Johnston is a big fan of Scottish artists Jack Hinks, Indoor Foxes, Hamish Imlach, AMUR and Posable Action Figures, as well as now disbanded Scottish indie rock band, Frightened Rabbit, whose lead singer Scott Hutchison is believed to have committed suicide in May 2018 after going missing.

If he could tour with anyone, he picks Kings of Leon and Nirvana. ‘But I also love Pearl Jam and Elvis. I’d love to have toured with the King but it would have to be that man, Kurt Cobain. Elvis was a better guitarist than people realise, he wrote a lot of stuff acoustically. (He picks up his guitar and starts playing.) ‘It’s very clean, you can hear all the notes pronounced, it’s not muddy. It’s one of the most natural ways to write.’

(Photo from left to right: Chris and Shaun)