We had the pleasure of interviewing Duquette Johnston over Zoom video!
Duquette Johnston has shared "Mystics," an ode to the enduring strength of unconditional love and the emotional toll we face when nearly losing it. Written by the Birmingham, Alabama musician for his wife and creative partner Morgan, the song centers on finding beauty in those unbreakable bonds when it feels like everything else around you is falling apart. For Duquette and Morgan, this came as they built their lives together with a focus on giving back in the aftermath of his treacherous cycle through Alabama's prison system - and once again years later as Morgan developed a life-threatening condition after becoming pregnant with their first child.
A founding member of the breakout 90s indie band Verbena, Johnston got his musical start signing to Merge Records and touring alongside other ascendant acts of the era like The Strokes and Foo Fighters. In the years that followed, a non-violent drug charge found him stuck in a prison system more focused on "zero tolerance" than recovery and rehabilitation - an experience that's led Johnston to become a vocal advocate for prison reform in his home state of Alabama. With only a select few album releases since leaving prison for the last time in the mid-2000s, The Social Animals marks Duquette's first new record since 2013 and finds him reuniting with friends and collaborators from his indie rock past; including producer John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr, Hop Along, Waxahatchee, Twin Peaks, Kurt Vile) and a band anchored by longtime Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. The results are a sonic world of spiraling guitars, cavernous beats and Johnston's deeply-learned lessons on the idea that "we can lift each other up. We can change things if we keep our hearts in the right place.”Johnston has previously shared the advance singles "Year To Run" and "To My Daughters" from the record.
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