John David Padgett aka Johnny Jewel is probably the biggest name featured for Futurs Antérieurs happening at SAT for a 3 decades celebration. Musician, record producer, composer, multi-instrumentalist known for using all-analog equipment. Born and raised in Houston, Jewel has been recording and releasing music for more than 3 decades.
His creative life really began when he was recording music in Portland, Oregon, where he moved in the mid 90’s. Then he formed Glass Candy with vocalist Ida No, a no wave-influenced band that shifted progressively into an electronic-based duo much influenced by Italo disco. In 2006, he founded the record label Italians Do It Better, which gathers a range of artists and groups producing similar Italo disco, electronic, and synth-based music. Then Johnny Jewel came in Montreal and met Megan Louise who became his « partner in crime » in music and the mother of his only child.
Glass Candy and Desire (an electro duet with Megan) were the bands he got involved with. Through Jewel’s association, the band called Chromatics succeded with the album Night Drive (2007), and their music was later featured in Nicolas Winding Refn’s soundtrack of his movie Drive (2011). Jewel also scored many films. Among them, Ryan Gosling’s Lost River (2015). In 2017, he was featured with Chromatics in David Lynch’s series Twin Peaks:The return – revival of the famous 90s series. Additionally, between 2014 and 2018, Jewel released three solo albums, largely consisting of instrumental material. Since his career expanded in the American film industry, he moved back to the West Coast where he lives with his partner and daughter.
Since then Desire released other albums, the most recent was in 2025 Games People Play. He also released solo albums (The Other Side of Midnight, Windswept, Digital Rain, Vapor, Themes for Television, Naïf de coeur with Sébastien Tellier) and film scores (A Beautiful Now, Home, Don’t Come Back from the Moon, Zeroville, Holly).
So? Interviewing Johnny Jewel for Futurs Antérieurs where he performs on Friday June 5 is a no brainer!
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PAN M 360 : So you lived in Montreal for 3 years, didn’t you?
Johnny Jewel : Yeah. My daughter was born in Montreal. Her mother is my partner, Megan Louise, who is also in our duet Desire, and was born and raised in Montreal.
PAN M 360 : So, you’re a Montrealer in a way. I see that I’m calling you in California. So you are based on the West Coast if I understand.
Johnny Jewel : Yes, outside of Joshua Tree.
PAN M 360 : Right in the desert of the Joshua Tree? Wow. So, I checked your career for a while and you have a very interesting following since your beginning because you started as a musician interested with No-Wave, Post-Punk, Art Rock, Italo-disco, Glam Rock and it progressively became electronic with analog equipment. Am I right? Maybe you can have a better resume than mine.
Johnny Jewel : Well, basically, what you’re picking up is the beginning of the story starting in 1996. That’s when I moved to Portland, Oregon on the West Coast. But before that, I’m from Houston Texas. It’s about 10 years before that, that I began recording in the mid to late 80s . And my first experience with music was noise and musique concrète, experimental music, which I used synthesizers and field recordings.
And then when I moved to Portland for the first time ever, I tried to make a band called Glass Candy. I had never written pop songs before. So, what came out of it, you know, we were really interested in David Bowie and no-wave and punk. And we didn’t really know how to play very well or record very well. So, it really sounded very jagged and very no-wave.
But we were really attempting disco. It was just very primitive. And then slowly I started bringing more and more electronic roots back into the band project. And as we started making albums, I started including instrumental sections, cinematic sections to offset the pop songs. And then that caught the ear of, you know, fashion designers and directors and film editors who then started using those instrumental tracks in actual films. And then that led to working in films and being asked to score. So, that’s sort of where you’re speaking of with the band and the punk is kind of in the middle.
PAN M 360 : And about the Italians Do It Better label ?
Johnny Jewel : It began in 2006. It was a tribute to Italo-Disco. The name is based on a T-shirt that Madonna was wearing in a 1986 video, on which we could read Italians do it better, so it’s like an obscure reference to that. And also at the time, in the mid-2000s, there was an underground movement of rediscovery of the 80s European Disco. Like 8-track and 16-track minimal wave stuff that was kind of all called Italo Disco, even though a lot of it wasn’t. This stuff coming from Europe, playing in Germany and Italy and Greece, we were really into.
PAN M 360 : I see. So, it started with Glass Candy.
Johnny Jewel : Glass Candy was the first of all. And then I did contribute with Chromatics and then I began writing for the Desire project even before I met Megan. I had the concept for the band and then I met her in Montreal in 2008 and then we began Desire. So, that’s been going for the last 18 years. Actually, the first time I saw Megan’s things was at Zoo Bizarre. Do you know this venue?
PAN M 360 : Yeah, sure, I know. I was living 2 blocks from there. Alexandre Auché was the owner and today he’s part of the SAT’s booking team and an important participant of the collective artistic direction. Alex is doing the program of Futurs Antérieurs event.
Johnny Jewel : Yeah, I know Alex. Megan set it up this show, I wasn’t sure who was hiring me.
PAN M 360 : Zoo Bizarre was in France before being in Montréal.
Johnny Jewel : Yes I know! I met Alex in Bordeaux. Yeah, so I first saw Megan’s thing at Zoo Bizarre; she was doing a tribute show to Jean-Pierre Mercier, the French Cosmic Disco producer. Members of the Georges Leningrad and Dutch Estelle were performing with Megan singing, like in a prog rock band. They only played one or two shows. And I happened to be visiting when they played, and I asked her to make a band with me.
