Johnny Ironsights® is a Dark Country-Folk artist from Arizona whose music channels the hard-living spirit and dark strangeness of the American underbelly. Johnny's storytelling is honest, gritty and misanthropic, dealing with themes of drug and gambling addictions, violence and grief, as well as the struggles of the American working class.
Johnny is currently writing and recording his next album in his humble home studio in the Sonoran Desert and will not be touring or active on social media during this time.
Prior to the cinematic storytelling heard in his music today, he played in SoCal punk, garage and psychobilly bands. He also writes classical piano compositions and film scores. These experiences and music influences are heard in the unconventional writing style and sound of his Dark Country-Folk tunes.
In 2014, Johnny was awarded a Fulbright Research Scholarship by the US State Department. He lived in New Delhi for nine months researching the 1960s US Government Cold War espionage and jazz diplomacy program in India and greater South Asia. After returning to California, he began a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz focusing on American Social History and Music Diplomacy, but left the program and moved to Arizona with his wife in 2018.
Johnny comes from a diverse cultural background. His mother was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and is indigenous Filipino. His father, a French-Canadian immigrant, worked as an electrician and later as a manager of a mobile home park.