an email I just sent to Lentz:
so I saw Daniel Johnston last night. Jesus. I must
explain.
I got there with James and Amy and Kimya Dawson played
in front of 20 people. I was expecting her to suck (I
don’t know why) but she was actually really good. She
finished and then people started showing up, maybe 80
people were there…apparently they were there to see
this Dan Bern guy, who’s some honkin’ fuckin’
country-rock Ryan Adams boogie balladeer macho fuck.
And people were into it.
While this was going on Daniel was sorta walking
around trying not to make eye contact with anybody but
not going backstage to be alone. James tried to talk
to him but didn’t get too far, so he told Daniel that
he heard he liked comics so he was going to get him
some. This made Daniel happy, so I drove James to his
house and picked up some books to give Daniel. Daniel
liked them and drew James a picture. Then he went
back to wandering around the club, mostly
unrecognized, because eveybody was into the
shitloafers grinding out the blueshammer pickin’
cotton blues slop. They even had a guy come out and
‘sit in’ with them on some bongos. People were
yelling for an encore, and then the club turns up all
the house lights, like the show is over. The roadies clear
off the stage completely, till there’s just a chair,
some mics, and an electric piano. Daniel comes out
and they turn down the lights and Daniel yells “I need
the lights! I can’t see the words!” He had a
notebook with his lyrics to read from. Then his mics
weren’t even on. This made the whole thing even more
shaky than it was going to be. I really felt like the
club was trying to screw Daniel over at this point, or
that they were just so fucking cluless to who he was
by having some fuckin hard-rockin’ country rock band
play before him to make their money back. Assholes.
So Daniel’s playing and now there’s only about 30 of
us watching him, most of everyone else has left, and
about 20 people are in the rear of the club partying
down, playing video games, pool, and talking really
loud. Mia Sladyk was among them, scenester club
gooddess or whatever she was. Daniel was playing his
songs on a little guitar with nylon strings. His
playing was nervous and frantic, he was mashing
whatever strings he could hold down and singing he was
just fine. He’s Daniel. He burped during one song
which made him laugh, but mostly he looked like he
didn’t want to be there. He was playing the songs
faster and faster until the words weren’t matching the
music anymore. Then he went to play some songs on the
piano. He put the notebook on the piano and
accidentally turned it off. He turned it back on and
put the notebook down and turned it off again. This
happened a few more times until he yelped “Help! I
need some help!” His voice is so child-like and
fragile, man. Then when somebody was finally helping
him, the keyboard got put into some psychedelic whimsy
cheese mode and that made Daniel laugh then he played
two songs and said “Bye” and ran off the stage outside.
That was it. 20 minutes. That was fine. I don’t think anybody
was there taking care of him, he might have just been there by himself.
He’s playing like 40 dates on this tour. I don’t know why. I hope
nobody is forcing him to do it.