PAN M 360 : You also did some film scores for movies. With your help, Chromatics did the album Night Drive in 2007, four years later, this music was transformed into Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Drive. You also scored Refn’s film Bronson in 2008, and Ryan Gosling’s Lost River in 2015. Great achievement! Still important for you??
Johnny Jewel : Oh yes. And before that, the reason that Drive happened is that I had done Bronson, which is his previous film. And Ryan saw Bronson and loved it. And then when Ryan came on to Drive, he had a choice of music and director. So he chose me and Nick because of Bronson. And then I did the Drive soundtrack in Montreal.
PAN M 360 : Why did you leave Montreal for the West Coast again?
Johnny Jewel : It was Megan’s idea. So after the Drive team hired me for film music and television music , we could stay in Montreal at first, with the internet and all those things. But the LA people really love the composers to be in town. So Megan bought me an LA phone number and they would call and set up a meeting and I’d answer it in Montreal.
PAN M 360 : So you were faking being on the West Coast?
Johnny Jewel : Yes ! And then she’d say, I can’t make that today, but I can make it tomorrow.
And then Megan would book me a flight and I’d fly to LA for the meeting.
PAN M 360 : Megan is also your manager in a way !
Johnny Jewell: Yeah, well, she’s my partner in crime, so we do everything together. She’s brilliant with business. She had a studio in the building that I recorded in. And then she was also a part-owner of Zoo Bizarre and had production companies. She’s very creative and has lots of ideas. And then it was her idea. After I had come to the West Coast to work on a television show for a month, we had a newborn daughter and she was like, why don’t we just move to LA? I never considered the possibility of moving to Los Angeles because, honestly, I wasn’t that fond of it. I liked living in Montreal, but I didn’t have much experience in Los Angeles. And then after we moved there and got more embedded in a neighborhood type feeling, I really loved it there, and we loved California.
PAN M 360 : And now you live in the Joshua Tree desert, which is a great place to be as an artist.
Johnny Jewell : Yeah, for me as a writer, it’s amazing. I love the isolation. That’s perfect.
PAN M 360 : And why did you shift mostly to electronic analog equipment ?
Johnny Jewel : The analog was, you know, the equipment that I used for (the albums) Beatbox and Night Drive. Those early albums, that’s all done on the same equipment that I already had in Texas when I moved from Texas to Portland. It’s basically three synthesizers and a drum machine. And I already had all of that. And then I just became, I think in the mid 2000’ s, a little more interested in sequencing and drum machines and rap music and club music. And I think that’s the real, you know, live drumming I love. But I had done that for 10 years at that point.
PAN M 360: Yeah, but you’re not an analog proselyte. It’s just a coincidence that you built your art form this way, but it’s not necessarily a belief in the superiority of analog.
Johnny Jewel : Well, it’s not a religion for me, you know, but I definitely prefer analog, I use digital for other things. My own personal path has been with the tools that I’ve had access to, which happened to be analog since I’ve had them for 30 years, you know. And then I’m just building on that and still haven’t found the end of my limitations with that. So there’s no reason for me to switch to computers or digital when I’m still exploring analog. I see.
But I love computer music and I love all types of electronic music. I find it very interesting just for me personally. My workflow is based more in the old school rock mentality of you start the song and you play the song all the way through and then you add layers. And that’s how I still work.
PAN M 360 : And are you mostly working alone? Do you collaborate with other musicians sometimes?
Johnny Jewel : I work mostly in complete isolation. And collaborations usually happen remotely. And they will most often be with a vocalist. Musically, I need a lot of time alone.
PAN M 360 : The best setup for a close and warm family!
Johnny Jewel : Yes, plus three dogs and two guinea pigs!
PAN M 360 : So cool! And what are you going to present precisely in Montreal?
Johnny Jewel : Well, (one week before the gig) I haven’t quite decided yet to be honest. Just the general mood, I mean. Yes, the general mood will be a mix of film work that I’ve done in reality. You know, like music that I made for David Lynch, music that I made for Drive, Lost River, things like that.
And then there will be a fantasy component where I will be live improvising to films from the 1960s and 1970s cut up in a non-linear way. And that’s sort of like an imaginary film idea. And then I will also be playing a few pop songs from my bands. So it will be a mix of those main three components. I’m just not sure what I’m going to play yet. I usually decide the day before.
PAN M 360 : So you do something else with this previous material and you change it in a live set.
Johnny Jewel : Yes. I reinterpret some of my favorite moments or things that I find, depending on what I choose, that complements the entire set and creates an emotional arc for the night. I’ll be performing for about 80 minutes. So it’s very much every song affects every other song. And that determines how I play, what I choose, the order that I choose, and then ultimately also what we’re seeing visually while those musical pieces are playing out and while the lyrics are being heard.
PAN M 360 : Are you also presenting new stuff, new music?
Johnny Jewel : Yes, unreleased music from my upcoming album, Kaleidoscope. And it’s multi-volume. I directed my first film last year and I’m in the process of editing it. It also shares the name Kaleidoscope. When I went to make music for the film, I ended up making about eight hours of music, which is too much. So I decided instead of doing an album, I’m going to do a series that’s going to be three or four volumes of Kaleidoscope. So volume one I’ll be playing some pieces.
PAN M 360 : Thank you so much for this conversation. You’ve been very generous with PAN M 360. Johnny Jewel : Thank you, à bientôt!
